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 _bona fide_ Home Ruler cannot be a _bona 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 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.