Note 3 — HOW WE BECAME HOME RULERS.

I may mention here another fact whose significance impressed some among us. Parliament, which usually sinned in not doing for Ireland what Ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for Ireland which were regarded as setting very bad precedents for England. By some bargain between the Irish Office and the Nationalist members, measures were put through which may have been right as respects Ireland, but which embodied principles mischievous as respects Great Britain. We felt that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better that they should proceed from an Irish Legislature rather than from the Imperial Parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when asked to extend the same principles to England. The Labourers' Act of July, 1885, is the most conspicuous example.