Mr. Balfour replied to the new proposals for federating England
and Scotland with Ireland, in a very striking speech at a dinner of the Constitutional Union in St. James's Hall, on Wednesday. He pointed out that it would obviously be impossible to meet the difficulty of the extraordinary inequality in the federated States by cutting England "into lengths in order to suit the Irish standard," since, as the whole proposal is based on the rights of nationalities, the nationality of England cannot be suppressed while the nationality of Scot- land and Ireland is recognised. What will emerge, then, will be the federation of three nations (Mr. Balfour omitted the Welsh nationality on account of its smallness), of which England will contain three-fourths of the population and four-fifths of the wealth. Would it be possible to prevent the Imperial Administration from attaching a great deal more weight to the view which was backed by England's people and wealth, than to the view which obtained a majority in the Imperial Parliament only by the artificial weight given to Scotch and Irish votes ? Such a system would be simply unworkable. There would be no stability in it.
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