How much more will such questions arise when it may be asked in almost every case of legislation, Does this matter concern the colonies or not? Would, for instance, such a question as Irish Home Rule, or any change in any direction in the relations between Ireland and Great Britain, be looked on as an “Imperial” question, or as one touching Great Britain and Ireland only[6]? It is often hard enough to settle rules for assemblies called into being for the first time; but how much harder will it be, when an assembly has had for ages an absolutely boundless range of powers, and where every member has always had an equal voice on all subjects, to bring in a new class of members who shall have votes on certain classes of subjects only, and those classes of subjects which it will be practically impossible to define. * * * * * But, be any scheme of this kind good or bad, possible or impossible, it is not Federation. We have seen elsewhere what Federation means and how federations grow. A federal union involves a certain loss of power and position on the part of the states which unite to form it. But, as federations have been formed hitherto, that loss of power and position has either been merely nominal or else has been fully made up in other ways. When the Achaian cities, the Swiss cantons, the Batavian provinces, the American States, were threatened by enemies, whom they could resist only by union, it was worth their while to give up the independent power of peace and war; for each city or state to cleave to it would have meant for each city or state to be subdued singly. In some of these cases many of the states had never really exercised the independent powers of peace and war. There was no moment when Aargau or Indiana could have made war on its own account; and, if we say that there was a moment when Massachusetts or Pennsylvania might have done so, it was only an ideal moment which had no real historical being. In each of the great federal unions some of the members, in some of them all the members, distinctly gained in political position by entering the Union. Federation is a check on independence; but many of the states had never known separate independence. But it will be quite another thing to ask a great power, a ruling power, a mighty and ancient kingdom, which has for ages held its place among the foremost nations of the earth, to give up its dominion, to give up its independence, to sink of its own will to the level of a new State or Canton. It will be quite another thing to ask the Parliament of such a kingdom, a Parliament which has for ages been a sovereign assembly, which has for a very long time believed itself to be the first of all assemblies, a Parliament whose range of functions has been boundless, whose will has known no limit save the limits which the laws of nature impose on all wills--to ask such a Parliament as this to come down from