All the weakness in external relations, all the internal friction and impediment to progress, all the bitterness and pettiness of local politics, which marked the absence of union among neighbouring colonies, also characterised the relations of Great Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century.  But there was this difference:  the immense disproportion in wealth and power, and the political control exercised by the greater state, caused all the evils of disunion to concentrate with intensified force upon the smaller state.  To undo the mischief of eighteenth century disunion required at least a generation.  A series of political mistakes and mischances, and a disastrous economic policy, have left the healing task of union incomplete after a century.  But renewed disunion to-day would only mean a renewal of old local feuds to the point of civil war, a renewal of old economic friction, in which most of the injury would be suffered by the weaker combatant, the indefinite postponing for Ireland of the prospect, now so hopeful, of national development and social amelioration, a weakening of the whole United Kingdom for diplomacy or for defence.  It is a policy which no Dominion in the Empire would dream of adopting—­a policy which every Dominion would most certainly resist by force, just as the United States resisted it when attempted, with more than a mere pretext of constitutional justification, by the Southern States.

Now for the “exception which proves the rule”:  there is one Colonial analogy for what would be the position of Ireland under Home Rule, namely, the position of Newfoundland outside the confederation of the other North American Colonies.[57] The analogy is only partial, for this reason, that whereas Ireland is almost wholly dependent economically on Great Britain, Newfoundland has little direct trade with Canada, and moreover enjoys a virtual monopoly of one particular commodity, namely codfish, by which it manages to support its small population.  Nevertheless, no one can doubt that with its favoured geographical position, and with its great natural resources, Newfoundland would have been developed in a very different fashion if for the last forty years it had been an integral part of the Dominion.  Nor is the loss all on the side of Newfoundland, as the history of even the last few years has shown.  In 1902, Newfoundland negotiated a commercial Convention with the United States which, in return for a free entry for Newfoundland fish into the United States, practically gave the Newfoundland market to American manufacturers, and explicitly forbade the granting of any trade preference to the United Kingdom or to Canada.  When, fortunately, the American Senate rejected the Convention, Newfoundland embarked on a course of legislative reprisal against American fishing.  But this involved the Imperial Government in a diplomatic conflict which, but for the excellent relations subsisting with the United States, might easily have led to a grave crisis.  The inconveniences and dangers which Irish trade policy might lead to under Home Rule can easily be inferred from this single example, all the more if Irish policy should be influenced, as Newfoundland’s policy certainly was not, by a bias of hostility to the Empire.