directly conferred or tolerated by Parliament; has no capacity of
indefinite extension; and neither comes into competition with nor
restrains, either legally or morally, the legislative authority of
Parliament. Logically, indeed, there may be difficulty in drawing the
precise line of demarcation between a plan for conferring on Ireland the
minimum of legislative independence which could without absurdity be
dignified with the name of Home Rule, and a plan for giving to the
boroughs and counties of Ireland the maximum of law-making power which
could, without fraud upon the intelligence of the English people, be
comprehended within the elastic phrase "extension of Local
Self-Government." But this logical puzzle need give us no trouble; it is
based on the fact that every non-sovereign law-making body, whether it
be the French National Assembly, the American Congress, or the London,
Chatham and Dover Railway Co., belongs to one and the same genus.[2] The
casuists of jurisprudence may quibble for ever over the confines between
Home Rule and Local Self-Government; men of sense engaged in the
consideration of affairs thrust aside such inopportune logomachy, and
content themselves with the knowledge that were the Town Council, say,
of Birmingham or of Belfast endowed with tenfold its present powers, it
would differ essentially from any Irish Parliament which, even though
denied the Parliamentary title, should represent the people of Ireland,
and should have received the very smallest amount of authority which
could by any possibility satisfy Mr. Parnell. Nor are differences which
may not admit of easy definition difficult for a candid enquirer to
discern. A town council, whatever its powers, does not represent a
nation, and derives no prestige from the principle of nationality; the
feeblest legislative assembly meeting at Dublin would rightly claim to
speak for the Irish people. A town council, whether of Birmingham or of
Belfast, springs from and is kept alive by the will of Parliament, and
cannot pretend that its powers, however extensive, compete with the