hange must
not take place if it be adverse to the interests of Great Britain. This
is merely to assert that the welfare of thirty millions of citizens
must, if a conflict of interest arise, be preferred to the interest of
five millions of citizens. Home Rulers, it must again and again be
repeated, demand not the national independence of Ireland, but the
maintenance of the connection between England and Ireland on terms
different from the conditions contained in the Act of Union. To keep
one's mind clear on this point is of importance, because the result
follows that, as already intimated, a whole series of arguments or
claims which may fairly be put forward by a Nationalist are not
available to a Home Ruler. A Nationalist, for example, may urge that
the will of the Irish people to be independent is decisive of their
moral right to independence, and that the perils which a free Ireland
may bring upon England need not in any way concern him or his country.
Whether indeed the principle of "nationality," or the contention that
any portion of a State which deems itself conscious of distinct national
sentiment may, as a matter of absolute right, claim to become a separate
nation, can be maintained, is an enquiry not so easily answered in the
affirmative as is often assumed by modern democrats. What, however, is
here insisted upon is not that the principle of nationality is unsound,
but that this principle does not cover the demand for Home Rule. A Home
Ruler asks not for the political separation, but for the political
partnership of England and Ireland. He wishes not that the firm should
be dissolved, but that the Articles of Association should be revised.
There is not then the least unfairness in the answer that no
modification can be allowed which in the judgment of his associates is
fatal to the prosperity of the concern. To crowds excited by pictures of
past greatness or of past struggles, by the hope of future prosperity to
be brought about by miracles wrought by substituting the rule of love
for the rule of law, there may appear to be something prosaic, not to
say repulsive, in the comparison of the relation between Great Britain
and Ireland to the relation between shareholders in a trading company.
But at a period when a fundamental change in the constitution is
advocated on grounds of faith, benevolence, or generosity, a good deal
is gained by bringing into relief the business aspect of constitutional
reforms. It can n