This proposition has during the Home Rule controversy been occasionally, in words at least, disputed or questioned by the supporters of Mr. Gladstone's policy, and language has been used which seems to imply that a sovereign power such as the Parliament of the United Kingdom can never by its own act divest itself of sovereignty. I can hardly think that the able controversialists who seem to maintain this doctrine really meant to contend for more than the admitted principle that a sovereign cannot while remaining a sovereign limit his sovereign powers. If, however, it be seriously suggested that the Parliament of the United Kingdom cannot divest itself of sovereignty, the suggestion is as a matter of argument untenable, and this for more than one reason. An autocrat, such as the Russian Czar, can undoubtedly abdicate; but sovereignty, whether it be the sovereignty of the Czar or of Parliament, is always one and the same quality. If the Czar can abdicate, so can Parliament. The Czar again could, instead of abdicating in the ordinary sense of the term, constitute a new sovereign body for the government of Russia, of which he might himself be a part. Thus he may undoubtedly give Russia a constitution like that of England, under which the Czar and two Houses of Parliament might together become the sovereign of the Russian State, and no constitutionalist would dream of maintaining that the new power thus constituted was the less supreme owing to the fact that one of its members, namely the Czar, had at one time been himself the real sovereign of Russia. Here again what is true of the Czar is true of Parliament. The Parliament of the United Kingdom certainly might become a part of another sovereign body, or might join in constituting a sovereign power supreme throughout the British Empire of which Parliament itself did not form a part. There is nothing in the theory of sovereignty to prevent the Parliament of the United Kingdom from forming a constitution for the whole British Empire under which the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Victorian Parliament, the Parliament of the Canadian Dominion and so forth should become simply State Parliaments, whilst the whole British Empire was ruled by some Imperial Congress sitting, say, either in London or in Victoria. Nor need we in this matter have recourse to theory. The present Parliament of the United Kingdom is itself a monument of the historical fact that sovereign Parliaments can divest themselves of sovereignty. For the Parliament of the United Kingdom is itself the result of the abdication of supreme power by sovereign Parliaments. The Union with Scotland was not, as Englishmen often, I suspect, fancy, the absorption of the Parliament of Scotland in the Parliament of England. The transaction bears, when carefully looked at, a quite different character. Up to the year 1707 there existed an English Parliament sovereign in England, and there existed a Scotch Parliament sovereign in Scotland.