gn to
Ireland the whole of the Irish revenues, though probably retaining the
control of customs and excise, and in that case retaining some Irish
representatives at Westminster. So far from fixing any contribution to
Imperial expenditure from Ireland, it will, apparently, include the
provision of an Imperial grant in aid towards Land Purchase and Old Age
Pensions. Any such measure is wholly incompatible with even the loosest
federal system. A federal scheme postulates the existence over the whole
confederation of two concurrent systems of government, each exercising
direct control over the citizens within its own sphere, each having its
legislative and executive functions, and its sources of revenue, clearly
defined. The Home Rule Bill will certainly not set up any such division
of government and its functions in Great Britain. Nor will it, in
reality, set up any such effective double system of government in
Ireland. What it will set up will be a national or Dominion government
in Ireland, separate and exclusive, but subject to certain restrictions
and interferences which it will be the first business of the Irish
representatives, in Dublin or Westminster, to get rid of. Long before
Scotland or Wales, let alone England, get any consideration of their
demand for Home Rule, if demand there be, the last traces of any
quasi-federal element the Bill may contain will have been got rid of.

In a federation every citizen, in whatever state or province he resides,
is as fully a citizen of the federation as every other citizen. He not
only has the same federal vote, and pays the same federal taxes, but he
has the same access to the federal courts, and the same right to the
direct protection of the federal executive. In what sense are any of
these conditions likely to be true of, let us say, an Irish landlord
under this Home Rule Bill? Again, federalism implies that all the
subordinate units are in an equal position relatively to the federal
authority. Is this Bill likely to be so framed that its provisions can
be adapted unchanged to Scotland, Wales, or England? And if they could,
what sort of a residuum of a United Kingdom government would be left
over? Take finance alone: if every unit under "Home Rule all round" is
to receive the whole product of its taxation, what becomes of the
revenue on which the general government of the United Kingdom will have
to subsist? The fact is that the creation of a federal state, whether by
conf