duced as presumptions that Home Rule would knit together
Great Britain and Ireland, or, as the cant of the day goes, transform a
paper union into a union of hearts. If New York be loyal to the United
States, if New Zealand be loyal to the British Crown, why should not
Ireland, when endowed with local independence resembling the
independence of an American State or of a self-governing British colony,
be a loyal member of the United Kingdom?[117]

This is the suggested argument--let us consider its validity.

As to federalism.--All the conditions which make a federal constitution
work successfully in the United States, in Switzerland, and possibly in
Germany, are wanting in England and Ireland. No man till the last five
or six years has even suggested that Englishmen or Scotsmen desire a
federal government for its own sake. Whether Mr. Gladstone himself has
any wish to federalise the whole United Kingdom is at least open to
doubt. Where federalism has succeeded, it has succeeded as a means of
uniting separate communities into a nation; it has not been used as a
means of disuniting one State into separate nationalities. The United
States, it has been well said, is a nation under the form of a federal
government. Gladstonians apparently wish to bind together two, or shall
we say three or four, nations, or nationalities, under the reality of a
federation and the name of a United Kingdom. While all the powerful
countries of the world are increasing their strength by union, the
advocates of the new constitution pretend to increase the moral strength
of the United Kingdom by loosening the ties of its political unity. If
any one ask why federalism which has succeeded in America should not
succeed in the United Kingdom, the true answer is best suggested by
another question: Why would not the constitutional monarchy of England
suit the United States? The answer in each case is the same. The
circumstances and wants of the two countries are essentially different;
and if this be not a sufficient reply, the reflection is worth making
that in the three great Confederacies of the world unity has been
achieved, or enforced by armed conflict.

As to colonial independence.--The plain and decisive reason why the
loyalty of New Zealand to the Empire affords no presumption of the
loyalty under our new constitution of Ireland to the United Kingdom is
this: The whole condition of New Zealand is different from the condition
of Ireland, and our