But we are told that there are to be in the new Home Rule Bill safeguards which will protect the minority from any interference with their civil and religious liberties. It is not necessary for me to go over again in detail the ground which is so admirably covered by Mr. George Cave and Mr. James Campbell. They show clearly that the existence of restrictions and limitations upon the activities of a Dublin Parliament, whether they are primarily intended to safeguard the British connection or to protect the liberties of minorities, cannot be worth the paper on which they are printed. Let us take, for instance, an attempt to prevent the marriages of Irish Protestants from being invalidated by an Irish Parliament. We may point out that an amendment to the 1893 Home Rule Bill, designed to safeguard such marriages, was rejected by the vote of the Irish Nationalist party. But even were legislation affecting the marriage laws of the minority to be placed outside the control of a Dublin Parliament, the effect would not be to reassure the Protestant community. Mr. James Campbell mentions a case which has profoundly stirred the Puritan feelings of Irish Protestantism. A man charged with bigamy has been released without punishment because the first marriage, although in conformity with the law of the land, was not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church. However justifiable that course may have been in the exceptional circumstances of that particular case, the precedent obviously prepares the way for a practical reversal of the law by executive or judicial action. We must remember that, since the _Ne Temere_ decree has come into force, the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics are held by the Roman Catholic Church to be absolutely null and void unless they are celebrated in a Roman Catholic Church. We have also to bear in mind that these marriages will not be permitted by the priesthood except under conditions which many Irish Protestants consider humiliating and impossible. No more deadly attack upon the faith of the Protestant minority in the three provinces in Ireland can be imagined than to make a denial of their faith the essential condition to the enjoyment of the highest happiness for which they may look upon this earth.