ave the way to a
true South African nationality.

All the weakness in external relations, all the internal friction and
impediment to progress, all the bitterness and pettiness of local
politics, which marked the absence of union among neighbouring colonies,
also characterised the relations of Great Britain and Ireland in the
eighteenth century. But there was this difference: the immense
disproportion in wealth and power, and the political control exercised
by the greater state, caused all the evils of disunion to concentrate
with intensified force upon the smaller state. To undo the mischief of
eighteenth century disunion required at least a generation. A series of
political mistakes and mischances, and a disastrous economic policy,
have left the healing task of union incomplete after a century. But
renewed disunion to-day would only mean a renewal of old local feuds to
the point of civil war, a renewal of old economic friction, in which
most of the injury would be suffered by the weaker combatant, the
indefinite postponing for Ireland of the prospect, now so hopeful, of
national development and social amelioration, a weakening of the whole
United Kingdom for diplomacy or for defence. It is a policy which no
Dominion in the Empire would dream of adopting--a policy which every
Dominion would most certainly resist by force, just as the United States
resisted it when attempted, with more than a mere pretext of
constitutional justification, by the Southern States.

Now for the "exception which proves the rule": there is one Colonial
analogy for what would be the position of Ireland under Home Rule,
namely, the position of Newfoundland outside the confederation of the
other North American Colonies.[57] The analogy is only partial, for this
reason, that whereas Ireland is almost wholly dependent economically on
Great Britain, Newfoundland has little direct trade with Canada, and
moreover enjoys a virtual monopoly of one particular commodity, namely
codfish, by which it manages to support its small population.
Nevertheless, no one can doubt that with its favoured geographical
position, and with its great natural resources, Newfoundland would have
been developed in a very different fashion if for the last forty years
it had been an integral part of the Dominion. Nor is the loss all on the
side of Newfoundland, as the history of even the last few years has
shown. In 1902, Newfoundland negotiated a commercial Convention with th