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 must, in the year 1911, present a doubtful aspect.  The British entente with France, and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance, but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember, with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step in the furtherance of Imperial unity.  The word “nation,” therefore, as applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home Rule.  Even the word “Colony” is becoming harmless; for every year that has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more important than legal ties.  In one remarkable case, that of the conquered Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been thrown on the significance of those phrases “nation” and “Colony.”  There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, “national” included racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland.  But we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without.