in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation of all her ablest sons.

If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a semiSocialist, Government as the one consideration which would reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every year which passes aggravates the financial difficulties which imperil the future of Ireland.

The best hope of securing a final settlement of the Irish question in the immediate future lies in promoting open discussion on the details of the Home Rule scheme, and of drawing into that discussion all Irishmen and Englishmen who realize the profound importance of the issue. This book is offered as a small contribution to the controversy.

For help in writing it I am deeply indebted to many friends on both sides of the Irish Channel, in Ireland to officials and private persons, who have generously placed their experience at my disposal; while in England I owe particular thanks to the Committee of which I had the honour to be a member, which sat during the summer of this year under the chairmanship of Mr. Basil Williams, and which published the series of essays called "Home Rule Problems."

E. C.

UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA

ERRATA

SINCE this book went to press the Treasury has issued a revised version of Return No. 220, 1911 [Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland, and Ireland)], cancelling the Return issued in July, and correcting an error made in it. It now appears that the "true" Excise revenue attributable to Ireland from spirits in 1910-11 (with deductions made by the Treasury from the sum actually collected in Ireland) should be £3,575,000, instead of £3,734,000, and that the total "true" Irish revenue in that year was, therefore, £11,506,500, instead of £11,665,500. In other words, Irish revenue for 1910-11 was over-estimated in the Return now cancelled by £159,000.

The error does not affect the Author's argument as expounded in Chapters XII. and XIII.; but it necessitates the correction of a number of figures given by him, especially in Chapter XII., the principal change being that the deficit in Irish revenue, as calculated on the mean of the two years 1909-10 and 1910-11, should actually be £1,392,000, instead of £1,312,500.

The full list of corrections is as follows:

Page 259, line 9, for "£1,312,500," read "£1,392,000."

Page 260, table, third column, line 6, for " £10,032,000," read " £9,952,500 '; last line, for "£1,312,500," read "£1,392,000."

Page 261, table, last column, last line but one, for "£321,000," read "£162,000"; last line (total), for "£329,780,970," read "£329,621,970." Page 262, line 7, for "£10,032,000," read "£9,952,500"; line 10, for £1,312,500," read " £1,392,000."

Page 275, table, last column, line 2, for "£3,734,000," read "£3,575,000"; line 7, for £10,371,000," read £10,212,000"; line 14, for "£11,665,500," read, £11,506,500"; in text, last line but one of page, for "£10,032,000," read "£9,952,500."

Page 276, line 5, for "£500,000," read "£340,000"; table, last column, line 2, for "£3,316,000," read" £3,236,500"; line 3, for "£6,182,000," read"£6,102,500"; line 9, for £8,737,500," read "£8,658,000" last line, for "£10,032,000," read "£9,952,500."

Page 277, line 2, for "£1,672,500," read "£1,752,000"; line 7. for "£1,312,500, read "£1,392,000"; line 8, for £10,032,000," read "£9,952,500"; line 12, for " £1,672,500," read "£1,752,000"; footnote, line 1, for "£1,793,000," read " £1,952,000."

Page 279, line 8, for "70-75," read "70-48."

Page 282, sixth line from bottom, for "£1,312,500," read “£1,392,000.❞

Page 246, line 8 and footnote, and page 295, lines 21-31: A temporary measure has been passed (Surplus Revenue Act, 1910), under which the Surplus Commonwealth Revenue is returned to the States on a basis of £1 58. per head of the population of each State.

Page 288, line 2, omit "like the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands." These islands have distinct local tariffs, but they cannot be said to be wholly under local control.

UNIV CALIFORNIA

THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE

CHAPTER I

THE COLONIZATION OF IRELAND AND AMERICA

I.

IRELAND was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all Colonies, she has a Governor or LordLieutenant of her own, an Executive of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments, but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony, exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods; and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be exercised at all.

To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta are examples, where the in

habitants exercise no control over administration, and only partial control over legislation.*

Why is this?

Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, always frank and fearless in his political judgments, gave the best answer in 1893, when opposing the first reading of the second of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bills. "Does anybody doubt," he said, "that if Ireland were a thousand miles away from England she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony ?" Now this was not a barren geographical truism, which might by way of hypothesis be applied in identical terms to any fraction of the United Kingdom-say, for example, to that part of England lying south of the Thames. Mr. Chamberlain never made any attempt to deny-no one with the smallest knowledge of history could have denied—that Ireland, though only sixty miles away from England, was less like England than any of the self-governing Colonies then attached to the Crown, possessing distinct national characteristics which entitled her, in theory at any rate, to demand, not merely colonial, but national autonomy. On the contrary, Mr. Chamberlain went out of his way to argue, with all the force and fire of an accomplished debater, that the Bill was a highly dangerous measure precisely because, while granting Ireland a measure of autonomy, it denied her some of the elementary powers, not only of colonial, but of national States; for instance, the full control over taxation, which all self-governing Colonies possessed, and the control over foreign policy, which is a national attribute. The complementary step in his argument was that, although nominally withheld by statute, these fuller powers would be forcibly usurped by the future Irish Government through the leverage offered by a subordinate Legislature and Executive, and that, once grasped, they would be used to the injury of Great Britain and the minority in Ireland. Ireland (" a fearful danger ") might arm, ally herself with France, and, while submitting the Protestant minority to cruel persecution, would retain enough national unity to smite Britain hip and thigh, and so avenge the wrong of ages. Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented

* Class C. in Sir William Anson's classification, "Law and Custom of the Constitution," p. 253,