In his thoughtful and eloquent volume, “The Framework of Home Rule,” Mr. Erskine Childers gently chides Home Rulers for wasting vain regrets on the Grattan Parliament, in which he loses interest after the rejection of Flood’s Reform Bill of 1783. No instructed Home Ruler would dream of setting that celebrated body on a pedestal. We know too well that, in the words of Litton Falkiner, it was a parliament of landlords, of placemen, and of Protestants. It was fundamentally conservative and aristocratic. It was ever ready to pass Coercion Acts. It was no more a council of disinterested patriots than the sister assembly at Westminster. On the other hand a large and influential section of its members was eager to purge it of its baser elements. “With every inducement to religious bigotry, it carried the policy of toleration in many respects further than the Parliament of England. With many inducements to disloyalty, it was steadily faithful to the connection. Nor should it be forgotten that it was on the whole a vigilant and intelligent guardian of the material interests of the country.”(147) Though cabin’d, cribbed, confined, it was at least in some degree an organ of public opinion and a symbol of nationality, as the Third Duma, tame though it be, has stood for the principle of representation in autocratic Russia. The duty of British statesmen was to mend it, not to end it. If Grattan’s Parliament was a failure, the Union was a greater failure. For the one experiment recognised, however imperfectly, the separateness of Ireland, while the other started from its denial. To use the jargon of the Ascendency party, Ireland was “loyal” before the Union and “disloyal” after it. The clear moral of those chequered years for latter-day statesmen is that a responsible Executive is of more importance than a co-equal legislature, and that having granted autonomy the British Parliament and British Ministers must strive to render it a success. Pitt’s Union was not partnership but subjection. The only true Union between countries so different is to be found in loyal comradeship. Against such a relationship history cannot bear witness, for it has never been tried. XII.—“The Government Of Ireland In The Nineteenth Century”. BY R. BARRY O’BRIEN I When you speak to Englishmen about English rule in Ireland they say: “Oh! you Irish are always looking back. You always want to talk about the past. You read nothing but ancient history. You never think of all we have done for you in recent years. Come to modern times; forget the past.”