Nor is the analogy academical.  Ireland is at this moment under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world, but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the business of the Mother Country.  What we have to do is to liberate Great Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution—­not pedantically adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great Britain than that of any Colony.

Three main difficulties have to be contended with:  first, that the system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between “Federal” and other systems of Home Rule.

A.

With regard to the first of these obstacles, we have got to make a big national effort to take a sensible and dispassionate view of the whole problem.  We must cease to regard Ireland as an insubordinate captive, as a “possession” to be exploited for profit, or as a child to be humoured and spoiled.  All this is vieux jeu.  It belongs to an utterly discredited form of so-called Imperialism, which might more fitly be called Little Englandism, masquerading in the showy trappings of Bismarckian philosophy.  We have gone too far in the “dismemberment” of our historic Empire, and near enough to the dismemberment of what remains, to apply this worn-out metaphor to the process of making Ireland politically free.

In Ireland we must build on trust, or we build on sand.

What is best for Ireland will be best for the Empire.

Let us firmly grasp these principles, or we shall fail.  They may be carried to the extreme point.  If it were for Ireland’s moral and material good to become an independent nation, it would be Great Britain’s interest to encourage her to secede and assume the position of a small State like Belgium, whose independence in our own interests we guarantee.  Since nobody of sense, in or out of Ireland supposes that her interest lies in that direction, we need not consider the point; but it is just as well to bear in mind that a prosperous and friendly neighbour on a footing of independence is better than a discontented and backward neighbour on a footing of dependence.  The corollary is this—­that any restrictions or limitations upon the subordinate Irish Government and Parliament which are not scientifically designed to secure the easy working of the whole Imperial machinery, but are the outcome of suspicion and distrust, will serve only to aggravate existing evils.  When the supreme object of a Home Rule measure is to create a sense of responsibility in the people to whom it is extended, what could be more perversely unwise than to accompany the gift with a declaration of the incompetence of the people to exercise responsibility, and with restraints designed to prevent them from proving the contrary?