Where are the dangers and difficulties of exclusion?  The dangers first.  I believe, from a study of events in the last twenty-five years, that the strongest opposition to it was founded, not so much upon a reluctance to give Ireland powers full enough to render needless her representation at Westminster, but on a jealous desire to keep Irish Members under surveillance, as a dangerous and intractable body of men who would hatch mischief against the Empire if they were allowed to disappear from sight; the same kind of instinct which urged revolutionary Paris to stop the flight of Louis and to keep him under lock and key.  In the case of Ireland it is possible to understand the prevalence of this instinct in 1886, though even then it was irrational enough.  But in 1911 we should be ashamed to entertain it.  Irish plots against the Empire have passed into electoral scares, and if they had not, representation in London would be no safeguard.  We should also dismiss the more rational but groundless view that Imperial co-operation necessitates representation in a joint Assembly.  Conference is a better method.  Anyone who studies the proceedings of the last Imperial Conference and observes the number and variety of the subjects discussed and the numerous and valuable decisions arrived at, will realize how much can be done by mutual good-will and the pressure of mutual interest.[81]

It may be objected that, with one or two exceptions of quite recent date, the Colonies have contributed nothing to the upkeep of the Empire, except in the very indirect form of maintaining local military forces, that their present tendency —­unquestionably a sound tendency—­is to co-operate, not by way of direct money contribution to Imperial funds, but by the construction of local Navies out of their own money, and, in time of peace, under their own immediate control, and that Ireland cannot be allowed to follow their example.  The objection has no point.  Ireland, through no fault of her own, has reached a stage (if we are to trust the Treasury figures) where she no longer pays any cash contribution to Imperial expenses, nor is it possible to look back with any satisfaction upon the enormous total of her cash contributions in the past.  They were not the voluntary offerings of a willing partner, but the product of a joint financial system which, like all consequences of a forced Union, was bad for Ireland.  If we consider that a similar attempt to extort an Imperial contribution from the American States led to their secession; that the principle was definitely abandoned in the case of the later Colonies; that, on the contrary, large annual sums raised in these islands were, until quite recent times, spent for purposes of defence within these Colonies; that in the South African War two hundred and fifty million pounds were spent in order to assist British subjects in the Transvaal to obtain the rights of freemen in a self-governing Colony; and that to this day indirect