e form of Imperial federation.
What is needed is not the creation of separate parliaments _within_ the
United Kingdom, but the creation of a separate Parliament _for_ the
United Kingdom, a Parliament which should deal with the affairs of the
United Kingdom considered as one of the Dominions, leaving the general
problems of Imperial policy to a common Imperial Parliament or Council
equally representative of the citizens of every Dominion. No form of
Home Rule can in any sense advance that desirable solution of our
Imperial problems. The creation of an additional Dominion in the shape
of Ireland would merely add one to the number of units to be considered,
and would be contrary to the spirit of the resolution passed at the 1897
Conference, that it was desirable "wherever and whenever practicable, to
group together under a federal union those Colonies which are
geographically united." The problem would be no more affected by the
setting up of a federal constitution for the United Kingdom, than it
would be if South Africa decided, after all, to give her provinces
federal powers, or Australia carried unification by a referendum. The
notion that the Dominions could simply come inside the United Kingdom
federation, though it sometimes figures in Home Rule speeches, is merely
a product of the third form of confusion of ideas previously referred
to, and is a sheer absurdity. The terms and conditions of a United
Kingdom federation would necessarily differ in almost every respect from
those of an Imperial Federation, and a constitution framed for the one
object would be unworkable for the other. Nor would it ever be
acceptable to the Dominions, which regard themselves as potentially, if
not actually, the equals of the United Kingdom as a whole. From their
point of view the United Kingdom might almost as well be asked to step
inside the Australian Commonwealth on the footing of Tasmania, as that
they should be asked to join in, in the capacity of an additional
Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, under any scheme of "Home Rule all round."

It should be sufficiently clear from the foregoing analysis that the
vague and confused claim that the success of British Colonial policy is
an argument for the Home Rule Bill has no shadow of justification. It
has been shown, first of all, that the factor of success in our Colonial
policy was not the factor of separatism implied in Home Rule, but the
factor of responsible government already secured for I