with unrepresentative or autocratic rule, and separate government, whether for all or for specified purposes, as contrasted with a common government.  In the next place there is the confusion between the status of a self-governing Dominion, in its relations to the Imperial Government, and the status of a Colonial state or provincial government towards the Dominion of which it forms a part.  A truly inimitable instance of this confusion has been provided by Mr. Redmond in a declaration made on more than one occasion that all that Ireland asks for, is, “What has already been given to twenty-eight different portions of the Empire."[54] Considering that the “portions” thus enumerated include practically sovereign nation states like Canada, provinces like those of the South African Union, with little more than county council powers, and stray survivals, like the Isle of Man, of an earlier system of government, based on the same principle of ascendency and interference as the government of Ireland under Poynings’s Act, it is difficult to know which to admire most, Mr. Redmond’s assurance, or his cynical appreciation of the ignorance or capacity for deliberate self-deception of those with whom he has to deal.  The third confusion is that between Imperial functions and national or Dominion functions, due to the fact that the two are combined in the United Kingdom Parliament, which is also, under present conditions, the Imperial Parliament, and to the consequent habitual use of the word “Imperial” in two quite different senses.  It is this last confusion which makes such a declaration as Mr. Asquith’s about safeguarding “the indefeasible authority of the Imperial Parliament” a mere equivocation, for it affords no indication as to whether the supremacy retained is the effective and direct control maintained by Canada over Ontario, or the much slighter and vaguer supremacy exercised by the United Kingdom over the Dominions.  It is this same confusion, too, which is responsible for the notion that the problem of creating a true Imperial Parliament or Council by a federation of the Dominions would be assisted, either by creating an additional Dominion in the shape of Ireland, or by arranging the internal constitution of the United Kingdom, as one of the federating Dominions, on a federal rather than on a unitary basis.

The confusion of ideas between self-government and separate government pervades the whole argument that the granting of “Home Rule” to Ireland would be analogous to the grant of responsible institutions to the Colonies.  The essence of Home Rule is the creation of a separate government for Ireland.  The essence of our Colonial policy has been the establishment of popular self-government in the Colonies.  That this self-government has been effected through local parliaments and local executives, and not by representation in a common parliament, is a consequence of the immense distances and the profound differences in local conditions separating the Dominions from the Mother Country.  It is an adaptation of the policy to peculiar conditions, and not an essential principle of the policy itself.