scheme, but with plain indications that they regard it as only a half-way house and refuse to take the exclusion of Ulster as final. It is certainly unfortunate that the only solution which the Government can suggest is one which all parties in Ireland regard with aversion. And the more the plan is looked into, the greater the difficulties appear. The existing Act must be altered, as arrangements must be made for the government of Ulster, quite as elaborate as those provided by the Act for the rest of the country. Moreover, the Home Rule Act leaves it uncertain whether the Imperial Parliament will be able to levy taxes in Ireland or not. Will England consent to waive all contributions from Ireland, or will the Parliament at Westminster attempt under its doubtful powers to levy taxes against the wish of the Dublin Parliament? If it does, can it be called Home Rule?

The fact is that any scheme for fundamentally altering the constitution by a measure passed hurriedly during a European war must be fraught with incalculable difficulty and danger. Mr Asquith asserts that Castle Government has broken down; but in reality, for some years there has been no Castle or any other Government in Ireland. What has broken down has been Mr Birrell's policy of doing nothing, on the advice of his Nationalist friends. We fail to see any sufficient reason for the course which Mr Asquith, exchanging his customary dilatoriness for undue haste, adopted immediately after the Dublin rising was suppressed. He was apparently under the impression that the situation was entirely changed by the rebellion. The rebellion made no change in the situation except in so far as it opened the eyes of Mr Birrell and Mr Asquith, and made the reasons against granting Home Rule at this time more obvious than before. Nor is it easy to understand why the Prime Minister should have rushed over to Ireland to ascertain, by personal contact, the opinions of prominent Nationalists and Unionists, which he might have ascertained at any time during the last five years. We presume that, having no policy of his own, he went to find one. So far, moreover, we are in the dark as to the exact circumstances in which Mr Lloyd George was commissioned to draw up an arrangement. It is indeed asserted that

he had no such commission-that he was merely a mediator, not a plenipotentiary. It is still uncertain which he was. There is also a fundamental difference between Mr Redmond and Sir E. Carson as to the nature of the suggestions made. The indecent and imprudent haste with which the whole scheme of Mr Lloyd George's mission was started has already produced a sinister crop of misunderstandings.

But, whatever may be in dispute about the mission. itself, one thing is clear. There was absolutely no need that it should have started at all. There was no need to change the system of government in Ireland. On the contrary, there were most potent reasons for making no change at this juncture. To do so establishes a fatal precedent. It is the bounden duty of a Government, especially in times like the present, to make no terms with rebellion. But Mr Asquith, by practically pledging his Government to grant, let us say, half the rebels' demand, has not only condoned their crime, but given an immense incentive to rebellion in future. He has even gone far towards stultifying the executions of the leaders; for, if this great concession was to be made, should they have paid the penalty of their lives for demanding a little more? He has enabled their partisans to say, 'Look what the Martyrs have done! They have obtained in a week of civil war what the Moderates failed to accomplish in many years.' It has over and over again occurred in Ireland that what peaceful agitation could not win has been conceded to violence and crime; but never has the pernicious lesson been more flagrantly impressed on the national mind than on the present occasion. It is pessimi exempli indeed; and it has already begun to tell. Mr Asquith congratulated the country on the fact that, for the first time in Irish history, nine-tenths of the population were out of sympathy with the rebels. The statement was a very rash one when made; it is the opposite of truth now. The Sinn Fein movement has received an enormous impulse; such authority as Mr Redmond possessed has been hopelessly undermined; the hostile forces, stunned for the moment, have more than recovered their lost ground; the whole country, if not actually seething with revolt, is agitated and expectant.

