In Ireland therefore the new constitution abolishes the effective exercise of authority by the Imperial Parliament in matters of administration, in matters of legislation, in matters of finance; every concern which affects the daily life of Irishmen will be under the control of the Irish Cabinet and the Irish Parliament. The relation of the Imperial Parliament towards Ireland will not be the relation which it now occupies towards the whole United Kingdom, and which under the new constitution it will still occupy towards Great Britain. The Imperial Parliament, it is true, retains considerable reserved powers; what are the effect and nature of these powers shall be considered in its due place. The matter upon which I now insist is simply this: the new constitution does in any case transfer the effective government of Ireland from the Imperial Parliament to the Irish Parliament. The authority reserved to the Imperial Parliament may be termed supremacy, or sovereignty, or may be described by any other fine-sounding name which we are pleased to use, but the fact remains unaltered that, as long as the new constitution stands and works, the Imperial Parliament will not govern Ireland in the sense in which it governs England and Scotland, and that such authority as it exerts in Ireland will be analogous not to the power which it now exercises there, but to the influence which it possesses in Canada or in New Zealand.[19] The new constitution is at bottom a federalist or semi-federalist constitution; it introduces into English institutions many of the forms of federalism and still more of its spirit. The Parliament sitting at Westminster becomes for the first time a Federal Congress. Of its members, 567 will represent Great Britain; 80 will represent Ireland. The exact numbers are for the present purpose insignificant. The serious matter is that the Imperial Parliament undergoes an essential change of character. The British members will have, or are intended to have, no concern with the government of Ireland. The Irish members ought to have nothing to do with the government of Great Britain. On Imperial subjects the Imperial Parliament, or, to call it by its proper name, the Federal Congress, votes as a whole; on Irish subjects it does not vote at all; on British topics its British members only vote. The British and the Irish members, in short, alike represent, though in a very clumsy fashion, the States of a Confederacy. Though the fact be artfully concealed, we have under the new constitution already, in germ at least, a British State and an Irish State, a British Parliament and an Irish Parliament, and a third body consisting of these two Parliaments, which is the Imperial or Federal Parliament.[20] The different features of federalism make their appearance though under strange forms. The constitution imposes Restrictions on the powers of the State Governments and of the Federal Government.