Page:Home rule through federal devolution.djvu/30

 Rule none of its advocates has defined. Sir Horace Plunkett, who was chairman of the Convention and who, last year, in view of the various proposals for industrial regeneration which were afloat, was energetic in organising an association for promoting the material progress of Ireland, has recently suddenly dropped this practical scheme, and, with some forty adherents, has got up an "Irish Dominion League" with the object of promoting a crusade for securing "Dominion Home Rule." In the circular which introduces this league to the public no attempt at definition is made; nothing beyond the usual statements of pious hopes and vague aspirations with which we have long been familiar. I do not propose in this paper to analyse the contents of the manifesto; but I venture to think that if ever its suggestions for the most part they are hardly proposals come to be shaped into an act of Parliament, it will be found that Dominion Home Rule is virtual separation, subject only to that worn-out claptrap "The Golden Link of the Crown," to retain Ireland "within the Empire." Once grant the powers sought for by the Irish Dominion League, and the United Kingdom will soon find itself in the position of the purchaser of the Peau de Chagrin, and will justly suffer his fate.

That there are very grave disadvantages in the union of executive and legislative functions in the same elective Chamber may be admitted; but it is not easy to see how the reproduction of this feature in the local Legislatures can be avoided. In Ireland the persistent and reiterated demand has been for "an Irish Legislature with an Executive subject and responsible thereto." The essential element of the Home Rule claim is the desire to control the Administration; the chief function of the Legislative Assembly being to supervise and direct the executive machine. The "Democracy," especially in Ireland (though not in Ireland only), are so filled with a faith in the miracles of material prosperity which it is supposed to be in the power of a rightly directed patriotic Government to effect that their first object is to secure