l Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pass,
and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and
determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian
Constitutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable
result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and
Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of
the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case
made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the
conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force.
If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886
and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the
alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of
Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish
Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes,
evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and
vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning
and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the
pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that
patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have
been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient
numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped
by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the
speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the
Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the
fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect.

Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view?
Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic
needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds
itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from
white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is
genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a
Constitution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to
live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the
democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of
perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details
of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the
resuscitation of those time-h