benevolent person who makes the offer must not wonder if he receives no
thanks.

[Sidenote: National Independence.]

Home Rule does not mean National Independence. This proposition needs no
elaboration. Any plan of Home Rule whatever implies that there are
spheres of national life in which Ireland is not to act with the freedom
of an independent State. Mr. Parnell and his followers accept in
principle Mr. Gladstone's proposals, and therefore are willing to accept
for Ireland restrictions on her political liberty absolutely
inconsistent with the principle of nationality. Under the Gladstonian
constitution her foreign policy is to be wholly regulated by a British
Parliament in which sit no Irish representatives; she is not to have the
right either of raising an army or of endowing a church; she is in fact
to surrender any claim to the rights of a nation in consideration of
receiving a certain number of State-rights. In all this there is nothing
unreasonable and nothing blameworthy. One part of the United Kingdom is
prepared to accept new terms of partnership. But this acceptance,
though reasonable and fair enough, is quite inconsistent with any claim
for national independence. A nation is one thing, a state forming part
of a federation is quite another. To ask for the position of a dependent
colony like Victoria, or of a province such as Ontario, is to renounce
the demand to be a nation. A _bonâ fide_ Home Ruler cannot be a _bonâ
fide_ Nationalist. This point deserves attention, not for the sake of
the miserable and ruinous advantage which is obtained by taunting an
adversary in controversy with inconsistency till you drive him to
improve his logical position by increasing the exactingness of his
demands, but because the advocates of Home Rule (honestly enough, no
doubt) confuse the matter under discussion by a strange kind of