ederation or by devolution of powers, must be, in the main, a
simultaneous act. Additional subordinate units may subsequently join the
confederation under the conditions of the federal constitution. Backward
areas which are unable to provide for an efficient provincial
expenditure, over and above their contribution to federal expenditure,
may be held back as territories directly controlled by the federal
authorities till they are financially and in other respects ripe for the
grant of provincial powers. If a federal scheme were really seriously
contemplated by the present Government they would have to adopt one of
two courses. They would either have to establish it simultaneously for
the whole United Kingdom, and in that case limit the powers and
functions of the provinces so narrowly as to make it possible for
Ireland to raise its provincial revenue without undue difficulty, the
rest of Ireland's needs being met by a substantial federal expenditure
carried out by federal officials. Or else they might begin by the
creation of a federal constitution with considerable provincial powers
for England, Scotland, and Wales, keeping back Ireland as a federal
territory till its economic and social conditions justified the
establishment of provincial institutions. The converse policy of
treating the case of Ireland as "prior in point of time and
urgency,"[58] of giving the poorest and most backward portion of the
United Kingdom the whole of its revenue and a practically unfettered
control of its territory, is, indeed, "not merely non-federal, but
anti-federal."

The truth is that the federal element in this Home Rule Bill, as in that
of 1893, will be merely a pretence, designed to keep timid and
hesitating Home Rulers in line--a tactical manoeuvre of much the same
character as the talk about a reformed Second Chamber which preceded the
Parliament Act, and found due burial in the preamble to that Act. In
essence the Bill will set up Ireland as an entirely separate state
subject to certain restrictions which the Government have no serious
intention of enforcing, and the Irish every intention of disregarding,
or abolishing as the outcome of further agitation. For this policy of
pretence there is one admirable parallel in our Colonial history--the
policy by which "Home Rule" was "given" to the Transvaal after Majuba.
It was the same policy of avoiding expense and trouble, political or
military--the policy, in fact, of "cutting the lo