Department of
Agriculture. The diversion to Ireland of a larger part of the general
national and Imperial expenditure, whether by the establishment of a
naval base, or the giving out of battleship contracts, or even only of
contracts for Army uniforms, would also be of appreciable assistance to
Ireland and to the Union. Ireland suffers to-day economically and
politically, from the legacy of political separation in the eighteenth
century, and of economic disunion in the nineteenth. It is the business
of Unionists not only to maintain the legal framework of the Union, but
to give it a vitality and fulness of content which it has never
possessed.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: Speech at Whitechapel, Oct. 10, 1911. There is an almost
identical passage in Mr. Redmond's article in _McClure's Magazine_ for
October, 1910. Sir J. Simon, the Solicitor-General, has since
perpetrated the same absurdity (Dewsbury, Feb. 6, 1912).]

[Footnote 55: The usual rhetorical appeal to "What Home Rule has done in
South Africa" presents, indeed, a most perfect specimen of the confusion
of thought which it is here attempted to analyse. For no sooner had the
Transvaal received "Home Rule" (_i.e._ responsible government) than it
surrendered the "Home Rule" (_i.e._ separate government) which it had
previously enjoyed in order to enter the South African Union. Stripped
of mere verbal confusion the argument from the Transvaal analogy then
runs somewhat as follows: "The Transvaal is now contented because it
enjoys free representative institutions as an integral portion of a
United South Africa; therefore, Ireland cannot be contented until she
ceases to be a freely represented integral portion of the United
Kingdom!"]

[Footnote 56: Quoted on p. 54.]

[Footnote 57: The position of New Zealand, outside the Australian
Commonwealth, is no parallel. New Zealand is almost as far from
Australia as Newfoundland is from the British Isles; it differs from
Australia in every climatic and physical feature; there is comparatively
little trade between them.]

[Footnote 58: Mr. Asquith at St. Andrews, Dec. 7, 1910.]

[Footnote 59: See "The _Times_' History of the South African War," vol.
I. pp. 67 _et seq._]

[Footnote 60: _Cf_. Mr. J. Redmond on the third reading of the Home Rule
Bill of 1893. "The word 'provisional,' so to speak, has been stamped in
red ink across every page of the Bill. I recognise that the Bill is
offered as a compromise and accepted as s