gratuitous.  The will of a locality is admitted not to be the expression of the will of the nation.  No one, again, fancies that the legal institutions of England ought of necessity to be extended to Scotland, or the law of Scotland to England.  In Ireland recent legislation has, and with general approval, established institutions which no one alleges must, because they exist in Ireland, be applied of necessity or as a matter of justice to England.  English tenants might in many cases, it is likely enough, think the provisions of the Irish Land Acts a boon, but no one would listen to the argument that simply because under the special circumstances of Ireland special privileges are given to Irish tenants, similar privileges ought to be conferred upon every English tenant farmer.  The idea therefore that because English boroughs or counties receive an increased measure of self-government the same measure ought to be extended to Ireland, though it sounds plausible, is neither conformable to democratic principle nor to our habitual practice, grounded as that practice is on considerations of common sense and expediency.  The true watchwords which should guide English democrats in their dealings with Ireland, as in truth with every other part of the United Kingdom, are not “equality,” “similarity,” and “simultaneity,” but “unity of government,” “equality of political rights,” “diversity of institutions.”  Unless English democrats see this they will commit a double fault:  they will not in reality deal with Ireland as with England, for to deal with societies in essentially different conditions in the same manner is in truth to treat them differently; they will not—­and this is of even more importance—­perform the true function of the democracy, which is to remove by special legislation, mainly in a democratic direction, the peculiar evils which are the result of Ireland’s peculiar and calamitous history.

Once realise that Local Self-Government is essentially different from Home Rule, and it becomes patent that the idea of satisfying the wish for Home Rule by increasing the municipal franchises of every township in Ireland is a dangerous delusion.  Local Self-Government may be an excellent thing in its way—­it is possibly (though I do not say it is) the thing which the inhabitants of Ireland ought to wish for; but it is not the thing which they do wish for, and it has not the qualities which, if Home Rule be really desired by the Irish people, make Home Rule desirable.  It does not meet the feeling of nationality; it does not give the popular leaders authority to settle the land question; it does not free the law from its alien aspect.  The very reasons which make English reformers favour the extension of Local Self-Government in Ireland prove that Local Self-Government, whatever its merits, is no substitute for Parliamentary independence.  Englishmen recommend Local Self-Government because it does not check on the authority of the Imperial Parliament; Home Rulers desire Home Rule because it does check Imperial legislation.  Brandy is good, and water is good; but when a neighbour asks for a glass of spirits, it is mockery to tender a glass of water on the ground that both spirits and water are drink.  The benevolent person who makes the offer must not wonder if he receives no thanks.