The authority reserved to the Imperial Parliament may be termed supremacy, or sovereignty, or may be described by any other fine-sounding name which we are pleased to use, but the fact remains unaltered that, as long as the new constitution stands and works, the Imperial Parliament will not govern Ireland in the sense in which it governs England and Scotland, and that such authority as it exerts in Ireland will be analogous not to the power which it now exercises there, but to the influence which it possesses in Canada or in New Zealand.[19] The new constitution is at bottom a federalist or semi-federalist constitution; it introduces into English institutions many of the forms of federalism and still more of its spirit.
The Parliament sitting at Westminster becomes for the first time a Federal Congress.
Of its members, 567 will represent Great Britain; 80 will represent Ireland.

The exact numbers are for the present purpose insignificant.
The serious matter is that the Imperial Parliament undergoes an essential change of character.

The British members will have, or are intended to have, no concern with the government of Ireland.

The Irish members ought to have nothing to do with the government of Great Britain.

On Imperial subjects the Imperial Parliament, or, to call it by its proper name, the Federal Congress, votes as a whole; on Irish subjects it does not vote at all; on British topics its British members only vote.