Bill, clauses 3, 4.
Bill, clause 2.
This will perhaps be disputed. Trial by jury, it will be said, is saved by the expression 'due process of law,' in clause 4, sub-clause (5). But this contention is, in my judgment, unfounded, and its validity must in any case be held open to extreme doubt.
See Bill, clauses 10-19, and note especially clause 12, sub-clause (I).
Ibid, clauses 14-16.
Ibid, clause 12, sub-clause (3).
I am aware that to this statement moderate Gladstonians may take exception. What may be the effect of the preamble which reserves the supreme authority of Parliament or of Bill, clause 33, which recognises the right of the Imperial Parliament to legislate for Ireland will be most conveniently considered in the next chapter. In this chapter, be it noted, I am concerned only with the constitution as it is intended to work, and most Gladstonians will admit that as long as the Government of Ireland, including in that expression both the Cabinet and the Parliament, keeps within the terms of the Act, it is not intended that the British Cabinet or Parliament shall, except in certain excepted cases, intervene in Irish affairs.
All the provisions which under clause 9 of the Home Rule Bill, 1893, in its earliest form, were intended to restrain Irish Peers, or members representing Irish constituencies, from deliberating or voting on any Bill or motion the operation of which should be confined to Great Britain, were swept away by the Gladstonian majority before the Home Rule Bill was sent up to the House of Lords. The unfairness of giving to Ireland a Parliament intended to legislate on all, or nearly all, Irish affairs, and at the same time retaining eighty Irish members at Westminster with full power to legislate on all English and Scottish affairs, secured in 1895 the enthusiastic approval by the British electorate of the rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1893 by the House of Lords.
See Bill, clause 5 (1).
Bill, clauses 22, 23.