rish Government would have power to forbid or restrict
recruiting for the Imperial forces in Ireland, and to raise and train a
force of its own. It might establish or subsidise a religion, make
education wholly denominational, levy customs duties on imports from
Great Britain and give fiscal advantages to a foreign power, confiscate
or transfer property without payment, and deprive individuals of
nationality, franchise, liberty, or life without process of law. However
improbable some of these contingencies may appear, it is right on a
matter of so much moment to consider possibilities and not probabilities
only. Such powers as these could not without serious risk be conceded to
any part of the kingdom, and in the case of Ireland there would be a
special danger in granting them to a popularly elected body.

In the first place, the national safety would be involved. Englishmen
were at one time too fond of saying that the great Colonies might, if
they chose, sever the link which binds them to the Mother Country.
Happily, in their case, no such catastrophe need now be considered. But
it would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that to many Irishmen
national independence appears to be the only goal worth striving for. If
the concession of full responsible government should be followed (at
whatever interval) by an assertion of complete independence, we may
assume that Great Britain would follow the example of Federal America
and re-establish the Union by force of arms, but at how great a cost!
Those who deny the possibility of a serious movement towards separation
would do well to remember Mr. Gladstone's reference[28] to the position
of Norway and Sweden, then united under one crown:--

"Let us look to those two countries, neither of them very large,
but yet countries which every Englishman and every Scotchman must
rejoice to claim his kin--I mean the Scandinavian countries of
Sweden and Norway. Immediately after the great war the Norwegians
were ready to take sword in hand to prevent their coming under the
domination of Sweden. But the Powers of Europe undertook the
settlement of that question, and they united those countries upon a
footing of strict legislative independence and co-equality.... And
yet with two countries so united, what has been the effect? Not
discord, not convulsions, not danger to peace, not hatred, not
aversion, but a constantly growing sympathy;