So much for the first confusion, that which would base the case for a separate government in Ireland on the success of free institutions in the Colonies, entirely ignoring the whole movement for union, which has made every geographical group of Colonies follow the example of the Mother Country.  We must now deal with the second confusion, that which is based on a hazy notion that Home Rule is only a preliminary step to endowing the United Kingdom as a whole with a working federal constitution like that of Canada or Australia.  Ireland, in fact, so runs the pleasing delusion, is to be set up as an experimental Quebec, and the other provinces will follow suit shortly.  Not all Home Rulers, indeed, are obsessed by this confusion.  Mr. Childers, for instance, makes short work of what he calls the “federal chimera,” dismissing the idea as “wholly impracticable,” and pointing out that Home Rule must be “not merely non-federal, but anti-federal.”  But the great majority of Liberals to-day are busy deluding themselves or each other, and the Nationalists are, naturally, not unwilling to help them in that task, with the idea of Home Rule for Ireland followed by “Home Rule all round.”

The new Home Rule Bill has not yet appeared, but certain main features of it can be taken for granted.  It will be a Bill which, save possibly for a pious expression of hope in the preamble, will deal with Ireland only.  It will set up in Ireland an Irish legislature and executive responsible for the “peace, order, and good government” of Ireland, subject to certain restrictions and limitations.  It will assign to Ireland the whole of the Irish revenues, though probably retaining the control of customs and excise, and in that case retaining some Irish representatives at Westminster.  So far from fixing any contribution to Imperial expenditure from Ireland, it will, apparently, include the provision of an Imperial grant in aid towards Land Purchase and Old Age Pensions.  Any such measure is wholly incompatible with even the loosest federal system.  A federal scheme postulates the existence over the whole confederation of two concurrent systems of government, each exercising direct control over the citizens within its own sphere, each having its legislative and executive functions, and its sources of revenue, clearly defined.  The Home Rule Bill will certainly not set up any such division of government and its functions in Great Britain.  Nor will it, in reality, set up any such effective double system of government in Ireland.  What it will set up will be a national or Dominion government in Ireland, separate and exclusive, but subject to certain restrictions and interferences which it will be the first business of the Irish representatives, in Dublin or Westminster, to get rid of.  Long before Scotland or Wales, let alone England, get any consideration of their demand for Home Rule, if demand there be, the last traces of any quasi-federal element the Bill may contain will have been got rid of.