Ambiguity and obscurity, since they help to pass Bills, are in the judgment of Parliamentary draughtsmen and Parliamentary statesmen characteristics which promote the easy working of Acts. Knives which are made to sell are not knives which are made to cut. No delusion is more dangerous. The founders of the American Union knew their own minds, and were not well acquainted with the advantages to be derived from the obscurities of modern draughtsmanship. But on two points they tried the experiment of keeping real perils out of sight by omitting to refer to them. "Slave" and "slavery" are words not to be found in the Constitution of the United States. What (if any) was the right of a State to retire from the Union, was a matter purposely left open for the interpretation of future generations. The Abolition movement, the Fugitive Slave Law, the War of Secession tell the result of trying to ignore perils or problems which it is not easy to face or to solve. [Sidenote: And to Ireland.] The last disappointment of Englishmen would be to find that Home Rule had not satisfied Ireland. For to Irishmen no less than to Englishmen the Constitution must bring disappointment and inconvenience. That the Gladstonian Constitution cannot satisfy Ireland is all but certain. To say this is not to imply that its acceptance by Irish Home Rulers is dishonest. In their eyes it is a move in the right direction; they exaggerate, as their English allies underrate, the freedom of action which the Constitution offers to Ireland. It cannot, as already pointed out, by any possibility remove the admitted causes of Irish discontent. It cannot tempt capital towards Ireland, but it may easily drive capital away from her shores; it cannot diminish poverty; it cannot in its direct effect assuage religious bigotry; it cannot of itself remove agrarian discontent. The Land Purchase Bill, even when discarded, remains an involuntary exposure of the futility of the Gladstonian Constitution, and of the unsoundness of the principle on which the demand for Home Rule rests. No friend of Italy ever suggested that Italian independence should be accompanied by a loan from Austria to the Italian Kingdom. For the principle of nationality was the true source of Italian disaffection. If in dealing with Ireland we must calm agrarian misery before satisfying national aspirations, this necessity is all but a confession that Irish unrest is due far more to desire for a change in the land laws than to passionate longing for national independence. I do not doubt that the spirit of nationality has some, though probably a small, part in the production of Irish discontent. But the Gladstonian Constitution is unfortunately so devised as to outrage quite as much as it soothes national sentiment. The tribute will affect every Irishman in his pride no less than in his purse. Can any one suppose that Northerners indignant at recent treachery, and Catholics mindful of