The inevitableness of Home Rule resides in the fact that it is, as one might say, a biped among ideas. It marches to triumph on two feet, an Irish and an Imperial foot. If there were in Ireland no demand whatever for self-government it would, nevertheless, be necessary in the interests of the Empire to force it on her. The human, or as some people may prefer to call it, the sociological case for Home Rule, and the historical case for it have already been outlined. We now turn to consideration, of another order, derived from Political Mechanics, or rather bearing on the mere mechanism of politics. Let us approach the problem first from the Imperial side.
On the whole, the most remarkable thing about the British Empire is that there is no British Empire. We are in presence of the familiar distinction between the raw material and the
finished article. There are, indeed, on the surface of the globe a number of self-governing colonies, founded and peopled by men of Irish and English blood. In each of these the United Kingdom is represented by a Governor whose whole duty consists in being seen on formal occasions, but never heard in counsel or rebuke. The only other connecting links are those of law and finance. The Privy Council acts as a Court of Appeal in certain causes, and Colonial Governments borrow money in the London market. These communities widely seperated in geography and in temperament, have no common fiscal policy, no common foreign policy, no common scheme of defence, no common Council to discuss and decide Imperial affairs. Now this may be a very wise arrangement, but you must not call it an Empire. From the point of view of unity, if from no other, it presents an unfavourable contrast to French Imperialism, under which all the oversea colonies are represented in the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. In the English plan the oversea colonies are unrelated atoms. You may say that they afford all the materials for a grandiose federation; but if you have flour in one bag, and raisins in another, and candied peel in another, and suet in another you must not call them a Christmas
pudding until they have been mixed together and cooked. Those areas of the globe, coloured red on the maps, may have all the resources requisite for a great, self-sufficing, economic unit of a new order. Their peoples may desire that new order. But until it is achieved you must remember that the British Empire belongs to the region of dream and not to that of fact.
For many years now, apostles of reconstruction have been hammering out the details of a scheme that shall unify the Empire on some sort of Federal basis. For the new organism which they desire to create they need a brain. Is this to be found in the Westminster Assembly, sometimes loosely styled the "Imperial Parliament"? As things stand at present such a suggestion is a mere counter-sense. That body has come to such a pass as would seem to indicate the final bankruptcy of the governing genius of England. All the penalties of political gluttony have accumulated on it. Parliament, to put the truth a little brutally, has broken down under a long debauch of over-feeding. Every day of every session it bites off far more in the way of bills and estimates than it even pretends to have time to chew. Results follow which it would be indiscreet to express in terms of physiology. Tens of millions are shovelled out of the Treasury by
an offhand, undiscussed, perfunctory resolution. The attempt to compress infinite issues in a space too little has altered and, as some critics think, degraded the whole tenor of public life. Parliament is no longer the Grand Inquest of the Nation, at least not in the ancient and proper meaning of the words. The declaration of Edmund Burke to the effect that a member has no right to sacrifice his "unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience" to any set of men living may be echoed by the judges in our day, but to anyone who knows the House of Commons it is a piece of pure irony. Party discipline cracks every session a more compelling whip; and our shepherded, regimented, and automatised representatives themselves realise that, whatever more desirable status they may have attained, they have certainly lost that of individual freedom. Out of their own ranks a movement has arisen to put an end altogether to Party government. This proposal I myself believe to be futile, but its very futility testifies to the existence of an intolerable situation. All this turns on the inadequacy of the time of the House of Commons to its business. But the distribution of such time as there is, is a revel of ineptitudes. It resembles the drawing of a schoolboy who has not yet
learned perspective. A stranger dropping into the Chamber will find it spending two hours in helping to determine whether Russia is to have a Czar, and the next four hours helping to determine whether Rathmines is to have, let us say, a new sewer. The affairs of India, involving the political welfare of three hundred millions of human beings, get one day; Egypt, that test case in international ethics, has to be content with a few scattered hours. And, despite all this, local questions are not considered at sufficient length or with sufficient knowledge. The parish pump is close enough to spoil St Stephen's as an Imperial Council, and yet so far away as to destroy its effectiveness as an organ of local government.
Such an assembly is clearly unfitted to function as the cerebrum of Empire. It must be relieved of burdens which in the complexity of modern politics it is no longer able to bear. How is this to be done? In one way and in one way only, by leaving local business to local bodies. But that is Home Rule, or, as the learned, envisaging the idea from another point of view, sometimes prefer to call it, Devolution. Through the principle of autonomy, incompletely applied, the British Possessions have so far evolved. Through the principle of autonomy,
completely applied, and in no other wise, can they evolve into an ordered system worthy of the Imperial name. This is at first blush a singular development. Here lie Ireland and England separated by a mountain of misunderstanding. We Irish Nationalists have for a century been trying to bore a tunnel through from one side. And suddenly we become aware of the tapping of picks not our own, and encounter midway the tunnel which the Party of Imperial Reconstruction have driven through from the other side. Here are all the materials for a tableau. Justice falls on the neck of expediency. Imperialism recognises in nationality no rebel but a son of the house. Toryism rubs its eyes, and finds that it is Home Rule.
But, sounded to its depths, this new current of thought appears not only not eccentric but inevitable. Ample explanation is to be found in the history of the Irish fight for self-government. On this subject there has been in Ireland a marked evolution of ideas. O'Connell began by demanding simple Repeal of the Union and the Restoration of Grattan's Parliament. But by 1844 he had advanced towards a Federal programme.