Evening Post MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1911. MR. BALFOUR AND HOME RULE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 84, 10 April 1911, Page 6

Evening Post MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1911. MR. BALFOUR AND HOME RULE.

Mr. Balfour's address to the Junior Imperial League as reported by cable on Saturday throws very little- light on the question of Home Rule, which appears to have been its principal if not its sole theme. If the league had really been -an Imperial and not a party organisation, and if Mr. Balfour himself had had an Imperial and not a paarty object in view, 1 he might doubt-less have made an interesting and informing contribution to the discussion. Bat the Imperial i point of view is the very last that even now the bulk of the Imperialists of the United Kingdom can be induced to take up with regard to this question. When the Constitutional Conference was about half way through its deliberations, the proper spirit promised to assert itself in the couneels of the Unionists;, but the hope was not of long duration, and the failure of the Conference put matfcecs back very much as they were. Mt. Balfour's language is as provocative and unstatesmanlike as it could well be when he refers tp the Liberal-Nationalist combination! as "a plot too complicated and too impudent for the ordinary ©lector to grasp." The Home Rule problem is full of difficulties and dangers, but they can only be aggravated by stale, exaggerated, and irritating denunciation of this kind. 1 Such polemical virulonce, of course, gratifies the fighting instincts of the party man, but it disgusts the wider -audience with which the ultimate decision of the question recta. This is the more regrettable, since Mr. Balfour appaf l ently had the widest possible audience in view during part of his speech. The Government's scheme, which, as Mr. Asquith had made perfectly clear, looks ultimately to such, a measure of devolution as will establish " Home Rule all round,"/ would seem at the first blush, says Mr. Balfonr, "to give the United Kingdom a Constitution not differing fundamentally from those of the great colonial democracies." He concedes that this "might appeal to tho Britisher* Imperial instincts," but wrongly so in mis opinion. The movement in the overseas dominions has been from separation to centralffiation, but the policy of Home Rtile for Ireland or " Home Rule all round " would reverse the process for a part or for the whole ot t3io United Kingdom. The argument is one to be carefully weighed, and dteearves a cooler atmosphere than that which it had apparently been the aim of Mr. Balfour's previous infective to create. The colonial analogy has been quite enough to provide the average colonist with a short cot to Home Rule. Why should not what is. good for Canada and A-ustralia, for South Africa and New Zealand, be good for Ireland only? In a general way the argument appeai-s to us to be perfectly sound, but it roust be remembered that a general analogy rarely, if ever, provides an exact- model for particnlaa* imitation. The mode and extent of the application of a principle must x be determined by the special circumstances of each case. Canada, if she is so minded, may eet up as a nation on her own. account or throw in her lot with the United States; New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa may at any moment"cut the painter" and paddle their own canoes where they please, and John Bull will never raise a finger to prevent it. In these eases, therefore, the reservation of a merely nominal sovereignty < is all that Imperial policy requires. But an independent Ireland — an Ireland which might be a member of the American or the German Union — is plainly out of the question. The application of the colonial analogy must therefore be limited in this case by the imperative requirements of national self-preservation. "I wanld never," eaid Lord Crew© in 1902, "be party to a proposal which placed Ireland in a position of political independence such as that possessed by New Zealand. Soaver than that, I would see Ireland deprived of its Parliamentary representation and governed as a Crown Colony." This statement was quoted against the Government in the debate in the House of Commons on the Anti-Home Rule amendment to the Ad- , dress, yet it merely recognises tho estsential condition to which we have referred. Mr. BaMour's appeal to the colonial analogy seems, however, to have special reference to the recent constitutional changes which have taken place in Australia and South Africa rather than to the general privileges of the self-govern-ing SUtea.._ Tho waste and the fxietdo%

involved in tho rivalry of adjoining independent States have been overcome in Australia by a federal, and in South Africa, by a unitary, scheme. How, then, can their example be held to justify the United Kingdom in reversing the process? The example certainly does show that colonial autonomy supplies plausible arguments for both sides of the Homo Rule controversy. But there are two obvious answers to Mr. Balfour's contention. The consolidation of South Africa does not make the present congestion of business at Westminster any the les6 intolerable, nor does Mr. Balfour's party offer any suggestion for the removal or mitigation of tbe nuisance and the danger which this congestion represents. In the second place, would South African union have been possible if the principle of self-government had not in the first place been applied even to the two States where an "alien majority was lately in arms against British rule? When Ireland is as loyal and contented as tho Transvaal sho may be as ready as that State for a, scheme of unification, bub it will need the same medicine to put her in that frame of mind.