we then hesitate to apply to Irish discontent the “freedom” which has proved so sovereign a remedy elsewhere?  Again, if our Dominions have been able to combine local Home Rule with national unity—­so runs another variant—­why should a policy which works successfully in Canada or Australia not work in the United Kingdom?  Another suggestion freely thrown out is that Home Rule is only the beginning of a process of federalisation which is to bring us to the goal of Imperial Federation.  In one form or another the Colonial Analogy occupies the foreground of almost every speech or article in favour of Irish Home Rule.  The ablest, as well as the most courageous, piece of Home Rule advocacy which has so far appeared, Mr. Erskine Childers’s “Framework of Home Rule,” is based from first to last on this analogy and on little else.

That the argument is effective cannot be gainsaid.  It is the argument which appeals most strongly to the great body of thoughtful Liberals who from every other point of view look upon the project with unconcealed misgiving.  It is the argument which has appealed to public opinion in the Dominions, and has there secured public resolutions and private subscriptions for the Nationalist cause.  In one of its forms it appealed to the imagination of an Imperialist like Cecil Rhodes.  In another it has, undoubtedly, in recent years attracted not a few Unionists who have been prepared to approach with, at any rate, an open mind the consideration of a federal constitution for the United Kingdom.  And, indeed, if the analogy really applied, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion.  If Ireland has really been denied something which has proved the secret of Colonial loyalty and prosperity, what Englishman would be so short-sighted as to wish to deprive her of it for the mere sake of domination?  If Home Rule were really a stepping-stone towards Imperial Federation, how insincere our professions of “thinking Imperially,” if we are not prepared to sacrifice a merely local sentiment of union for a great all-embracing ideal!

But, as a matter of fact, there is no such analogy bearing on the question which, here and now, is at issue.  On the contrary the whole trend of Colonial experience confirms, in the most striking fashion, the essential soundness of the position which Unionists have maintained throughout, that the material, social and moral interests, alike of Ireland and of Great Britain, demand that they should remain members of one effective, undivided legislative and administrative organisation.

The whole argument, indeed, plausible as it is, is based on a series of confusions, due, in part, to deliberate obscuring of the issue, in part to the vagueness of the phrase “Home Rule,” and to the general ignorance of the origin and real nature of the British Colonial system.  There are, indeed, three main confusions of thought.  There is, first of all, the confusion between “free” or “self-governing” institutions, as contrasted