THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1912. HOME RULE AND FEDERALISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10716, 28 October 1912, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1912. HOME RULE AND FEDERALISM.

•The progress of the Home Rule movement .is being carefully watched in all parts of the British Empire. Somo people see in tho movement the destruction of tho larger scheme of federalism. Writing to the Daily Mail last month, Mr Sidney Low said: —Now, of course, federalism of the United Kingdom is impracticable unless Ireland ooines in upon the £-:wne terms as tho other areas. In any true federal system, in any workable devolution scheme, all the local legislatures and executives muHfc stan.l in tho same relation to the central Government. You cannot have Wales a province and Ireland a nation. Many people will say that this latter is what tho Nationalists intend, and that any Home Rule scheme which is not a stage towards that end will be entirely futile so far as they are concerned. Either you give Ireland separate treatment or you leave tho Nationalist agitation to go on as furiously as ever. Possibly. But it must be remembered. that federalism in some .shape has long been acceded by influential men of all parties as tho real solution of the Irish question. Mr Gladstone himself always maintained that his first Bill was only a species of federation, and Mr Asquith. rose into political prominence as a Liberal who objected to tli« Gladstoniaa scheme because it was not federal enough. Lord Randolph Churchill jtnd Lord Carnarvon wer* Federalists bofore Mr Gladstone was a Horn® Ruler. Tlia Unionist Party as * wholo ! has aever repudiated the federal idea, j It is barely tw« years sinoe th» con- ; ferenco between the leaders of th» tyr# parties offered substantial Kop« tk*t snob a salutio* would lw fou*d, ami som<f Unionist newspaper* i»

London were, vory properly as I ' think, quite disposed to welcome it. It is quite hopeless to suggest that the timo has come for another settlement by consent on federal lines as part of that wider reconstruction of J the whole national and Imperial Oon- I stitution which will ultimately have to bo undertaken? We have arrived at a crisis at which it is at least worth while for the question to be considered again. For what are the alternatives before us? If tho Government persevere with the Home Rule Bill in its present shape it is clear enough that they do go at the risk of disorder i in Ulster which may speedily amount , to something like civil war or revolu- I tion. If they simply withdraw it, then, of course, tho Nationalists will turn against them and the Unionists will come in; but they will come in, I 1 fear, for another long period of Irish disaffection and Irish coercion. We shall be no nearer the settlement by consent, and it is high time that we began to see our way to that. Is it j not possible that the Nationalist lenders, rocognising that in the present temper of the British nation the f-ull fruition of their conventional"hopes is not to be achieved, may be willing to accept, or at any rate to receive with "sombre acquiescent," a genuI ino federal scheme such m I believfyj was very nearly compacted at the parliamentary conferences of the an- j tumn of 1910. And might it not be possible also to bring in the Protestant counties of Ulster under this plan without doing violence to tho feelings of their inhabitants? They would not like it, of course, for they do not defir® •; '■any constitutional change in their relations to the central Government of the United Kingdom _and simpfy jrijjK. to remain m \ , tliey are. But~if ,Dublin is to have a directly to the Imperial Parliament, Belfast might have one too. Might it not be worth while the representative leaders of all parties, Ministers and the Opposition, the Nationalists and the J Ulster loyalists, to get together and discuss whether any sucK arraligement is feasible ? A preliminary to the negotiations would be tli6 Withdrawal of the present Hottie Rule Bilh' for this is rather an obstacle to. federalism : than a step towards it. A real federation ;wi)utd be. - impossible if • Irish i itiembets are to intervc"" in the inter- : affairs of England ,j|in^,J§cotla : nd while England and Scotland are excluded from the field of Irish politics. Nor could one State or province in a federation have a separate tariff or a separate Post Office or collect Customs' on imports from the others. If any progress is to be made with a real .Federal Constitution the way for it must be cleared by the abandonment of the present scheme, and perhaps' that would release those concerned with it from a growing burden of embarrassment which threatens to become intolerable.