There are, however, valid reasons why Ireland has a pre-eminent claim to priority of treatment. Ireland has been much less successful than England or Scotland in securing that Parliamentary action should be in accordance with the wishes of the majority of its Members in the House of Commons. Where the representatives of three countries together constitute a legislative body, it is probable that each of these countries will at some time or other be under the sway of a majority different from that which would be formed if its own representatives alone decided upon its composition; but it is clear that this fate is less likely to overtake the country which has a great numerical preponderance in the legislature in question. Thus, taking the period since 1885, England, holding 465 of the 670 seats in the House of Commons, was only in this position from 1892-5, for at the two elections in 1910 there was almost a tie in the return of 226 Ministerialists and 239 supporters of the Opposition. And this great preponderance of one of the countries adds to the likelihood that the others may have the majority of their own representatives in a minority of the whole representation. I have not been discussing the separate case of Wales, and so I will only say that, of the 30 Welsh Members, on no occasion in the twenty-seven years have the Unionists been able to muster more than 8; and Scotland has scarcely responded more closely to the swing of the pendulum in England. Though the Unionists were in power for fifteen out of the twenty-seven years, they had a majority in Scotland, and that a very small one, only in the Parliament of 1900. But Scotland on the whole does not come off badly, since it is not the practice of the Members from the other countries to vote down the Scottish representatives. Where Scotland does suffer is in their inability, owing to their numerical weakness, to secure a fair share of attention for Scottish domestic concerns. A law on Scottish Education, for instance, though it got into the Queen’s Speech for 1900, was not enacted until 1908, and the Scottish Members never have more than one day in the Session for the discussion of all the Scottish Estimates. When we pass to Ireland, it is difficult to make any similar comparison, for, though the Nationalists sit permanently in opposition in the House of Commons, it does not follow that they should be classed as being opposed to the Liberals as well as to the Unionists. If we regard them as opposed to both of the principal parties, then, when the Liberals have been in power, every Irish Member with one single exception must be reckoned to have been among their opponents. But, if we prefer to base our calculations upon the sort of informal understanding which has existed during most of the time between the Liberals and the Nationalists, we must confine our attention, from the present point of view, to the years of Unionist Government, and we find that, of the 103