Even to the most ardent Unionist the case thus presented must, in the
year 1911, present a doubtful aspect. The British _entente_ with France,
and the absence of the smallest ascertainable sympathy between Ireland
and Germany, he will dismiss, perhaps, as points of minor importance,
but he will detect at once in the argument an antagonism, natural enough
in 1893, between national and colonial attributes, and he will remember,
with inner misgivings, that his own party has taken an especially active
part during the last ten years in furthering the claim of the
self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step
in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as
applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home
Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that
has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial
freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more
important than legal ties. In one remarkable case, that of the conquered
Dutch Republic in South Africa, a flood of searching light has been
thrown on the significance of those phrases "nation" and "Colony."
There, as in Ireland, and originally in Canada, "national" included
racial characteristics, and colonial autonomy signified national
autonomy in a more accurate sense than in Australia or Newfoundland. But
we know now that it does not signify either a racial tyranny within
those nations, or a racial antipathy to the Mother Country; but, on the
contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without.

Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall not
know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament
would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a
strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him
from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of
Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its