It was no answer to cite colonial analogies. The Irish problem is not, as I have pointed out elsewhere, a colonial problem. No one at present proposes to give Ireland complete fiscal autonomy, for example. Nor is it strictly apposite to say that the Imperial Parliament legislates for the Colonies in the absence of colonial representatives. Such legislation is now almost exclusively confined to what I may call enabling legislation in matters in which the Colonies, owing to their status as Dependencies, are unable to legislate. In such matters as copyright, merchant shipping, marriage, extradition, the Imperial Parliament legislates for the Colonies largely because colonial laws cannot operate ex-territorially, and such Imperial legislation is usually effected by means of application clauses which enable the Colonies to adopt it or not as they please. But rarely if ever does the Imperial Parliament legislate for a self-governing colony as it has done and will continue to do in the case of such domestic Irish affairs as old-age pensions, land purchase, Customs and Excise, defence, naturalisation, to say nothing perhaps of industrial and commercial law. I have already indicated my opinion in favour of confining these subjects to the Imperial Parliament, but even were the opposite course taken there would still remain the fiscal question. We cannot continue to tax Ireland unless the Irish representatives are to remain at Westminster. The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is imperative if the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is not to be illusory. Mr. Balfour(57) contends that it will be as illusory as it has been in the case of the Colonies. But the Colonies are not represented in the Imperial Parliament, and to differentiate Ireland in this respect is to make all the difference between a legal formula and a political fact.