intellectual shuffle. When they wish to minimise the sacrifice to
England of establishing a Parliament in Ireland, they bring Home Rule
down nearly to the proportions of Local Self-Government; when they wish
to maximise--if the word may be allowed--the blessings to Ireland of a
separate legislature, they all but identify Home Rule with National
Independence. Yet you have no more right to expect from any form of
State-rights the new life which sometimes is roused among a people by
the spirit and the responsibilities of becoming a nation, than you have
to suppose that municipal councils will satisfy the feelings which
demand an Irish Parliament.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See Dicey, Law of the Constitution (2nd ed.), p. 80.

[3] De Beaumont's opinions on this point are perfectly clear: they
represent the judgment of an extremely able thinker, who approaches the
problems presented by Irish society with an impartiality which from the
nature of things is unattainable by any Englishman or Irishman. His
utterances will moreover command the more respect from the consideration
that De Beaumont, belonging as he did to the school of his intimate
friend De Tocqueville, was inclined rather to overrate than to underrate
the virtues of self-government; whilst as a Frenchman he possessed a
knowledge which cannot fall to any Englishman of the benefits conferred
upon the people by a good administration of the French type. The
following extracts from a chapter too long for complete citation, which
is written to show that Ireland needs a centralised government, deserve
the most careful attention. The whole chapter, and indeed the whole work
to which it belongs, ought at the present moment to be familiar to every
English Liberal:--