Nor can the coming Bill for Ireland make any preparation, technically, for a general Federation.  Morally, as I shall show, it might have an important effect in stimulating local sentiment, not only in England, Scotland, and Wales, but in Ireland, towards a general Federation in the future, but in its mechanical structure it must be not merely non-Federal, but anti-Federal.  One often hears it carelessly propounded that Irish Home Rule, so devised as to be applicable in later years, if they so desire, to Scotland, Wales, and England, will give us by smooth mechanical means a General Federation.  This is a fallacy.  At one stage or another, the earliest or the latest, we should have to create a totally new central Parliament, still elected by the whole people, but exclusively devoted to Imperial affairs, and wholly exempt from local business, before we possessed anything in the nature of a Federation.  But, whatever the future has in store, it would be a scandal if Irish Home Rule were to be hampered or delayed by the existence of Scotch or Welsh claims, and it is earnestly to be hoped that no action of that kind will be taken.  The case of Ireland is centuries old, and more urgent than ever.  It differs radically from any case that can possibly be made for Scotland and Wales.

The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centrifugal.  In the case of Ireland we have first to dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a healthy Federal Union.  Such, exactly, was the history of Canada.  If, in that case, the dissolution of the Legislative Union and the construction of the Federal Union were consummated simultaneously in the British North America Act of 1867, they were nevertheless two distinct phases, and of these two phases the first, implying the revival of the old separate autonomies, was the indispensable precursor of Federal Union.  This antecedent recognition of autonomy was not peculiar to Canada.  Every Federation in the world arose in the same way, by the voluntary act of States under one Crown or suzerainty, but independent of one another, and it is of the essence of Federalism that this psychological condition should exist.  Compulsory Federation would not last a year.  It would indeed be practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of each of the component parts would have to be implicitly recognized.

It needs only a moment’s consideration of Anglo-Irish history to see the special applicability of the psychological rule to Ireland.  The evils of the Canadian Union, during the twenty-seven years of its duration, are infinitesimal beside the mischief, moral and material, which have been caused to both partners by the forcible amalgamation of Great Britain and Ireland; the waste of indigenous talent, industrial and political; the dispersion all over the globe of Irishmen; the conversion