charity. As for us poor lay folk, my vision is of a disestablished verger demanding the archdeacon's certificate of one's orthodoxy as a condition precedent to the sight of some historic monument. In return for these unknown risks, our consideration in hand is to be something large and dazzling, we know not what: at worst, a transitory squandering on local jobs at best, let us say, a system of middle-class education. But I confess I should not expect much of rational design or permanent good, for many reasons, one of which is perhaps enough: namely, that the plan must needs be taking at first sight. It would serve the turn as a gilded bait for the constituencies, and vanish in a cloud of Blue Books.

D. Fantastic alarms, my good Student, and idols of the cloister; and if they were not, I should still bid you carry them to weaker brethren. We are minded to do right without fear of consequence. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.

S. But once more, worthy Doctor, you assume the justice. You propose with a light heart to cut down a secular forest in order, as you say, to improve the climate. I humbly suggest that your improvements will give us a climate of alternating droughts and storm-floods, and you cry for answer, Fiat justitia! By the way, one point of your justice is to leave modern endowments alone, and that is well meant. I know not how you distinguish ancient from modern for my part, I should call those gifts modern which were conferred on the Church since it was

:

lawfully possible to give to other denominations; for

since that time it is a fair presumption that Anglicanism was consciously and freely preferred by the donor. For practical purposes it would not greatly matter whether we drew the line at the date of the Toleration Act or a century later. This discrimination, I say, is in itself equitable and laudable: without it, indeed, your plans would make little way. But it does not tend to diminish the risks of an imperium in imperio. Your so-called liberation would weaken the elements in the Church which want to be strengthened, and strengthen those which ought to be weakened.

D. We have thought of that, if your political caution must be satisfied. There are possible checks and safeguards.

S. O, master Doctor, I feared that your religious equality would prove but a rickety Hercules. Your destroyer of serpents cannot so much as walk alone, or encounter a dog unmuzzled. What! you would dismember the emancipated Anglican Church, debar it from retaining its unity and employing its freedom, lest it be too strong for you, and then talk of equality? Be these sour workings of the old antiprelatical Adam the fruits of your new justice and charity? But to my mind 'tis all one, for it shall need much more than a neatly drawn schedule to persuade me that your safeguards will work.

D. But what then would you do with the Establishment?

S. That were a new topic, and too long to consider at present. I am not ready with any plan; it was for you to convert me to yours. The drawbacks and

anomalies of our ecclesiastical polity are obvious enough, and capable of being represented with painful or ludicrous effect. But the resulting evils are known, amendable, and, as I believe, tending to amendment, and in the meantime endurable. I will go as far as I can see to mend them, but will not exchange them for unknown ones till amendment is proved impossible.

D. Well, if you will not be with us, you must even abide with your paradoxical delight of being against the stars in their courses.

S. I have no skill to read the stars; but I am old enough to know that they are jealous of mortals, and ill to claim for allies before the event. Only one thing I will prophesy: that if the Church of England falls, it will be through the folly of her own champions.

VIII

HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL SOVEREIGNTY1

In the following remarks I shall endeavour to show how and why the question of Home Rule for Ireland is not an ordinary question of domestic policy, nor even a domestic question of constitutional policy, such as Parliamentary Reform, but one involving by its nature much wider issues and consequences. And in

so doing I shall at the same time show the grounds on which I think that any serious and effective working out of the idea of Home Rule would import not only a new constitution for Ireland, but a new constitution for the British Empire, and a revolution in the existing relations between the British colonies and possessions and the Imperial Parliament. I do not profess to disclose new facts or urge new arguments. It appears

to me that we are in far greater danger of neglecting plain facts and broad principles in this matter than of overlooking any facts not generally known, or reasons not of general validity which are likely to be material to a sound decision. Our business at this juncture is

1 First published in The Truth about Home Rule (W. Blackwood and Sons, 1888). I do not think the argument is affected by anything that has happened since.

to insist on essentials, and to insist on them with repetition even to weariness rather than let them fall out of sight. My aim will be to make use of facts. which are notorious, and inferences from them which. are simple.

I

The territories collectively known as the British Empire are not only scattered over the world, but are subject to the ultimate dominion of the Imperial Parliament in many different ways. We have in the first place the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, whose people are directly represented in Parliament. We have a few possessions of the Crown which are geographically adjacent to Great Britain, but are extra-parliamentary (if one may use the word) for historical reasons. They enjoy their ancient local laws and privileges, which are practically guaranteed by the Imperial Parliament. Only the trifling area and population of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man as compared with the United Kingdom have made the continuance of this state of things practicable. Then we have the colonies founded by English settlers who carried with them the law of England and the rights of British subjects. Lastly, there are the colonies and dependencies acquired at various times by conquest or by cession, or partly in one way and partly in the other, sometimes from native rulers, but more often from princes or rulers who, whether European or not, were themselves conquerors or represented some previous conqueror. Among this