which, could it be produced, would be an adequate compensation even for the evils and inconveniences of a federal system" (p. 191).
Now I do not myself believe these things, but what else can any advocate of Home Rule say in answer to them? They are in their very nature the utterances of a prophet—an able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, I grant, but still a prophet—and before a prophet the wisest man has to be silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also. What makes the sceptical frame of mind in which Mr. Dicey approaches the Home Rule question so important is not simply that it probably represents that of a very large body of educated Englishmen, but that it is one in which a federal system cannot be produced. Faith, hope, and charity are political as well as social virtues. The minute you leave the region of pure despotism and try any form of government in which the citizen has in the smallest degree to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you have need of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin to trust in some degree to their intelligence, to their love of order, to their self-respect, and to their desire for material prosperity, and the nearer you get to what is called free government the larger this trust has to be. It has to be very large indeed in order to carry on such a government as that of Great Britain or of the United States; it has to be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal government. In such a government the worst that can happen is very patent. The opportunities which the best-drawn federal constitution offers for outbreaks of what Americans call "pure cussedness"—that is, for the indulgence of anarchical tendencies and impulses—is greater than in any other. Therefore, to set it up, or even to discuss it with any profit, your faith in the particular variety of human nature, which is to live under it, has to be great.
No communities can live under it together and make it work which do not respect each other. I say respect, I do not say love, each other. The machine can be made to go a good while without love, and if it goes well it will bring love before long; but mutual respect is necessary from the first day. This is why Mr. Dicey's book is discouraging. The arguments which he addressed to Englishmen would not, I think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds Englishmen, and that this mood makes against Home Rule there can be little doubt.
I am often asked by Americans why the English do not call an Anglo-Irish convention in the American fashion, and discuss the Irish question with the Irish, find out exactly what they will take to be quiet, and settle with them in a rational way. I generally answer that, in the first place, a convention is a constitution-making agency with which the English public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second place, Englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious, to make the idea of discussion on equal terms with the Irish at all acceptable. They are, in fact, so far from any such arrangement that—preposterous and even funny as it seems to the American mind—to say that an English statesman is carrying on any sort of communication with the representatives of the Irish people is to bring against him, in English eyes, a very damaging accusation. When a man like Mr. Matthew Arnold writes to the Times to contend that Englishmen should find out what the Irish want solely for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a journal like the Spectator maintains that the sole excuse for extending the suffrage in Ireland, as it has lately been extended in England, was that the Irish as a minority would not be able to make any effective use of it; and when another political philosopher writes a long and very solemn letter in which, while conceding that in governing Ireland a sympathetic regard for Irish feelings and interests should
be displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts of the situation, that in "the Irish character there is a grievous lack of independence, of self-respect, of courage, and above all of truthfulness"—when men of this kind talk in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral conditions necessary to the successful formation of a federal union are still far off. No federal government, and no government requiring loyalty and fidelity for its successful working, was ever set up by, or even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity, cowardice, and slavishness could make it.
Finally let me say that there is nothing in Mr. Dicey's book which has surprised me more, considering with what singular intellectual integrity he attacks every point, than his failure to make any mention or to take any account of the large part which time and experience must necessarily play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement which is made to order, if I may use the expression, no matter how carefully it may be drafted. Hume says on this point with great wisdom, "To balance the large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason or reflection to effect it. The judgments of many must unite in the work, experience must guide their labour, time must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into in their first trial and experiments."[25]
This has proved true of the American and Swiss federations; it will probably prove true of the Austro-Hungarian federation and of any that may be set up by Great Britian [Transcriber: sic.] and her colonies. It will prove still more true of any
attempt that may be made at federation between Great Britain and Ireland. No corrections which could be made in the Gladstonian or any other constitution would make it work exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. Even if it were revised in accordance with Mr. Dicey's criticism, it would probably be found, as in the case of the American Constitution, that few of the dangers which were most feared for it had beset it, and that some of the inconveniences which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise from it were among the things which had materially contributed to its success. History is full of the gentle ridicule which the course of events throws on statesmen and philosophers.