The measure of 1893, in short, would have effected a complete revolution in the polity of these realms; it would have given the least important of the Three Kingdoms an iniquitous authority over the most important; it would unnaturally have placed weakness in superiority to power; it would have subjected the dominant to the lesser partner; all this, it will be observed, followed from the inclusion of Irish representatives in the Imperial Parliament, who, though a Parliament in Dublin was to rule Ireland, were to have a right to deal with Imperial and Irish questions. Mr. Gladstone, I repeat, seems never to have understood the strange and ruinous consequences this would involve; but this can be made manifest by one or two examples. The Irish members would be excluded from the British Parliament, and would have no right to vote on purely British questions, say upon the extension of the British railway system, or the disfranchisement of an English or Scottish borough. But they would have eighty seats in the Imperial Parliament; and as it was impossible to separate a number of British questions from those of an Imperial or Irish character, they would have a most potent influence over British affairs; for example, they could legitimately vote upon such subjects as the confidence to be placed in a British Ministry, the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland, or the validity of British incumbrances affecting Irish estates. The exclusion, however, of Irish members from the British Parliament, and their introduction into the Imperial Parliament, would have led to even more disastrous results; it must, in many instances, have caused a complete paralysis of the State. This in-and-out plan, as it was derisively called, must have made Parliamentary government well-nigh impossible; if Irish members were to have a right to vote in the same House of Commons on Imperial and Irish questions, but were not to have a right to vote on British questions, to vote, say, upon a war with a Foreign Power, and upon the domicile and status of Irish subjects, but not to vote on matters of purely British commerce, there might, and very often would be, two conflicting majorities in the leading House of Parliament; Parliamentary affairs would be brought to a stand; the tenure of even the strongest Ministry would be utterly insecure. It is needless to point out that the relations between Great Britain and Ireland would almost certainly have been more strained, under the Bill of 1893, than they would have been under that of 1886; and that the government of Ireland by the Irish Parliament, would, under both, have been much of the same character. The British nation would have been indignant at the humiliation of their ancient Parliament, which would be sometimes placed at the mercy of Irish members; it would have condemned the weakening in Ireland of its authority, through the mere establishment of an Irish Parliament; it would have been sorely vexed that Irish smuggling would filch away a large part of British revenue. It should be borne in mind, too, that the Irish members, who would have been let into the Imperial Parliament, would have been more difficult to deal with, by many degrees, more openly disloyal, more obstructive, than Irish Nationalists could be, as affairs stand at present; they would have the support of the Irish Parliament; the Imperial Parliament could hardly impose a check on them. As for the rule of the Irish Parliament, within its proper domain, it would have been the same, or much the same, under either measure; that is, it would have been a succession of angry wranglings with England and oppression in Ireland, leading to anarchy and general ruin.