So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I pass to the consideration of the problem itself.  What is to be the framework of Home Rule?  I take it for granted that there must, in the broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and, through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown.  So much is common ground with nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish Council Bill of 1907.[74] But agreement upon responsible government does not carry us far enough.  What are to be the relations between the subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament and Government?

We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature.  In popular parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized—­“Federal” and “Colonial.”  Both, of course, may be “Colonial,” because there are Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States.  But, nomenclature apart, the two possible types of Irish Home Rule correspond to two distinct types of subordinate Constitution.  The “Colonial” type is peculiar to the British Empire, the other is to be found in many parts of the world—­the United States, for example, and Germany, and Switzerland.

Let us examine these types a little more closely, confining ourselves as far as possible to the British Empire, past and present, because within it we can find nearly all the instruction we need.  As I showed in my sketch of the growth of Colonial Home Rule, all the Colonies now classed as self-governing, together with the American Colonies before their independence, were originally unitary States, subordinate to the Crown, each looking directly to Great Britain, possessing no constitutional relation with one another, and gradually obtaining their individual local autonomies under the name of “Responsible Government.”  New Zealand and Newfoundland alone have maintained their original individualities, and their Constitutions, from an historical standpoint, are the best examples of the first of the two types we are considering.  Now for the Federal type.  Very early in the history of the American Colonies (in 1643) the New England group formed amongst themselves a loose confederation, which was not formally recognized by the British Government, and which perished in 1684.  In the next century the War of Independence produced the confederation of all the thirteen Colonies, but this was little more in effect than a very badly contrived alliance for military purposes, and it was a keen sense of the inadequacy of the bond that stimulated the construction of the Great Constitution of 1787, the first Federal Union ever devised by the English-speaking race.  All the States combined to confer certain defined powers upon a Federal Parliament, to which each sent representatives, and upon a Federal Executive whose head, the President, all shared in electing.  At the same time, each State preserved its own Constitution and the power to amend it, with the one broad condition that it must be Republican, and subject to any limitation upon its powers which the Federal Constitution imposed.