The Government of Ireland Bill adopts the principle of total inclusion, but qualifies the anomaly which is involved in the presence of Irish members voting on non-Irish questions by reducing the representation of Ireland to the number of forty-two, and thus to a figure far below that to which Ireland is entitled on the basis of population. At the same time it must be admitted that the anomaly is not thereby removed. The position of Irish members voting on purely English legislation after the grant of Home Rule will indeed—numbers apart—be more anomalous than it was before it. An anomaly can be tolerated so long as it is universal in its operation, and Scotch and English members can at present view with equanimity the spectacle of Irish members voting in their own affairs so long as they themselves exercise the same privilege in those of their neighbours. Reciprocity of this kind produces a certain unity of thought in a deliberative assembly. But the anomaly at once becomes invidious if Irishmen are placed in a privileged position. It is perhaps more theoretical than real, as the actual weight that could be thrown into the scale of the division lobby by a Nationalist majority (taking the present balance of parties in Ireland) of about twenty-six cannot be considerable, even if, as is very doubtful, it were consistently exercised.
Still the anomaly remains. Is it possible to meet it by some extension of Home Rule to the legislative affairs of England and Scotland?
