view there can be no 'Union' in the highest
sense of the word. Ireland must be retarded and estranged. We cannot
raise Territorial Volunteers within her borders; on the contrary, we
must keep and pay for a standing army of police to preserve our
authority there. Her population must diminish, her vital energy ebb away
to other lands; as a market for our goods and as a source of revenue for
Imperial purposes she must remain undeveloped and unprogressive. She
will continue rightly to agitate for Home Rule, and this agitation will
always be baneful both to her and to us. It will distract her energies
from her own economic and social problems. It will embitter and degrade
our politics, and dislocate our Parliamentary institutions. She must
suffer, we must suffer, the Empire must suffer. It is sad, but
inevitable."

Morality aside, is that common sense? Is it strange that the Colonies
themselves regard such logic, when applied to Ireland, as perverted and
absurd?

Before leaving Australia we have only to recall the fact that at the
close of the last century, after a generation of controversy and
negotiation, the Canadian example of 1867 was at length imitated, and
the Federal Union formed which amalgamated all the mainland States,
together with Tasmania, in the Commonwealth of Australia, and that the
Union was sanctioned and legalized by the Imperial Act of 1900. New
Zealand preferred to remain a distinct State. The Australians departed
in some important respects from the Canadian model, the main difference
being that a greater measure of independence was retained by the
individual States, and smaller powers delegated to the central
Government. This was a matter of voluntary arrangement as between the
States themselves, the Home Government standing wholly aside on the
sound principle that Australia knew its own interests best, and that
what was best for Australia was best for the Empire.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Letter to Lord Malmesbury, August 13, 1852 ("Memoirs of an
Ex-Minister," by the Earl of Malmesbury, vol. i., p. 344).

[30] "Life of Gladstone," vol. i., p. 363.

[31] Annual Treasury Returns ["Imperial Revenue (Collection and
Expenditure)"]. According to these returns, Ireland's Imperial
contribution in 1839, before the famine, was L3,626,322; in 1849, after
the famine, L2,613,778, and in 1859-60 no less than L5,396,000. At the
latter date the Colonies were estimated to cost three and a half
millions a year, of whi