The aim of both these great measures--the Bills of 1886 and 1893--was
to give the Irish control of their own local affairs and to distinguish
as clearly as possible between those affairs and Imperial matters. The
method chosen in both Bills is to follow the Parnell scheme of
enumerating the subjects excluded from the legislative power of the
Irish Parliament. The excluding clause became considerably enlarged in
the Bill of 1893 as it was left by the House of Commons. The 1893 Bill
also contains a far more definite and stronger assertion of Imperial
authority, which is inserted twice--first in the Preamble, and then in
the second clause of the Bill.[43]
In both Bills there was a safeguarding clause as well as an excluding
clause. The safeguarding clause also grew considerably between 1886 and
1893. It is almost entirely directed to preventing the Irish
Legislature from establishing any new religious privileges, or
interfering with any existing religious rights. The clause, as it
emerged in 1893, not only forbade any new establishment or endowment of
religion, but seemed to leave the claims of all denominations precisely
as they stand at present.
This safeguarding clause reappears in the Bill of 1912, but it has been
shortened and redrafted by the Government. It contains very important
additional safeguards to prevent the adoption by the Irish civil power
of the principles contained in the recent Papal Decrees against mixed
marriages, and in regard to the right of Catholic clergy to claim
exclusion from the courts of justice. The Irish Parliament will be
debarred from acting on these decrees, and thus the whole agitation
against "Ne Temere" falls to the ground.
THE TWO CHAMBERS
The 1886 Bill established, as we have seen, an arrangement by which
Ireland should be governed by one legislative body consisting of two
orders, a first and a second. These orders were to deliberate and vote
together, except in regard to matters which should come directly under
the Home Rule Act, amendments of the Act, or Standing Orders in
pursuance of the Act. In such cases the first order possessed the right
of voting separately, and seemed to possess an absolute veto.
The first order of the legislative body created by the 1886 Bill
consisted of 103 members, of whom 75 were elected members and 28
peerage members. The elected members were to be chosen under a
restricted suffrage, and the peerage members were to be the
representative Irish Peers. The second order was to consist of 204
members, elected under the existing franchise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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