from its legitimate uses; but the Irish Customs were to be appropriated to the Imperial charge, which Ireland was declared to be justly liable to pay; and this was a sum of about two millions and a half, with an addition for a time of one million, a sum less than the estimate made in 1886. The Irish Parliament, however, if thus made largely subordinate, was like the Parliament of the preceding Bill, to be in many, and most important, respects supreme. It was to rule Ireland as a sovereign power, subject to the limitations by which it was to be bound; it could make, change, and repeal laws, as regards the Irish community, almost as it pleased; it could, in a word, do nearly everything within the province of a real Parliament. Above all, it could appoint and control the Irish Executive Government, to which the administration of Irish affairs would belong; and it would thus have complete power over the most important machinery of the State. The Bills of 1886 and of 1893 so far resembled each other, with some distinctions; but, in other respects, they markedly differed. The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, implied but not expressed in the first scheme, was unequivocally asserted in the second, though this supremacy could not be effective, as respects Ireland. The Imperial Parliament was nominally left untouched by both Bills, though this was a play on words only; but it was to hold a position in the second it was not to hold in the first; the Union was not in terms repealed by either measure, though virtually it was repealed by both, through the mere creation of an Irish Parliament. The Bill of 1886 had, as its complement, a Land Purchase Bill; in fact, both were made parts of the same policy; a sum of L50,000,000 was to be an indemnity for Irish landlords who should think fit to part with their estates; for Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had declared that it was 'an obligation of duty and honour' to protect this order of men; and he asserted that Parliament would, doubtless, vote any further sums required, a singular exhibition of credulous hope, for these would have amounted to L150,000,000 at least; and he had himself, in a speech addressed to Lord George Hamilton, valued the lands of Ireland at L300,000,000. But what was to be deemed sacred, in 1886, had a very different aspect in 1893; the settlement of the Irish land was, indeed, withheld for three years from the Irish Parliament, but, after this brief space of time, this was to be certainly left to a body, which Mr. Gladstone had evidently thought would make short work of the Irish landed gentry, and would drive them, in beggary, out of their own country. These differences, however, between the two Bills, sank into insignificance compared to a vital distinction which made them essentially unlike each other, and made their projects of Home Rule completely dissimilar. The exclusion of Irish representatives from the House of Commons at