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The converse policy of
treating the case of Ireland as "prior in point of time and
urgency,"[58] of giving the poorest and most backward portion of the
United Kingdom the whole of its revenue and a practically unfettered
control of its territory, is, indeed, "not merely non-federal, but
anti-federal."
The truth is that the federal element in this Home Rule Bill, as in that
of 1893, will be merely a pretence, designed to keep timid and
hesitating Home Rulers in line--a tactical manoeuvre of much the same
character as the talk about a reformed Second Chamber which preceded the
Parliament Act, and found due burial in the preamble to that Act. In
essence the Bill will set up Ireland as an entirely separate state
subject to certain restrictions which the Government have no serious
intention of enforcing, and the Irish every intention of disregarding,
or abolishing as the outcome of further agitation. For this policy of
pretence there is one admirable parallel in our Colonial history--the
policy by which "Home Rule" was "given" to the Transvaal after Majuba.


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