The New Irish Constitution: An Exposition and Some Arguments

The New Irish Constitution
An Exposition and Some Arguments
Edited on Behalf of The Eighty Club by
J. H. Morgan, M.A.
Professor of Constitutional Law at University College, London
Late Scholar of Balleol College, Oxford
“For the later kindness done in season, though small in comparison, may cancel a greater previous wrong”—Thucydides I. 42.
Hodder And Stoughton
Londo, New York, Toronto
1912

A word of explanation seems necessary as to the origin of this work, its design, and the obligations under which it has laid the Editor. The Committee of the Eighty Club requested me some few months ago to undertake the preparation of a book dealing with the Irish question. They did me the honour of leaving entirely to my discretion both the design of the work and the choice of the contributors. Of books about Ireland, particularly of those which wear the livery of political parties, there are enough and to spare. Most of them are retrospective. I am not insensible to the value of a historical argument—as the design of the second part of this book sufficiently attests—but “few indeed,” as Burke has remarked, “are the partisans of departed tyranny,” and it seemed to me more profitable to pay some attention to the present and the future. The restoration to Ireland of her Parliament is an event which not only appeals to the imagination of the historian, but also stimulates the speculation of the jurist, and invites the assistance of the administrator. I have, therefore, attempted in the earlier part of this book to secure a sober and dispassionate study of the new order of government by writers who can speak with the authority of a life's vocation. Their names need no commendation from me.