“Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits through legislation on the country to which we belong?”

The proposal would be incredibly stupid, if it were not recklessly mischievous.

But to most advocates of the federal system the word means less than this; and the conception, usually vaguely expressed, is that the relations of England, Scotland, and Ireland, should be something like those of the communities which make up (to quote instances commonly given) the German Empire, the Swiss Federation, the United States of America, or the British self-governing dominions of Canada, Australia, and South Africa.  So expressed, the aspiration for a federal union deserves respectful consideration.

In the first place, it must not be forgotten that no proposal of this nature has yet been put forward, even in general terms, by any English or Irish Party.  Mr. John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Nationalists, has indeed said that he and his friends “were only asking what had already been given in twenty-eight different portions of the Empire:"[46] and a speaker usually more careful in his language[47] lately suggested to his audience that they should

     “ask the twenty-eight Home Rule Parliaments if the Empire would be
     split in pieces if there were a twenty-ninth.”

But in order to make up the number of Parliaments and Legislatures within the Empire to twenty-eight it is necessary to include in one category the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the colonial Parliaments of Newfoundland and New Zealand, the federal Parliaments of Canada and Australia, the provincial or state Legislatures (widely differing from one another in their constitution and powers) comprised in those Federations, the Union of South Africa and its constituent provinces, and the tiny assemblies surviving in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.  From a reference so vague and confused no inference as to the real meaning or desire of either speaker can safely be drawn.[48]

But let us put aside, with the foreign confederacies (which have in most cases been achieved or maintained by armed conflict), the practically independent Parliaments within the British Empire, and confine ourselves to the Federations of Canada and Australia, and to the Union (sometimes incorrectly called a Federation) of South Africa.