cial evils of its own. It revolutionizes the whole
Constitution of the United Kingdom; by undermining the sovereignty of
Parliament, it deprives English institutions of their elasticity, their
strength, and their life; it weakens the Executive at home, and lessens
the power of the country to resist foreign attack. The revolution which
works these changes holds out no hope of reconciliation with Ireland. An
attempt, in short, to impose on England and Scotland a constitution
which they do not want, and which is quite unsuited to the historical
traditions and to the genius of Great Britain, offers to Ireland a
constitution which Ireland is certain to dislike, which has none of the
real or imaginary charms of independence, and ensures none of the solid
benefits to be hoped for from a genuine union with England.

If this be the true state of the case, thus much at least is
argumentatively made out: Federalism offers to England not a
constitutional compromise, but a fundamental revolution, and this
revolution, however moderate in its form or in the intention of its
advocates, does not offer that reasonable chance of reconciliation with
the mass of the Irish people which might be a compensation for a repeal
of the Union, and is as much opposed to the interests of Great Britain
as would be the national independence of Ireland. This conclusion is a
purely negative one, but it is, as far as English statesmen are
concerned, the _reductio ad impossibile_ of the case in favour of Home
Rule in so far as Home Rule takes the form of Federalism.

* * * * *

II. _Home Rule as Colonial Independence._--The modern Colonial policy of
England has, or is thought to have, achieved two results which impress
popular imagination:--it has relieved English statesmanship from an
unbearable burden of worry and anxiety; it has (as most people believe)
changed Colonial unfriendliness or discontent into enthusiastic or
ostentatious loyalty. Some politicians, therefore, who are anxious to
terminate the secular feud between England and Ireland, and to free
Parliament from the presence, and therefore from the obstructiveness, of
the Home Rulers, readily assume that the formula of "Colonial
independence" contains the solution of the problem how to satisfy at
once the demand of Ireland for independence and the resolution of Great
Britain to maintain the integrity of the Empire. This assumption rests
on no sure foundation, but