Home Rule, and a Nationalist majority—­paradoxical survival of a pre-national period—­seeking to maintain or enlarge Home Rule.  These unhappy results would react in their turn upon the Irish Legislature, impairing the value of Home Rule, and making Ireland, as of old, the cockpit of sectarian and sentimental politics.  The same results would have happened if, simultaneously with the concession of Home Rule to Canada, Australia and South Africa, these Colonies had been given representation in the British Parliament.

(c) Whatever the extent of the danger I have indicated, inclusion in full numbers will tend to keep alive the habit of dependence on Great Britain for financial aid, a habit so ingrained, through no fault of Ireland’s, that it will be difficult to break if the Parliamentary leverage is left intact.  If ever there was a country which needed, as far as humanly possible, to be thrown for a time—­not necessarily for a long time—­upon its own resources, it is Ireland.  Every other self-governing Colony in the Empire has gone through that bracing and purifying ordeal, accepting from the Mother Country, without repayment, only the loan of military and naval defence, and Ireland can imitate them without dishonour.

What is bad for Ireland is sure to be bad for Great Britain, too, and the bad effect in this case is sufficiently apparent.  Imagine the result if Quebec, besides having her own Legislature and her own representatives in the Dominion Parliament, were to be represented also in the Ontario Legislature.  Ireland, besides controlling her own affairs, free from British interference, would have a voice in British affairs, and sometimes a deciding voice.  “If you keep the Irish in,” said Mr. John Morley in 1886—­and he meant in their full numbers—­“they will be what they have ever been in the past—­the arbitrators and masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British administrations.”  That is a rather exaggerated account of the past, for had it been literally true Ireland would have had Home Rule long ago; and it was unduly pessimistic about the future, for it hardly made sufficient allowance for a change in Irish spirit as a result of Home Rule; but there is a truth in the words which everybody recognizes and whose recognition is one of the great motive forces behind Home Rule.  Even a total change in Irish sentiments and parties would not remove the danger, and might intensify it by producing at Westminster a solid instead of, as at present, a divided, Irish vote.  It would be truer, perhaps, to say what I said above, that retention of Members would tend to stereotype Irish parties and the mutual antipathy of Ireland and Great Britain.