In the Home Rule Bill of 1893 (Section 34) it was laid down that for three years the Irish Legislature should not "pass an Act respecting the relations of landlord or tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally." Such a provision repeated in the coming Bill would be inconsistent with the absence of Irish Members from Westminster. But I take it for granted that there is no question of its repetition. At first it might appear that Land Purchase should be distinguished from other branches of land legislation and reserved to the Imperial Government on the ground that it needs Imperial credit. I shall deal with this point fully in Chapter XIV., and only need here to express the view that Land Purchase cannot be separated from other branches of land legislation, or from the Congested Districts Board, or even from the control of the police, and that we are bound to give, and shall be acting wisely in giving, all these powers to the Irish Legislature from the first. It is necessary perhaps to add that non-representation at Westminster does not in the smallest degree affect the complete legal supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over the subordinate Irish Legislature. This Legislature will in legal language be a "local and territorial" body, like those of the Colonies. It will be the creature of Parliament, and could be amended or even extinguished by it in a subsequent Act. The Bill of 1886 (perhaps because it never reached the Committee stage) said nothing explicit about the supremacy, though the Bill of 1893, while providing for representation at Westminster, repeatedly (and sometimes quite superfluously) affirmed it--in the Preamble, for example, and in a rider to Clause 2. The King's authority, through the Lord-Lieutenant, will be supreme in Ireland, as, through the Governors, it is supreme in the Colonies. Every Irish Bill, like every Colonial Bill, will require the Royal Assent, given through the Lord-Lieutenant, who will correspond to the Colonial Governors. The Lord-Lieutenant, like his colonial counterpart, will have to exercise both his Executive and Legislative functions in a double capacity: in the first instance by the advice of his Irish Cabinet, but subject to a veto by the British Cabinet. This dual capacity has belonged to all Colonial Governors ever since the principle of responsible government was established. As I showed in earlier chapters, it was regarded even by Lord John Russell as impossible and absurd as late as 1840; but it ought by now to be understood by every educated man, and we may hope to be spared the philosophical disquisitions and hair-splitting criticisms which it evoked from men who should have known better in the Home Rule debates of 1893.