Any scheme of Home Rule which can conceivably be accepted by England must, it is admitted, satisfy the following conditions.[29]

It must in the first place be consistent with the ultimate supremacy of the British Parliament.[30]

It must in the second place be just; it must provide that each part of the United Kingdom take a fair share of Imperial burdens; that the citizens of each part have equality of rights; that the rights both of individuals and of minorities be safely guarded.[31]

It must in the third place promise finality; it must be in the nature of a final settlement of the demands made on behalf of Ireland, and not be a mere provocation to the revival of fresh demands.

It must, in short, to sum up the whole matter, be, as already insisted upon, a scheme which promises to England at least not greater evils than the maintenance of the Union or than Irish independence.

These conditions constitute the touchstone by which any given plan of Home Rule must be tested.  No scheme, however ingenious, can be accepted which lacks any of these characteristics, namely, the maintenance of Parliamentary sovereignty—­justice—­finality.

[Sidenote:  General character of Federalism.]

I. Home Rule as Federalism.—­Federal government is the latest invention of constitutional science.  Several circumstances confer upon it at the present moment extraordinary prestige.  It is a piece of political mechanism which has been found to work with success in three notorious instances.  In its favour is engaged the pride—­may we not say vanity?—­of one of the leading nations of the earth.  Americans regard Federalism with pardonable partiality.  They are the original inventors of the best Federal system in the world, and Federalism has made them the greatest of all free communities.  A polity under which the United States has grown up and flourished, and fought the biggest war which has been fought during the century, and come out of it victorious, and with renewed strength, must, it is felt, be a constitution suited for all nations who aspire to freedom.  There is nothing therefore surprising in the fact that Federalism is supposed to be the panacea for all social evils, and all political perplexities, or that it should be thrust upon our attention as the device for bringing England and her colonies into closer connection, and (not perhaps quite consistently) for relaxing the connection and terminating the feud between England and Ireland.  We should do well, therefore, to recollect what is the true nature of Federalism.  Federal government, whatever be its merits, is a mere arrangement for the distribution of political power.  It is an arrangement which requires for its application certain well-defined conditions.[32]