A Leap in the Dark / A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the / Bill of 1893

by A. V. Dicey

Bill, clause 12, sub-clause (3).

This is the only sense in which the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament is inalienable. This should be noted, because a strange and absurd dogma is sometimes propounded that a sovereign power such as the Parliament of the United Kingdom, can never by its own act divest itself of sovereignty, and it is thence inferred or hinted that there is no need for the Imperial Parliament to take measures for the preservation of its supremacy. The dogma is both logically and historically untenable. A sovereign of any kind can abdicate. A Czar can lay down his power, and so also can a Parliament. To argue or imply that because sovereignty is not limitable (which is true) it cannot be surrendered (which is palpably untrue) involves the confusion of two distinct ideas. It is like arguing that because no man can while he lives give up, do what he will, his freedom of volition, so no man can commit suicide. A sovereign power can divest itself of authority in two ways. It may put an end to its own existence or abdicate. It may transfer sovereign authority to another person, or body of persons, of which body it may, or may not, form part. The Parliaments both of England and of Scotland did at the time of the Union each transfer sovereign power to a new sovereign body, namely the Parliament of Great Britain. The British Parliament did in 1782 surrender its sovereignty in Ireland to the Irish Parliament. In 1800 both the British Parliament and the Irish Parliament alienated or surrendered their sovereign powers to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Compare Dicey, Law of the Constitution (7th ed.), note 3, p. 65.

It may, I am quite aware, be argued that the presence of Irish representatives is not requisite for the maintenance of parliamentary supremacy. In theory it is not. An arrangement might quite conceivably be made (which if Home Rule were to be conceded might be the least objectionable method of carrying out a radically vicious policy) under which it should be distinctly agreed that Ireland should occupy the position of a self-governing colony with all the immunities and disadvantages thereof, and should cease to be represented at Westminster, whilst the British Parliament retained the right to abolish, or modify, the Irish constitution. Such an arrangement would, however, make it perfectly plain that the sovereignty of the British Parliament meant in Ireland what the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament now means in New Zealand. But 'the retention of the Irish members is a matter of great public importance' (at any rate in the opinion of Mr. Gladstone) 'because it visibly exhibits that supremacy' (i.e. the supremacy of Parliament) 'in a manner intelligible to the people.'—Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 306. See as to Home Rule in the character of colonial independence, England's Case against Home Rule (3rd ed.), pp. 197-218.

i.e. at the moment when these pages are written. What parts of the Government of Ireland Bill may or may not be officially deemed essential by the time these pages appear in print, no sensible man will undertake to predict. Mr. Gladstone's own language is most extraordinary. On the retention of the Irish members, which in the eyes of any ordinary man affects the whole character of the new constitution, and essentially distinguishes the Home Rule policy of 1886 from the Home Rule policy of 1893, he uses (inter alia) these words: 'On the important subject of the retention of the Irish members I do not regard it, and I never have regarded it, as touching what may be called the principles of the Bill. It is not included in one of them. But whether it be a principle of the Bill or not, there is no question that it is a very weighty and, if I may say so, an organic detail which cuts rather deep in some respects into the composition of the Bill.'—Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 13, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, pp. 305, 306. This statement, with the whole passage of which it forms part, is as astounding as would have been a statement by Lord John Russell on introducing the great Reform Bill, that he could not say whether the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs did or did not form a principle of the measure.

Compare Report of Special Commission, pp. 18, 19.

Under the Home Rule Bill of 1893 as sent up to the House of Lords, it would have been the 'constant presence.'

The division of parties in an American State is governed not by questions concerning the internal affairs of the State, but by the questions which divide parties at Washington. State politics depend upon federal politics. 'The national parties have engulfed the State parties. The latter have disappeared absolutely as independent bodies, and survive merely as branches of the national parties, working each in its own State for the tenets and purposes which a national party professes and seeks to attain.' See Bryce, American Commonwealth, ii. p. 194.

i.e. in 1893.

Mr. Morley at Newcastle, The Times, April 22, 1886.

Now Lord Morley of Blackburn.