Mr. Goschen was followed by Mr. Parnell, who produced a
very great effect by the extreme moderation of his language, and by the promises which he lavishly gave that all Irishmen, whether in Ireland or America, would accept this Bill as a final settlement of their claims. He accepted the statutory Legis- lature in Dublin as a distinctly subordinate body to the Imperial Parliament. He would at one time have preferred a restora- tion of Grattan's Parliament ; but he accepted the subordinate Legislature with an Irish Executive dependent on it, as even preferable to a co-ordinate Legislature with no such Irish Executive. Only he assumed that the Imperial Parliament would never exercise its legal right to override the Dublin Parliament, unless the Dublin Parliament swerved from the honourable conditions within which the delegated Legislature was bound to restrict its action. Mr. Parnell did not object to the Conservative character of the "first order" of the Irish Legislature, which he called "a very salutary provision ;" and though he did not agree that the "first order" should have power to hang up an Irish Bill so long as Mr. Gladstone's measure proposed, he would rather see "a measure hung up for ten years by such a body than hung up for only twenty-four hours by this Imperial Parliament."
