t this point I feel it
necessary to plead for the reader's patient, if reluctant, attention to
what follows. The solution I suggest is unpopular, mainly, I believe,
because prejudice has so beclouded the issue in the past, and because
for the eighteen years since the last Home Rule Bill, while prejudice
has diminished, the subject of Irish Home Rule has ceased to be studied
with scientific care.

Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill
will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule
arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish
Members at Westminster. No Colony has representatives at Westminster.
The Federal solution, on the other hand, whether it be applied to the
whole Empire or to the United Kingdom alone, involves an exclusively
Federal Parliament unconcerned with State or provincial affairs. That we
have not got. What we have got is an absolutely supreme and sovereign
Parliament which has legal authority, not only over all Imperial affairs
within and without the United Kingdom, but over the minutest local
affairs. Unrepresented though the Colonies are, they can legally be
taxed, coerced, enslaved at any moment by an Act passed by a party
majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be
unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily
practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the
self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of
all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local affairs of the
United Kingdom.

When we set up an Irish Legislature, then, we have to contemplate four
different classes of affairs in a descending scale: (1) Affairs of
common interest to the whole Empire; (2) affairs of exclusive interest
to the United Kingdom; (3) affairs exclusively British; (4) affairs
exclusively Irish.

With regard to (1), the prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect
the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly
inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing
British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply
concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it
is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very effective consultation
with the self-governing Colonies by the method of Imperial Conference. A
Federal Parliament for the whole Empire is a possible though a remote
alternative