who are to live under it as to the manner in which the power is to be divided between the general and local governments; the other is an honest desire on the part of all concerned to make it succeed.  As a general rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to make work is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure to succeed if the people who live under it determine that it shall succeed.  If a federal plan be settled in the only right way, by amicable and mutually respectful discussion between representative men, all the more serious obstacles are certain to be revealed and removed.  Those which are not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure to be comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the general success of arrangement.  But by a “mutually respectful discussion” I mean discussion in which good faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged on both sides.

In what I have said by way of criticism of a book which may be taken as a particularly full exposition of the legal criticism that may be levelled at Mr. Gladstone’s scheme, I have not touched on the arguments against Home Rule which Mr. Dicey draws from the amount of disturbance it would cause in English political habits and arrangements.  I freely admit the weight of these arguments.  The task of any English statesman who gives Home Rule to Ireland in the only way in which it can be given—­with the assent of the British people—­will be a very arduous one.  But this portion of Mr. Dicey’s book, producing, as it does, the distinctively English objections to Home rule, is to me much the most instructive, because it shows the difficulty there would be in creating the state of mind in England about any federal relation to Ireland which would be necessary to make it succeed.  I do not think it an exaggeration to say that two-thirds of the English objections to Home Rule as federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust of Irish sincerity or intelligence thrown into the form of prophecy, and prophets, as we all know, cannot be refuted.  For instance, “the changes necessitated by federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain” (Dicey, p. 173).  The question of the command of the army could not be arranged; the Irish army could not be depended on by the Crown (p. 174); the central Government would be feeble against foreign aggression, and the Irish Parliament would give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. 176-7).  Federalism would aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual Irish disloyalty to the Crown (pp. 179-80); the Irish expectations of material prosperity from Home Rule are baseless or grossly exaggerated (p. 182); the probability is, it would produce increased poverty and hardship; there would be frequent quarrels between the two countries over questions of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p. 184); neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the Privy Council or of any other tribunal on these questions;