In the years succeeding this fiasco the Liberal policy for Ireland appeared to be at the mercy of shifting winds.  For some time Liberal speakers contented themselves with vague declarations in favour of Federalism or “Home Rule all round”—­phrases which may mean much or little according to the sense in which they are used.  More recently an able writer,[22] while admitting that “there is no public opinion in Ireland as to the form of the Irish Constitution,” has argued in a work of 350 pages in favour of the grant to Ireland of full legislative, administrative and financial autonomy; while a member of the Government[23] declared that fiscal autonomy for all practical purposes means separation and the disintegration of the United Kingdom.  In a publication recently issued by a committee of Liberals, comprising several members of the present Government,[24] two views directly contrary to one another are put forward, one writer arguing for a devolution to an Irish body of “definite and defined powers only,” and another for the grant of the widest possible form of Home Rule and the exclusion from Westminster of all Irish representation.  The latest official pronouncements indicate that the Government have it in their minds to revert to the Gladstonian form of Home Rule; but even now[25] no one outside the Cabinet, and possibly few inside that inner circle, would venture on a confident prophecy even as to the broad lines of the measure which in a few days may be submitted to Parliament as representing the urgent and considered demand of public opinion.

Franklin said truly that—­

     “those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not
     generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into
     execution new projects.”

But surely on a question of such vital moment to the Empire as the revision of the constitution of the United Kingdom, the bases, if not the details, of the contemplated change are deserving of prolonged consideration and even of some public and ordered discussion.  The British North America Act, 1867, by which the relation of the Dominion of Canada to its provinces is regulated, was the result, not only of years of preliminary debate in the provincial Legislatures and elsewhere, but of a formal conference at Quebec in 1864, followed by the appointment of delegates to confer with the Imperial Government on the matter.  In Australia the proposal for union, agitated at intervals since 1846, was canvassed in every detail at inter-colonial Conferences or Conventions in 1883, in 1891, and in 1897-8, as well as in the several colonial Legislatures, before it was embodied in the Australia Constitution Act, 1900.  And although in the case of South Africa, owing to the urgency of the question of union, the time occupied in the discussion was less than in the other great dominions, yet in the Convention of 1908-9 the best brains in the country were occupied for months in considering every detail of the proposal for union