"those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not
generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into
execution new projects."
But surely on a question of such vital moment to the Empire as the
revision of the constitution of the United Kingdom, the bases, if not
the details, of the contemplated change are deserving of prolonged
consideration and even of some public and ordered discussion. The
British North America Act, 1867, by which the relation of the Dominion
of Canada to its provinces is regulated, was the result, not only of
years of preliminary debate in the provincial Legislatures and
elsewhere, but of a formal conference at Quebec in 1864, followed by the
appointment of delegates to confer with the Imperial Government on the
matter. In Australia the proposal for union, agitated at intervals since
1846, was canvassed in every detail at inter-colonial Conferences or
Conventions in 1883, in 1891, and in 1897-8, as well as in the several
colonial Legislatures, before it was embodied in the Australia
Constitution Act, 1900. And although in the case of South Africa, owing
to the urgency of the question of union, the time occupied in the
discussion was less than in the other great dominions, yet in the
Convention of 1908-9 the best brains in the country were occupied for
months in considering every detail of the proposal for union before it
was submitted to the Colonial and Imperial Parliaments for their
sanction.[26] And yet in the Mother Country, where centuries of military
and political conflict have given us the Union, it is considered that a
few weeks' consideration by a committee of the Cabinet, without advice
from independent constitutional experts,[27] and without formal
consultation even with the Government's own supporters outside the
Ministry, is sufficient to determine both the general form and the
details of a proposal for its dissolution.
In the confusion so engendered it may be useful to consider in some
detail the different proposals which have been or may be made under the
name of Home Rule, their special qualities and dangers, and the results
to which they may severally lead.