In the new Bill the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is secured by express words. The words are not necessary. No Parliament can bind its successors, and what one Parliament has done another Parliament may undo. Even when one Parliament has been at pains, by declaring its legislation “perpetual” or “unalterable” to bind posterity—as in the case of certain clauses in the Irish and Scotch Acts of Union—its injunctions have been disregarded by its successors with no more formality than is necessary in the case of any other legislation. An Act setting up a new Constitution is no more irrevocable than an Act authorising the imposition of the income tax. If, therefore, the Imperial Parliament chooses to grant a Constitution to Ireland, there is nothing to prevent its revoking or amending that grant, even (we submit) though it should have been at pains to enact that the Constitution could only be surrendered or altered by the consent of the Legislature which that Constitution created. Some doubts did, indeed, arise as to this point in the case of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which not only excluded the Irish members from Westminster, but made provision for the amendment of the new Constitution by stipulating that such amendment should be made, if at all, by the joint authority of the Irish and English Parliaments. Whether this would have had the effect of preventing the “Imperial” Parliament from amending such a Home Rule Act without calling in the assistance of the Irish Parliament was much discussed at the time.(15) Obviously, the question does not now arise, as the Irish members are to continue to sit at Westminster.(16) It is therefore open to the Imperial Parliament at any time to repeal or amend the Government of Ireland Bill after it has become law. On the other hand, the Irish Parliament will have no power, except in so far as such power is conceded by the Act itself, to alter its provisions. This is stated in the Bill itself,(17) but the statement is superfluous. It follows from the doctrine of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament that statutes of that Parliament can only be repealed by the Parliament itself. No constitution granted to a British Colony, however large the grant of self-government it contains, can be altered by that colony unless the power to alter it is expressly conceded. Such a power, when the Constitution itself does not prescribe some particular method of constitutional amendment, has indeed been granted in general terms by Section 5 of the Colonial Laws Validity Act, but this Act could not apply to Ireland, which is outside the legal definition of a colony contained in the Interpretation Act of 1889. The only powers of constitutional amendment which the Irish Legislature will possess are those expressly conceded in Clause 9, which enables it after three years from the passing of the Act to deal with the franchise and with re-distribution.