The “subject matter” of the Old Age Pensions Acts, National Insurance Acts, and Labour Exchanges Acts has, it is true, been excluded. It seems regrettable that the category is not enlarged to include the Companies Acts, the Sale of Goods Act, the Bills of Exchange Act, and the Factory Acts. It would be highly undesirable to have the “industrial minimum” for the United Kingdom, so laboriously attained by our factory legislation, lowered in the interests of particular interests in Ireland. The advantages of securing uniformity by the inclusion of the three great statutes relating to commercial law is also very obvious. Two of them, indeed, represent a great step in that codification of English law which is the dream of English jurists, they have been adopted as a model in some of our colonies, and it would seem highly desirable that the standard thus attained should remain fixed. In urging this, I do not forget what I have already said, in connection with the subject of constitutional limitations, as to the undesirability of exacting too rigid a degree of uniformity in English and Irish legislation, but constitutional limitations are one thing and exceptions quite another. It is very difficult to subject the whole field of Irish legislation to juristic principles, but it is comparatively easy to exempt from that field the subject matter of particular Acts. The whole question resolves itself into a consideration of the point at which uniformity should be determined. The Bill seems to fix the point much too low. Of course, one way of dealing with the question would have been to grant Ireland only particular and enumerated powers of legislation, as has been done in the case of the provincial legislatures of Canada. There is much to be said for this. It seems the line of least resistance; it is always easier to add to powers which appear deficient than to withdraw powers which have proved excessive. But it undoubtedly invites litigation and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to define what are exclusively Irish matters without in the last resort using some such general term (as is used in the British North America Act) as “generally all matters of a merely local nature.”