To give Ireland Colonial Home Rule, without representation in London, is to follow the natural channel of historical development.  Ireland was virtually a Colony, and is treated still in many respects as an inferior type of Colony, in other respects as a partner in a vicious type of Union.  We cannot improve the Union, and it is, admittedly, a failure.  Let us, then, in broad outline, model her political system on that of a self-governing Colony.

History apart, circumstances demand this solution.  It is the best solution for Ireland, because she needs, precisely what the Colonies needed—­full play for her native faculties, full responsibility for the adjustment of her internal dissensions, for the exploitation, unaided, of her own resources, and for the settlement of neglected problems peculiar to herself.  As a member of the Imperial family she will gain, not lose.  And the Empire, here as everywhere else, will gain, not lose.

These ends will be jeopardized if we continue to bind her to the British Parliament, and restrict her own autonomy accordingly.  Reciprocally, we damage the British Parliament and gratuitously invite friction and deadlock in the administration either of British or of Imperial affairs, or both.  Of the difficulties raised we can mitigate one only by bringing another into existence.  Endeavouring to minimize them all by reducing the Irish representation to the lowest point, we either do a gross injustice to Ireland, by diminishing her control over interests vital to her, or, by conceding that control, remove the necessity for any representation at all.  Most Irish Unionists would, I believe, prefer exclusion to retention.  One gathers that from the debates of 1893, and the view is in accordance with the traditional Ulster spirit, and the spirit generally displayed by powerful minorities threatened with a Home Rule to which they object on principle.  It was the spirit displayed by the Upper Canadian minority, in 1838-39 (vide p. 101), in threatening to leave the Empire rather than submit to Home Rule, and by the Transvaal minority in the lukewarm and divided support given to the half-baked Constitution of 1905, and in the hearty welcome given to the full autonomy of 1906.  How the Colonists expressed themselves matters nothing.  We must make generous allowance for hot party feeling and old prejudices.  The Canadian minorities did not really mean to call in the United States, nor does it signify a particle that some of the Johannesburgers vowed that anything could be borne which freed them from the interference of a Liberal Government.  These opinions are transient and negligible.  The spirit is essentially healthy.  Paradox as it may seem, the uncompromising attitude of Ulster Unionists, as voiced by the ablest representative they ever had, Colonel Saunderson,[80] is hopeful for the prospects of Home Rule.  They fight doggedly for the Union, but I believe they would prefer a real Home Rule to a half-measure, and in making that choice they would show their virility and courage at its true worth.