, and each
is governed by its own Parliament. Denmark has, with benefit to herself,
given local independence to Iceland, and Iceland is content. Austria and
Hungary, after centuries of misunderstanding and twenty years of bitter
conflict, have finally composed the feud of ages by a compromise, which
gives to the two parts of the Empire the practical blessings of
Parliamentary independence, and concedes to Hungary at least the
sentimental blessing of acknowledged nationality. The argument, in fact,
from foreign experience, professes to be an induction based upon a
foundation of instances as large as can support any conclusion of social
science. In one land after another the existence of Home Rule, or, to
use the curiously inaccurate phraseology of the day, of "autonomy," in
one part of the State has been found consistent with the unity of the
whole. An experiment which has succeeded in one set of cases ought to
succeed in another, and England has no reason to dread a scheme of
government which has been tried with success in other portions of the
civilized world. Nor does the zealous advocate of Home Rule pause at the
conclusion that the measure he recommends may, on the strength of
foreign experience, be regarded as a tolerable evil or as a probable
cure for a chronic disease. He suggests that it is a good in itself, and
laments that ignorance led our ancestors to fuse Scotland and England
into an United Kingdom, when they might, had they understood the
principles of federalism, have left to each country the blessings of
State sovereignty.

[Sidenote: Criticism on argument.]

There is some difficulty in treating with perfect seriousness a line of
reasoning which, proceeding from the quarter whence it comes, holds up
for our admiration the wisdom or lenity of Turkish rule in Crete, and
extols the supreme justice of the system upon which rests the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which implies that the arts of government may
be learnt from the Russian administration of Finland, and omits all
reference to the disastrous results of the attempt to endow Poland with
some sort of independence, which bases weighty inferences as to the
proper relation between England and Ireland on the concession by Denmark
to the scanty inhabitants of a desolate island lying 1100 miles from her
coast of as much autonomy (if that be the right term) as under the Crown
of England has been enjoyed for generations by Jersey or Man, and which
suggests lam