The withdrawal of the Nationalist Members of ' Parliament from
Westminster is characteristically clever. No doubt they think .that since they repudiate all responsibility for what happens at Westminster, nobody will be able to say afterwards that they have refUsed Home Rule. At the same time, nobody will be able to say that they must work a scheme of Home Rule for which they have never accepted -responsibility. What will the result be ? Surely it will be that, having got a Parliament of some sort—if they do get it— the Irish Executive will immediately declare that no man can set bounds to a National Parliament,- that all the safeguards invented by -the British Government amount to nothing; and that for -their part they are going ahead as they think fit and as far 'as they dare. In such a course they would certainly have an historic precedent. They would be doing exactly what Grattan's Parliament did. Grattan's Parliament announced that it was a National Parliament, co-equal in power with the Parliament in Westminster, and that English decisions were quite powerless to affect it.
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