g more is in question than the extension of local
government generally known as Devolution, then adequate representation
in the Imperial Parliament is a matter of course. If a federal
government is established, each member of the Federation must needs be
represented in the federal Parliament; but in that case there must be no
attempt to entrust to the same assembly both the duties of the federal
Parliament and those of a Legislature for one of the federating states.
It was this attempt to treat the Imperial Parliament as the local or
state Legislature for Great Britain, and also as the federal Parliament
for Great Britain and Ireland, which was fatal to Mr. Gladstone's
proposals.

FEDERALISM.

These considerations bring us face to face with Federalism, or, to use
the phrase which to so many perplexed Liberals has seemed to point the
way to safety, "Home Rule all round." The expression covers a wide
field, and before any opinion can be pronounced upon the proposal, it is
essential to know what its advocates in fact desire.

To some the phrase means nothing less than Gladstonian Home Rule "all
round," in other words that we should meet the objections to dissolving
the legislative and executive Union with Ireland by dissolving also the
older Union with Scotland, and even (for some do not shrink from the
_reductio ad absurdum_) the yet older unity of England and Wales.
Consider what this means. For more than two hundred years the English
and Scottish races have been united by a constitutional bond
strengthened by mutual respect and good feeling, and Scotsmen, like
Englishmen, have taken their part in the government of these islands. If
in the division of labour and of honours there has been a balance of
advantage, it has not been against the virile Scottish race, from which
have sprung so many of our great soldiers and administrators, so many
leaders of the nation. And such a combination is to be broken up, and
Scotland to become a colony, because Ireland, unwilling to bear her
share in the duties of government, desires to be reduced to that status!
To such a proposal Mr. Gladstone's phrase about Home Rule applies in all
its force:--

"Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this
time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to
disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the
purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind,