circumstances, did become before the Union the centre of Irish public life. The analogy is certainly curious. Under the Constitution of 1690 the Scottish Parliament obtained complete legislative independence and practically also the power to govern Scotland, and at the end of seventeen years consented to the Union between Scotland and England. Under Grattan's Constitution, which may be well called the Constitution of 1782, the Irish Parliament obtained by the repeal or modification of Poynings' Law complete legislative independence, and at the end of eighteen years assented to the legislative union of Ireland with Great Britain. But the Irish Parliament was during those eighteen years the centre of the public life of Ireland. Why, one asks, did the Irish Parliament succeed where the Scottish Parliament failed?

The answer to this question is apparently the more difficult to find because, on the face of the matter, the Irish Parliament suffered under disadvantages from which the Scottish Parliament was free. The Irish Parliament was not, while the Scottish Parliament was an institution of really national growth. The Irish Parliament was imported by invaders or settlers from England. It could hardly at any time have been considered to represent the whole people of Ireland. From 1691 to 1800 it did not contain among its members a single avowed Roman Catholic. From 1691 to 1793 no Roman Catholic could vote for a Member of Parliament. The savage rebellion of 1798, crushed in many cases with savage cruelty, greatly embittered Irish Protestants against Irish Catholics, and Irish Catholics against Irish Protestants. The defects of the Irish Parliament were patent. Its virtues, even as represented by the learning and fairness of Lecky, are at best hypothetical. But the Irish Parliament even before 1782 had become the centre of Irish political life. What is the explanation of this historical paradox? It is not in reality hard to find. The Parliament of Ireland was no doubt the legislature of the colonists rather than of the native Irish. It became after 1691 the Parliament of the Protestants, and not of the Roman Catholics. But it had several advantages denied to the Parliament of Scotland. The Protestant settlers from England had

more or less inherited parliamentary ideas brought from England. Among other ideas they had succeeded to the Lancastrian tradition. The Irish asserters of parliamentary power fought mainly if not wholly for the rights of the Protestants. But before 1782 the Parliament had become the asserter of Irish Nationalism. The names of Molyneux, of Lucas, of Swift, were known to every Irishman. The oratory of Flood and Grattan was known throughout Ireland and Great Britain. These men had, in or out of Parliament, by writing or by speech denounced real and grievous wrongs done to Ireland. And the Irish Parliament before 1782 was a Parliament of speakers. All classes of Irishmen had been educated in the belief that, whatever its defects, it was the body by whose action the wrongs of Ireland would find redress. Lastly, the Irish Parliament shared with the Parliament of England all the prestige which belongs to a legislature which has no rival. There was in Ireland no General Assembly whose existence detracted from the authority of the Parliament.

Fourth Thought.—Both the strength and the weakness of the Scottish Parliament facilitated the making of the Treaty and the passing of the Act of Union.

The strength of the Scottish Parliament lay in two characteristics. Firstly, since 1690 it had become, at any rate when supported by the Crown, the legal sovereign of Scotland. It had acquired the legal and the moral power to make the Treaty and to carry through the Act of Union. Secondly, it was a body singularly well fitted for performing the very difficult task of basing the political unity of Great Britain on an elaborate contract which, though it might excite no enthusiasm either in Scotland or in England, secured solid advantages to each of these countries. It was a Parliament full of national feeling, and yet less inclined than are most representative assemblies to pay undue respect to public opinion. Men such as Fletcher of Saltoun were patriots, but were certainly not democrats or even what we should call Liberals. They wished to serve what they thought was the true interest of Scotland. They were little influenced by respect for the 'great heart of the people.' It was well too that the Parliament had become a place for open debate. It was necessary that the people of Edinburgh,

at any rate, should know that the objections to the policy of unity had received open expression.

