of a ministry which commands a large majority in the House of Commons. That is impossible. Whatever the motive behind such action, its immediate effect would be injurious to the Liberal Party, and therefore the great majority of Liberals would argue that the King had become a Tory partisan. The ultimate injury to the country as a whole would be incalculable. The immense advantage of the King's position is that he is outside party politics and can therefore bring his influence to bear upon both parties for the benefit of the nation. The moment he takes sides this power disappears. By one party he would be regarded as a tool, by the other as an enemy. Unionists have had sufficient experience, in the case of the House of Lords, of the folly of straining the power of the constitution for their own advantage. They treated the House of Lords as their tool, and it broke in their hands. They will not repeat that experiment.

Of very different character is Lord Loreburn's suggestion that there should be a conference between the leaders of the two parties with the object of arriving at a compromise. The moment for a conference has perhaps not yet arrived, but the fact that such a proposal should come from such a quarter is most significant. Lord Loreburn was an influential member of the Cabinet during the whole period that the present Home Rule Bill was being drafted, and during the greater part of the time occupied in its first passage through the House of Commons. He is therefore as much responsible for the Bill as any of his colleagues. He now comes forward and says in effect that the Bill will not work and that the subject must be tackled de novo by a non-party conference. If these are the views of Lord Loreburn, what about the other members of the Cabinet? How many of the others who are still keeping silence, as Lord Loreburn kept silence for two years, may not be in their hearts convinced that the Bill will not work and ought to be abandoned? Such is the cursed tyranny of our party system that men who by nature are straightforward and honourable are compelled to profess approval of measures which they hate and to persist in a course which they know to be injurious to their country. But no escape from this tyranny is possible without the co-operation of members of both political parties, and so far-whatever their private anxieties may be-there is no

public sign that the Unionist leaders have any higher ambition than to go on playing the party game.

One obvious course they might take. They might declare that in view of the seriousness of the present situation in Ireland they are willing to maintain a Truce of God on all other political issues while the country is being consulted by means of a referendum on the Home Rule Bill. A referendum is infinitely better than a general election, for by the nature of the case a general election settles nothing unmistakably except which set of politicians is to have command of the machinery of State and enjoyment of the profits of office. No doubt a referendum, like every other human contrivance, has its defects, but at least it permits a single issue to be clearly stated to the sovereign people. In the present case there are two obstacles to a referendum. First, Mr. Asquith's pledge to Mr. Redmond, and, secondly, the apparent refusal of Ulster to be bound by any decision by whomever pronounced. So far as the first point is concerned, Mr. Asquith must be left to take care of himself. If the Prime Minister of England is so careless of the responsibilities of his great office as to pledge himself to a particular course, regardless of the national dangers that may be involved, he must get out of his personal difficulty as best he can. If it be true that he has made no pledge, then this difficulty disappears.

The strength

The position of Ulster is more serious. of Ulster's opposition to the Home Rule Bill depends upon the nature of that measure, not upon the fact that it has no popular authority behind it, and a popular verdict in favour of the Bill would not remove Ulster's objection. But it would considerably modify Ulster's policy. To fight against the decree of a mere party majority in the House. of Commons is a very different thing from fighting against the definite judgment of the country. Moreover, the appeal to the people by means of a referendum gives Ulster an alternative method of defending herself. Hitherto the Home Rule Bill has scarcely been discussed on its merits. Probably not half the members of the House of Commons have even read it, and certainly in the constituencies not one man in a hundred understands its provisions. If the Bill goes to a referendum the people of Ulster and other Irish Unionists

will have an opportunity of stating their case to the British electorate, and when that case has been fully stated it is hard to believe that the Bill will be endorsed.

The rejection, however, of the present Bill would not by any means involve a refusal to consider other schemes for improving the government of Ireland. No one with any cognisance of the facts can fail to recognise that the government of Ireland, as of other parts of the United Kingdom, might be very greatly improved. Whether the primary need is decentralisation is another matter. No amount of decentralisation will effect any real improvement as long as we retain the vicious system of making the character of our legislation dependent upon the personal ambitions and pecuniary interests of rival sets of politicians. As long as two parties are engaged in a perpetual warfare for the prizes of office it is ridiculous to suppose that our legislative machinery can work well, whether it is centralised or decentralised. Therefore, whatever else is done in Ireland, we ought to avoid the mistake of reproducing there the system of government which has grown up here.

The form which the internal government of Ireland should take is a matter which should be first thrashed out by the inhabitants of Ireland themselves. In his valuable book on 'The Making of the Australian Commonwealth' Mr. Bernhard Wise has shown how the difficulties in the way of federation were gradually overcome, not by forcing the views of one party into law regardless of opposition, but by open conferences and by inviting the people themselves to express their wishes by means of the referendum. On these lines of conciliation Irishmen and Ulstermen are quite capable of formulating a scheme for the better government of the island they inhabit. When they have arrived at an agreement, their scheme-since it must affect British interestswould be submitted for approval to Great Britain.

But before any steps can be taken in this direction it is necessary to clear the present Bill out of the way. That Bill is bad in almost every detail-so inconceivably bad that it is difficult to believe that any man who has studied it can honestly wish it to become law. Moreover, the Bill, while failing to give Irish Nationalists what they have persistently asked for, national self-government, goes sufficiently

far in that direction to make its acceptance by Ulstermen and other Irish Unionists impossible. Doubtless it will be a bitter disappointment to many Nationalists-though certainly not to all-to have to abandon this Bill, for it has been accepted by them as bringing nearer the attainment of their ideal, complete national independence.

With this necessary disappointment Englishmen who really love liberty can sincerely sympathise. For the Irish ideal, though essentially anti-English, is not one that Englishmen need necessarily condemn. There is no moral law requiring all the world to love England, and if it were possible to create a true Irish nation, those Englishmen who most love their own country would be the first to say 'Go ahead.' But it is not possible. Geography forbids it; racial differences forbid it. Indeed the impossibility of accepting the Nationalist ideal is proved by the Home Rule Bill itself. For the Bill, while pretending to gratify the Irish demand for national self-government, binds the proposed new Government of Ireland with fetters which no nation and no self-governing colony would tolerate. Further, the Bill, with the full approval of the Irish Nationalists themselves, makes Ireland financially dependent upon Great Britain. Yet the conception of a nation essentially implies self-support and self-defence. No man with any true sense of national pride would even for a moment permit his nation to be dependent for its external defence and its internal administration upon the charity of another nation. Possibly some Irish Nationalists may regret the humiliation of such a surrender of the pride of nationhood, but they accept it because they know in their hearts that if they were to suggest that Ireland should pay for her ships and soldiers, her own pensions and her own land purchase, there is not a constituency in Ireland that would return a Nationalist member. On the other hand, the people of Ulster are not only willing to pay for their ideal; they are willing to die for it.

Not on grounds of prejudice, therefore, but on grounds of equity, Great Britain is entitled to decide in favour of the Ulster ideal of a United Kingdom and against the Nationalist ideal of an Irish nation. Once that decision has been pronounced, the way will be clear for the work of construction. EDITOR.

No. CCCCXLVII. will be published in Januar

INDEX

Titles of Articles are printed in heavier type.