[36] _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. [37] Compare Report of Special Commission, pp. 18, 19. [38] Under the Home Rule Bill of 1893 as sent up to the House of Lords, it would have been the 'constant presence.' [39] 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. [40] _i.e._ in 1893. [41] Mr. Morley at Newcastle, _The Times_, April 22, 1886. [42] Now Lord Morley of Blackburn. [43] _i.e._ in 1893, and as they continue to be in 1911. [44] Mr. Morley at Newcastle, _The Times_, April 22, 1886. [Morley's argument applied primarily, no doubt, to the Home Rule Bill of 1886; its force, however, was infinitely strengthened as applied to the Home Rule Bill of 1893 by the change which retained eighty Irish members at Westminster with unrestricted powers of legislation. The tenor of his argument applies, I contend with confidence, to any Home Rule Bill which shall propose to give Ireland a real Irish Parliament led by an Irish Cabinet, and at the same time to retain representatives of Ireland as members of the British Parliament.] [45] See p. 43, _ante_. [46] See Motley's speech, _Times_, April _22_, 1886. [47] See Bill, Third Schedule.