politics it is no longer able to bear. How is this to be done? In one
way and in one way only, by leaving local business to local bodies. But
that is Home Rule, or, as the learned, envisaging the idea from another
point of view, sometimes prefer to call it, Devolution. Through the
principle of autonomy, incompletely applied, the British Possessions
have so far evolved. Through the principle of autonomy, completely
applied, and in no other wise, can they evolve into an ordered system
worthy of the Imperial name. This is at first blush a singular
development. Here lie Ireland and England separated by a mountain of
misunderstanding. We Irish Nationalists have for a century been trying
to bore a tunnel through from one side. And suddenly we become aware of
the tapping of picks not our own, and encounter midway the tunnel which
the Party of Imperial Reconstruction have driven through from the other
side. Here are all the materials for a _tableau_. Justice falls on the
neck of expediency. Imperialism recognises in nationality no rebel but a
son of the house. Toryism rubs its eyes, and finds that it is Home Rule.

But, sounded to its depths, this new current of thought appears not only
not eccentric but inevitable. Ample explanation is to be found in the
history of the Irish fight for self-government. On this subject there
has been in Ireland a marked evolution of ideas. O'Connell began by
demanding simple Repeal of the Union and the Restoration of Grattan's
Parliament. But by 1844 he had advanced towards a Federal programme.

"Beside the local Parliament in Ireland having full and perfect local
authority," he writes in that year, "there should be, for questions of
Imperial concern, colonial, military, and naval, and of foreign alliance
and policy, a Congressional or Federal Parliament, in which Ireland
should have a fair share and proportion of representation and power."