reland by the
Union. It has been shown, secondly, that the experience of the Colonies
since the establishment of responsible government has in every case
forced union upon them, and union in the closest form which the facts of
trade and geography permitted of. Colonial experience is thus no
argument even for a federal scheme of "Home Rule all round," if such a
scheme could possibly result from an Irish Home Rule Bill, which it
cannot. The disadvantages and dangers of the contrary policy of disunion
have been shown, in their least noxious form in the case of
Newfoundland, which has simply remained outside the adjoining Dominion,
and in their deadliest form in the case of the Transvaal, where "Home
Rule" was given in 1881, as it would be given to Ireland to-day, if the
Government succeeded, not from conviction and whole-heartedly, but as a
mean-spirited concession, made to save trouble, and under the most
disingenuous and least workable provisions. Lastly, it has been made
clear that Home Rule cannot possibly assist, but can only obscure and
confuse, the movement for the establishment of a true Imperial Union.
Unionists and Imperialists can choose no better ground for their
resistance to Home Rule than the wide and varied field of Colonial
experience.

But Colonial experience can give us more than that. It can provide us
not only with an immense mass of arguments and instances against
disruption, but with invaluable instances of what can be done to
strengthen and build up the Union against all possible future danger of
disruptive tendencies. The confederation of Canada was accomplished in
the teeth of all the geographical and economic conditions of the time.
Canadian statesmanship thereupon set itself to transform geography, and
to divert the course of trade in order to make the Union a reality. The
Intercolonial Railway, the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk Pacific,
the proposed Hudson Bay Railway, and the Georgian Bay Canal schemes, all
these have been deliberate instruments of policy, aiming, first of all,
at bridging the wilderness between practically isolated settlements
scattered across a continent, and creating a continuous Canada, east and
west; and, secondly, at giving that continuous strip depth as well as
extension. Hand in hand with the policy of constructing the internal
framework of transportation, which is the skeleton of the economic and
social life of a nation, went the policy of maintaining a national