Note 55 — V HOME RULE AND THE COLONIAL ANALOGY.

The usual rhetorical appeal to "What Home Rule has done in South Africa" presents, indeed, a most perfect specimen of the confusion of thought which it is here attempted to analyse. For no sooner had the Transvaal received "Home Rule" (i.e. responsible government) than it surrendered the "Home Rule" (i.e. separate government) which it had previously enjoyed in order to enter the South African Union. Stripped of mere verbal confusion the argument from the Transvaal analogy then runs somewhat as follows: "The Transvaal is now contented because it enjoys free representative institutions as an integral portion of a United South Africa; therefore, Ireland cannot be contented until she ceases to be a freely represented integral portion of the United Kingdom!"