The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1912. MR. CHURCHILL ON FEDERALISM.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1546, 16 September 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1912. MR. CHURCHILL ON FEDERALISM.

In concluding his advocacy of the federalising of the United Kingdom Mr. Churchill was careful to say that he was expressing only his own personal opinions and was not to be understood as presenting the policy .of the Government. This robs his scheme of importance without impairing its picturcsqueness, and when wc remember that the Government emphatically denounced the crude idea of an Imperial Council advocated by Sir JosEPit Ward wc. can realise why Mn. Churchill spoke as he did. He was merely bringing forward one of the guns wjth which the case for Home Hulc is to bo_ fought. The Government cannot withstand the logic of the Unionist argument that if Ireland ifi to have a Parliament of her.own, soparato Parliaments should be • established for Wales, England, and Scotland. The argument does not stop there, of course. Whatever. Wales or Scotland may have been once, they are not today separate nations in any sense that Government must take account of: they are quite arbitrarily.bounded sections of the Kingdom, and there is no natural reason why Federalism should be built up on these, rather than any other sections, of the British Isles. As the Sprctator, for'examplc, has persistently argued, the abstract case for an English Parliament under a central British Parliament holds good for a Lancashire Parliament under the English LogisJature. and for a Manchester Pania-,

menfc under that. Tho Federalists are, in fact, confronted at the very outset by the problem : How far shall Federalism, devolution, and subdivision be carried!

Mn. Chukchill recognises the logic of the situation, and he does not shrink from proposing that selfgovernment be extended to Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands, and London. Nobody will feel surprise that the Westminster Gazette has been "startled" by jilt. Churchill's- blunt admission of the natural corollary of the federalist movement, and that another Minister, Mn. Samuel, has been put up to assure the Liberals that the scheme outlined is an academic one, and n.ut a policy for enforcement "to-day or to-morrow." Mn. Churchill suggested that federalism within the British Isles would be "another bold step onward to that closer union with the overseas dominions which must be achieved if Britain's greatness was to endure." We can leave this_ passage of his speech to the Tariff Reformers to deal with as a clumsy treading upon the toes of Frcotrade. To the overseas dominions, however, it is of more importance that a British Liberal Minister should, for any political purpose, declare, first, that a federal system for the United Kingdom will lead to a federal system for the Empire, and second, that without "closer union" between its parts the Empire will fall to pieces. The onus of proving the second of these assertions is upon those who assert it, and nobody has over seriously attempted to supply that proof. How, indeed, could they prove, such a thing, even as an ab.stract exercise? One might, be able to listen to the idea of an Imperial Federation, as a patent remedy, if there were signs of any grave fissures in the Imperial structure; but what our Imperial quacks arc seeking to dose with their nostrums is a patient in sounder health than ever. The Empire was never so solid and so strong asMt is to-day. In any event it would not follow that the decking out of the British Isles in a Federal dress would lead logically to the Federation ( of the Empire. The application of local federation to Canada and to Australia and of the union principle to South Africa and New Zealand, is rather an argument against the wider federation than an argument for it. Tbf>sp local amalgamations are unconscious expressions of the sense of local nationhood. Australian Federation, for example, definitely fixed Australia as one nation, and definitely affirmed the desirableness of each nation controlling all its own affairs. Wp are ready to believe that the Empire could have, with some safety been converted into a formal Federation.if all the Canadian provinces, the Australian States, and the South African colonies were still all independent units like New Zealand. When the Canadian Ministers were recently telling the English public that the colonies would some day require and be granted a voice in the government of the Empire, they were hardly expressing the opinion of Canada. The fact is, that the. British Government is ready justnow to use any stirring of opinion in any matter for the furtherance of, its party ends. On this occasion Mn. Churchill, finding the discussion of Imperial Federation still going on, has seized upon it to strike a blow for what appears to be the losing cause of Home Rule. People in the overseas dominions must bo very much on their guard when they hear British Ministers speaking in , the strain of the Dundee speech. That is all the real significance of this utterance. It may be noted as having a significant bearing upon "tho Ulster problem" that Mn. Churchill considered Homo Rule for Lancashire. If Lancashire, whv not Ulster?