Is it not the height of folly to hand over the government of three-fourths of Ireland to a population in this state of mind? We agree entirely with the five Peers who, in a letter published in the papers on June 24, deprecated this course. What safeguard have we against the extremists gaining the upper hand in the new Irish Parliament, and using their power in a manner hostile to this country? The ways in which such a majority might injure Great Britain are many and so obvious that there is no need to insist on them. One in particular has already been pointed out. Is our fleet in future to regard Irish harbours as belonging to a friendly, a neutral, or a hostile country? What security shall we have against these harbours being used as bases for German submarines, or against the neighbouring seas being strewn with bombs laid by Irish fishermen? Nor are we to consider ourselves alone. We have a sacred duty to our allies. What opinion will they conceive of an arrangement which, so far as common sense and all the signs of the times indicate, is all but certain to cause us grave embarrassment, and possibly worse, at a moment when all our forces should be thrown into the scale on behalf of the common cause. Mr Asquith's hasty indiscretions have so far prejudiced the situation that it is doubtless difficult to draw back. But the only possible justification for a new settlement is that it should be by universal consent. Such a consent has clearly not been attained. Here, then, is a way of escape from the impasse into which the Government have wantonly thrust themselves. Let them boldly state that, as Irishmen are not agreed, the only course open to them is to continue a firm government, on present lines, until the advent of peace makes the way clearer for a final settlement. In any case, we feel bound to deprecate, with all the force of conviction that can attach to any forecast of political consequences, the suicidal step of granting Home Rule, at this juncture, to Nationalist, hostile, and rebellious Ireland.

Art. 15. THE ORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE.

1. The Problem of the Commonwealth.

Curtis. Macmillan, 1916.

Preface by L.

2. The Empire on the Anvil: being suggestions and data for the future government of the British Empire. W. Basil Worsfold. Smith, Elder, 1916.

By

3. Imperial Unity aud the Dominions. By Arthur B. Keith. Clarendon Press, 1916.

THE organisation of the Empire is regarded from different points of view and desired for different and sometimes antagonistic reasons by the peoples of its several parts. The Englishman, who lives in England, hopes for a lightening of his heavy taxes, when the Dominions shall bear their full share of the common burden of Imperial defence; while the citizens of the Dominions, on their side, think more of exercising some control over the Empire's foreign policy, which determines the issue of peace or war, than of calculating the responsibilities which this would bring in its train. A third section of the inhabitants, both of Great Britain and the Dominions —although it is diminishing in numbers and importance -either from indifference or because they disbelieve in the possibility of closer union upon terms which would be just to all portions of the Empire, are content with the existing loose relationship between its parts, and deprecate as dangerous all attempts to formulate a legal bond. A fourth section which, like Aaron's rod, may swallow up the others, refuses to admit that the Union of the Empire should be regarded as a question of profit and loss or depend upon a nice speculation as to the balance of gain. Lord Milner has expressed the ideals of this school in many passages of his collected speeches. Imperial Unity,' he says in one place, 'is not a question of shifting burdens but of developing new centres of strength. . . . I believe that, as the self-governing Dominions grow in power, they will feel a stronger desire to share in the responsibilities and the glory of Empire.' It is a high merit of Mr Curtis and Mr Worsfold, whose books are now under notice, that they approach the problem of Imperial Organisation from all these differing points of view, and that, having each taken part under Lord

Milner in the making of the Union of South Africa, they can appreciate its many difficulties.

Mr Curtis describes his 'Problem of the Commonwealth as 'an answer to the question, "How a British subject in the Dominions can acquire the same control of foreign policy as one domiciled in the British Isles ?"" The makers of the Australian Commonwealth had in mind the same idea, when they adopted as one of the resolutions upon which their Constitution Act was founded, a statement that the contemplated Federal Union was designed to enlarge the powers of selfgovernment of the people of Australia.' Such a conception involves a high ideal of citizenship, for which the world may not be ripe; and therefore Mr Curtis, in his earlier chapters, appeals to history to prove that the sphere of patriotism has in fact extended with each expansion of British power. The loss of the American Colonies caused a temporary check, and in the opinion of contemporaries destroyed the Empire. A new idea, however than which none of greater importance has appeared in the field of politics since Edward I, borrowing from the Church, applied the principle of representation to his 'Model Parliament-saved the Empire from its anticipated dissolution. It became recognised gradually that the method of Empire was to distinguish between the local and general interest of the communities which compose it; and that, while the former may be put under the absolute control of local authorities, the latter are the concern of all the communities whose interests they affect. For Mr Curtis and his colleagues of The Round Table,' holding this view, the problem of Empire is to separate the local interests of Great Britain, the Dominions and the Colonies from the general, and to provide a machinery for a joint control of the latter, without interfering with local independence in respect of the former. Had this conception of local autonomy combined with association for common purposes been

* Mr Curtis uses the word 'Commonwealth' to express the conception of a Government which is controlled by the public opinion of its citizens, as opposed to the Eastern theocratic State. Its fundamental notion is that 'Society is at its best when it is able and free to adapt its own structure to conditions as they change, in accordance with its own experience of those conditions.'