rial losses and
perhaps the dangers involved in the independence of Ireland are liable
to exaggeration. Great Britain might find in her complete freedom of
action and in restored unity of national sentiment elements of power
which might balance the obvious damage resulting from Separation; she
might also find it possible to make for the protection of Loyalists
terms more efficacious than any guarantees contained in the articles of
a statutory constitution. If, further, the spirit of nationality has the
vivifying power ascribed to it by its votaries, then Ireland might gain
from it blessings which cannot be conferred by any scheme of merely
Parliamentary independence, since no form of Home Rule can transform
Ireland into a nation.

For Home Rule it may be pleaded that it offers two obvious advantages:
it satisfies the immediate wish of millions of Irishmen, and it
facilitates the adaptation of Irish institutions to Irish wants. These
advantageous results are the best that can be hoped for from Home Rule.
They are real, and to underrate them is folly; the moral gain indeed of
meeting the wishes of the body of the Irish people is so incalculable,
that did Home Rule involve no intolerable evils a rational man might
think it wise to venture on the experiment. Home Rule, it may be
suggested, has the further gain of lessening English responsibility for
the government of Ireland. What it really might effect is to lighten
England's sense of responsibility for misrule in Ireland. But this, so
far from being a blessing, would in truth be one of the greatest of
evils. The distinguished author of the Gladstonian Constitution denies
in his recent pamphlet that the Government of Ireland Bill would, if
passed, repeal the Act of Union. To follow the reasoning by which this
denial is made good is beyond my powers. But there is one aspect in
which the statement, paradoxical though it be, that the Union is not
dissolved by the existence of an Irish Parliament, has a most serious
meaning, which ought to command hearty and general assent. Under the
Gladstonian Constitution, as under any form of Home Rule, the Government
of the United Kingdom must still remain in the last resort responsible
for the administration of justice throughout the whole realm. Admit for
the sake of argument that the Act of Union, though affected in every
section, is not repealed, then assuredly if men be wrongfully deprived
of their property, if they be denied their l