or, at any rate, freely
consents to their insertion--a consent which could not, of course, be
expected if their tendency was to derange the functions of Government or
cripple the Legislature.

On the other hand, it would be a slur on Ireland which she would justly
resent, besides being a highly impolitic step, to deny to the Irish
Executive an important power, such, for example, as the control of its
own police.

B.

It is a grave difficulty that there is no public opinion in Ireland as
to the form of the Irish Constitution. That is an almost inevitable
result of political conditions past and present. Violent intestinal
antagonisms are not favourable to constructive thought. The best men of
a country, working in harmony, are needed to devise a good Constitution,
and if any Irishman could succeed in convening a Conference like that
which created the South African Union, he would be famous and honoured
for ever in the annals of the future Ireland. That Conference, we must
remember, was itself the result of the grants of Home Rule two years
previously, and these grants in their turn were greatly facilitated by
the co-operation of Britons and Dutchmen.[73] Canada, in 1840, is a
warning of the errors made in constructing a Constitution without such
co-operation. Eventually it had to be torn up and refashioned. The best
way of avoiding any such error in Ireland's case is to expel the spirit
of distrust which animated the framers of the Canadian Union Act of
1840.

C.

So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I
pass to the consideration of the problem itself. What is to be the
framework of Home Rule? I take it for granted that there must, in the
broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish
Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and,
through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown. So much is common ground with
nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no
question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish
Council Bill of 1907.[74] But agreement upon responsible government does
not carry us far enough. What are to be the relations between the
subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament
and Government?

We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular
parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized--"Federal" and
"Colonial." Both, of course, may be "C