FEDERALISM.
These considerations bring us face to face with Federalism, or, to use
the phrase which to so many perplexed Liberals has seemed to point the
way to safety, "Home Rule all round." The expression covers a wide
field, and before any opinion can be pronounced upon the proposal, it is
essential to know what its advocates in fact desire.
To some the phrase means nothing less than Gladstonian Home Rule "all
round," in other words that we should meet the objections to dissolving
the legislative and executive Union with Ireland by dissolving also the
older Union with Scotland, and even (for some do not shrink from the
_reductio ad absurdum_) the yet older unity of England and Wales.
Consider what this means. For more than two hundred years the English
and Scottish races have been united by a constitutional bond
strengthened by mutual respect and good feeling, and Scotsmen, like
Englishmen, have taken their part in the government of these islands. If
in the division of labour and of honours there has been a balance of
advantage, it has not been against the virile Scottish race, from which
have sprung so many of our great soldiers and administrators, so many
leaders of the nation.
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