to South Africa as a whole, the Union Act was a great
and beneficent grant of Home Rule. It was the end of a long period of
harassing interferences with the affairs of South Africa on the part of
the Imperial Government at home, through its High Commissioner on the
spot. That process is even now unfinished. It will probably in the end
have to be brought to completion by the inclusion within the authority
of the South African Parliament of countries like Rhodesia, and even,
perhaps, of Basutoland.

But in regard to South Africa itself, the same Act was a case of true
unionism required and necessitated by the conditions of the country.
Before 1909 the South African states were suffering within themselves
from excessive division of functions. They were quarrelling over
railways and tariffs. They were unable to pursue any common policy or
common aim. That perpetual division of functions weakened them in the
presence of the world, and rendered them unfit for local guidance. We
should have a similar situation in this country if England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales were all under separate governments, with separate
tariffs and separate policy. In that case the doctrine we should be
preaching to-day would not be Home Rule, but Unionism. For these two
tendencies throughout the world are like a see-saw. Both are required
for efficient government. Both may be carried to excessive and
exaggerated lengths. Our case in regard to the United Kingdom is that
unionism has been carried to excessive lengths, and requires to be
tempered by Home Rule.

For let any Unionist glance round the world outside the British Empire.
He will find that the British do not stand alone in their trust in the
Home Rule principle. Nearly every great Empire in the world rests upon
Home Rule as its basis. Even Russia, perhaps the most centralised of
all, has its provincial councils, known as the Zemstvos, and it was one
of M. Stolypin's most daring actions that he even broke the letter of
the Russian Constitution in order to strengthen the Zemstvos of Eastern
Russia. Finland, too, a province of Russia, possesses a larger form of
local government than is even being demanded by Ireland. It is a
curious irony of the present situation that many of those Britons who
refuse self-government to Ireland are most diligent in watching the
action of Russia in relation to the powerful and--up to the
present--almost independent Parliament of Finland.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE