ss demands not only that
they should cease to be dependent on the Mother Country for their
safety, but also that they should exercise control over the foreign
policy of which defence is merely the instrument. There are only two
possible solutions to the problem which is now developing: the one is
complete separation, the other is partnership in an Imperial Union in
which British subjects in the Dominions shall stand on exactly the same
footing, and enjoy the same powers and privileges in Imperial affairs,
as British subjects in the United Kingdom.

The conditions--geographical, economic, political--which, in the
Colonies, made the grant of free institutions, unaccompanied by some
form of political federation or union, even a temporary success, were,
indeed, exceptional. None of them were present in the circumstances of
Ireland before the Union. They are not present to-day. Geographically
the United Kingdom is a single compact island group, of which Ireland is
by no means the most outlying portion. No part of Ireland is to-day, or
ever was, as inaccessible from the political centre of British power as
the remoter parts of the Highlands, not to speak of the Shetlands or
Hebrides. Racially, no less than physically, Ireland is an integral part
of the United Kingdom, peopled as it is with the same mixture of racial
elements as the main island of the group. The blend of Celt with Dane,
with Normans and English of the Pale, with English citizens of the
seaports and Cromwellian settlers, which constitutes Celtic Ireland,
so-called, is less Celtic both in speech and in blood than either Wales
or the Highlands. Religion alone has maintained a difference between a
predominantly Celtic and a predominantly Teutonic Ireland which would
otherwise have disappeared far more completely than the difference
between Celtic and Teutonic Scotland. Economically, the connection
between Ireland and Great Britain, always close, has become such that
to-day Ireland subsists almost wholly upon the English market. In these
respects, at least, there is no resemblance between the conditions of
Ireland and that of any of the Colonies.

On the other hand, politically, Ireland was for centuries treated as a
colony--"the first and nearest of the Colonies," as Mr. Childers puts
it. The difficulties and defects of early Colonial government were
intensified by the great conflict of the Reformation, which made Ireland
a centre of foreign intrigue, and by the