The weakness of the Parliament was that it had never become the true centre of the public life of Scotland. But this failure to become the incarnation of national sentiment facilitated negotiations for a Treaty of Union. The only terms on which any English statesman was prepared to accept the political union of England and of Scotland were that the Scottish Parliament should be merged in the one Parliament of Great Britain. This was to every English Whig essential. On any other point the Whigs of 1707 were prepared to make, and did make, immense concessions to Scotland. But anything like a federal union, which should keep alive the Scottish Parliament for any purpose whatever, was utterly opposed to the policy of the English Unionists' of that day. Now, had the Parliament of Scotland become to Scotsmen what the Parliament of England was to Englishmen it would have been impossible for the Presbyterians, or even for the Episcopalians, of Scotland to acquiesce in the Act of Union. It was just because the Scottish Parliament had never been identified with Scottish nationality that Scottish nationalists found it possible to assent, if not to consent, to the Act of Union. It is more than possible that, if the one happy occasion for achieving the unity of Great Britain had been missed by the British statesmen of 1707, Englishmen and Scotsmen alike might have been found, say in the middle of the 19th century, still labouring, in common with some other European nations, to attain that national unity which every sensible man felt to be essential to the prosperity of the British kingdom. We can hardly exaggerate the gratitude we all owe to the British Unionists of the 18th century. On some other occasion it may be possible to narrate the extraordinary skill by which they passed an Act which was at once the most revolutionary and the most conservative of any of the great enactments to be found in the British Statute-book. They succeeded thereby in creating the political unity of Great Britain without destroying the nationalism of Scotland; and this was a great achievement.

A. V. DICEY.

Art. 10.-W. G.'

THE death of a distinguished cricketer at a time when the fate of nations is being decided on countless fields of battle may seem hardly worthy of notice. Yet, even in the midst of this gigantic struggle, the thoughts and memories of a vast number of persons will have been moved by the passing away of Dr William Gilbert Grace, whose prowess on many a green and bloodless sward made his name a household word in the latter half of the nineteenth century. There are forms that loom out of the past as supreme in the mastery of their art; Michael Angelo, Raphael, Beethoven, Joachim, Mario, Talma suggest themselves almost at hazard. In the realm of sport-that peculiarly British preoccupationno other individual ever towered so colossally over all other players in any game as did he whom we all knew as 'W. G.' Thousands who never saw a match nor felt the faintest interest in the antagonism of bowler and batsman were aware of him familiarly by repute. To the English public W. G.' was almost as well known as 'W. E. G.'; and, in the midst of the excitement over the first Home Rule Bill, a distinguished diplomatist observed that there was only one man more talked about in England than Gladstone, and that was Grace. This unique reputation will have to be considered when the social and moral history of the past fifty years comes to be written, for the investigator will be compelled to ascertain how it came about that one who never forced himself into publicity, except by his paramount skill in a game, should have held so high a place in popular regard.

The explanation seems to be that he embodied in a particular way so much that appealed to his fellowcountrymen. Beyond all others, he stood out as the typical example of absolute supremacy in his own sphere. In the best sense he was an individual gifted with amazing aptitude, emerging from the middle classes to be foremost in a game dear to all ranks of English society. Whether sport was made of too much importance before the war is a question that need not be discussed just now. Given the conditions of sport, it is but a truism to say that, to all intent and purpose, Grace personified cricket to the whole Empire for successive generations of cricketers-he

played with the grandsons of those who had called him champion, and could still merit that proud title. It was not only what he achieved, it was also the individuality of the man, his massive, unmistakably British personality, which exercised a spell over the crowd and caught the imagination of those who never saw him to such an extent that, in his own lifetime, he entered the ranks of traditional popular heroes. No official distinctions came to him. He was never nominated to the annual office of President of the M.C.C., who is the virtual head of English cricket; he was never even a member of the committee that forms the governing body of the game. All Grace's honours came to him from the public; and the testimonials collected for him gave substantial evidence of how large he loomed in general estimation.

It became a commercial enterprise to arrange for his appearance at such towns, for example, as Cork, Inverness, Aberdeen, Lincoln, Wakefield, Darlington, Grimsby, Durham and Exeter, where no crowds otherwise could be induced to watch cricket. He alone among Englishmen proved an attraction from the gate-money point of view, as lucrative as that which the Australians subsequently became. In the seventies, a newspaper observed that the clubs emptied and a stream of cabs dashed towards St John's Wood when it was known that he was playing at Lord's. More than twenty years later, on his fiftieth birthday, twenty thousand people were packed round the same ground; excursion trains were run from the West of England; and, much to their annoyance, ladies and gentlemen, not in twos and threes but in hundreds, had to be turned away.' No other votary of any sport has even a tithe of the references to W. G. Grace that are to be found in the pages of 'Punch.'

It was appropriate that so many of the greatest achievements of 'The Old Man' as he was familiarly called in his veteran days-should have been associated with the headquarters of the game in which he excelled. Countless are the occasions on which he descended the steps, first of the old, then of the new pavilion at Lord's, always to be greeted with acclamation, often with positive enthusiasm. Even to look at, Grace had no parallel. That huge, ponderous form, those tremendous arms-their hairy strength revealed by the upturned sleeves—the big,