Girardin's guess would not have been even a happy hit if one of a thousand accidents had averted the catastrophe of February 24.

The worth of the arguments against or for the new constitution depends upon the extent to which they are based upon a mastery of general principles and upon a sound analysis of the conditions of the time, and in these conditions are included the character of the English and of the Irish people.

But to object to criticisms simply as prophecies is to reject foresight and to forbid politicians who are creating a constitution for the future to consider what will be its future working.
Another Gladstonian argument is that because the English constitution itself is full of paradoxes, peculiarities, and anomalies, therefore the contradictions or anomalies which are patent in the new constitution (such for example as the retention of the Irish members at Westminster) are of no importance.
The fact asserted is past dispute.

Our institutions are based upon fictions.

The Prime Minister, the real head of the English Executive, is an official unknown to the law.