hamberlain to Colonial Secretaryship in 1895, was not
the natural outcome of a belief in self-government, but a sudden and
effusive acceptation of its matured results in certain definite cases.
Irish Home Rule itself had, in the preceding decade, twice been rejected
by the nation. With the first opportunity, after 1895, of testing belief
in the principle, namely, in the Transvaal Constitution of 1905, the
Government failed. Finally, in 1906, when, to redeem that failure, for
the first time in the whole history of the Empire a Cabinet
spontaneously and unreservedly declared its full belief in the
principle, and translated that belief into law, the whole of the
Opposition, representing nearly half the electorate, washed their hands
of the policy, and, if the constitutional means had existed, would,
admittedly, have defeated it, as they had defeated the Home Rule Bills
of 1886 and 1893. The change of national opinion has, I believe, been
considerable; but the circumstances remain ominous for the dispassionate
discussion of the Irish Constitution. Patriotic people can only do their
best to ensure that the grant of Home Rule shall not be nullified by
restrictions and limitations which, if they are designed merely to
appease opposition, are destined to create friction and discontent.

I am far from implying that restrictions are bad things in themselves.
All Constitutions, whether the sole work of the men who are to live
under them, like that of the United States, or the gift of a Sovereign
State to a dependency, or the joint work of a Sovereign and a dependent
State, contain restrictions designed for the common good. The criterion
of their value is the measure of consent they meet with from those who
have to live under and work the Constitution, and it is that
circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked
upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party
should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the
United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers
both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of
minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having insulted
themselves.

It will be no slur on Ireland, for example, if the most elaborate
safeguards against the oppression of the Protestant minority are
inserted in the Bill, provided that Nationalist Ireland, recognizing the
fears of the minority, spontaneously recommends,