may cause frequent and sudden changes of Government. This plan also they have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so applicable, because the Tories and dissentient Liberals, taken together, possess a majority in the House of Commons. But at any moment the alliance of those two sections may vanish, or another General Election may leave Tories and Liberals so nearly balanced that the Irish vote could turn the scale. Whoever reflects on the nature of Parliamentary Government will perceive that it is based on the assumption that the members of the ruling assembly, however much they may differ on other subjects, agree in desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself, and in caring for the main national interests which it controls. He will therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in working such a Government, where a large section of the assembly seeks not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve, but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency. In vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that the interests of their own country require them to seek first her welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly. Now that the demand for Irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk of English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able, without alienating their English friends, to render the conduct of Parliamentary business so difficult that every English Ministry will be forced either to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.