has been necessary to very strong measures on more than one occasion, owing to the tactics of the Croatian nationalists.

The hereditary Provinces of Austria are evidently not a Confederation, for the attributions of the local Diets are limited; and abundant power exists in the National Government to compel obedience on their part. Neither can the reforms of the Taafe administration as yet be said to have brought these countries within the category of Federal States, although it is evident that they tend in that direction. As yet so much remains of the result of the ideas which from the days of Maria Theresa to those of Schmerling, and from those of Schmerling to Prince Auersperg, have dominated the rulers of Austria, that it would be premature to say that the hereditary Provinces have ceased in the theory of their institutions to form a homogeneous State. The February Patent and not the October Diploma still has the upper hand, but for how long it would be rash to prophesy.

EDMOND FITZMAURICE.

III.

FOR SCOTLAND.

MR. PARNELL, in a speech made last autumn, whilst advocating a policy of separate government for Ireland, informed his hearers that 'Scotland had lost her nationality,' and held up her fate, so it seemed, as a warning to Ireland of what degradation and misfortune might be in store for his countrymen should they become thoroughly merged and incorporated with the British people. What is this nationality, which it is said Scotland has lost, and Ireland is in danger of losing, and to which we sometimes hear that even Wales has a claim? Scotchmen have recently been told, much to their own astonishment, that they, forsooth, like the Irish and the Welsh, deserve to be treated as a separate people. The English are quite ready to give us in Scotland an independent parliament for our local affairs, if we only wish it! So it is said; and there are some Englishmen, and here and there, may be, even an odd Scotchman, so out of sympathy with general Scottish sentiment as to think such talk grateful to Scottish ears. Every Scotchman takes a pride in the history of his country. When at the union the separate existence of the ancient kingdom came to an end for ever, we entered the Union on equal terms with the people of England. The eloquence of Lord Belhaven, the mistaken patriotic sentiments of many Scotchmen, and the Jacobite sympathies of too many others, raised indeed at the time some natural opposition to the action of the last of the Scottish parliaments. nationality of Scotland as totally distinct from that of England was of course not a mere sentiment, it was a fact. Scotchmen at the time of the Union did not, and they never will, forget their national history, of which the main feature was the struggle, and the successful struggle, they had carried on for so many centuries with their auld enemies of England.'

The

They had had their own monarchs, their own independent parliaments, their own courts of law and separate legal system, their separate religious establishment, their own universities. Scotland was no mere geographical expression.' Its inhabitants were bound together by those institutions and laws which teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom.' They were accounted an independent nation by the nations of Europe. Scottish ambassadors represented their sovereign at Paris and Madrid as well as in London; and ambassadors

from England and the Continental nations were received on the same terms at Holyrood. The effect of the two Unions (first that of the Crowns in 1603, secondly that of the Parliaments and Governments in 1707) was to bring all this to an end. No Scottish army would ever again take the field, nor a Scottish ship of war sail the seas. The patriotism of Scotchmen has not, however, ceased with the Union, though it has widened its scope; for wherever British armies and British fleets are engaged, Scotland feels, and has, thanks to the Union, as much right as England to feel, that she, as well as England, is sharing the danger and the glory on behalf of a common country and a united people.

Whatever nationality Ireland may have lost, it certainly was not a nationality marked by any of the ordinary signs of independent national existence. The Irish never acted as an independent nation, and if they really ever considered themselves an independent nation, they certainly were not so considered by any other nation of the world. Was ambassador ever sent by a foreign power to an Irish Government? Was the Irish flag ever seen upon the seas? Reference need hardly be made to Wales. A Welsh ambassador! A Welsh man-ofwar! A Welsh alliance with a continental power! Possibly before long Scotland will be having held up to it as an example, the independence of the Isle of Man! That island is, no doubt, blessed with a local parliament-the House of Keys. If the Scotch only wish it, the English will be quite willing that Scotland also should have its House of Keys! For heaven's sake, let there be some consideration among Englishmen for historical facts, to say nothing of Scotch susceptibilities, and let there be an end of this talk of indulging us with semi-national institutions since Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen form three separate nations! Scotchmen will assuredly resent an apparently growing tendency to thrust upon them new institutions, not because the Scotch want them, nor because they are suited to Scotland, but because some persons think that party advantage is to be obtained by likening the cases of Scotland and Ireland, and that Scotland may possibly be conveniently made use of as a stalking-horse, under which English politicians may advance with greater safety to meet the demands of Messrs. Parnell and Biggar for Irish Home Rule.

The Irish question must be judged upon its own merits and so must the Scotch. And whenever the relations between England and Scotland are discussed, it will be found that Scotchmen still choose to compare themselves and their privileges, as they did at the time of the Union, not with those of Ireland and Wales, but with those of England. Scotland and England then entered into partnership and became one nation. But it seems to occur too seldom to the English mind, when the project is mooted of reviving separate legislatures in the two countries, each devoted to its own local affairs, that on one

subject there is still not absolute reciprocity of feeling between Englishmen and Scotchmen. If Englishmen do not care to interest themselves in Scotch affairs, if they look upon Scotland as only a remote corner of the kingdom whose concerns cannot much matter to them, and are of intrinsically little importance, they should remember that a similar feeling as to English affairs is not reciprocated by Scotchmen.

For my part, though a Scotchman and a Scotch member of Parliament, I think it of the greatest importance and interest to myself and other Scotchmen that England should be well governed. The local affairs of England are the local affairs of seven-eighths of the people of this island. England is the home of hundreds of thousands of Scotchmen. Home Rule for England is a proposal which every Scotchman who has inherited one spark of true Scotch feeling will resist to the uttermost; he claims as a Scotchman and by virtue of the Union to take his part in governing England. Were England to have a separate parliament for English affairs, and Scotland a separate parliament for Scotch affairs, the importance of Scotland in the kingdom as a whole would inevitably be very seriously diminished. It is easy enough on paper to describe English affairs as local. fact is that England constitutes such a large portion of the kingdom that its affairs are necessarily of more than local importance.

The

Scotch Home Rule for Scotch affairs would necessitate English Home Rule for English affairs; and Scotchmen are very unlikely to forget that English Home Rule means the exclusion of Scotchmen from the chief internal politics of Great Britain.

It is difficult to conceive how any severer blow could be given to the importance of Scotland than by separating its legislature from that of the sister country. And how it comes that any such retrograde step should at the present time be contemplated as the barest possibility only shows what mighty pressure the return to the House of Commons of eighty-six separatist Irish members has brought upon the minds of men, especially of those-and they are unfortunately many-who care much more for the temporary position of political parties, than for the permanent position which Scotland should hold in the United Kingdom. What reason is there (except the return of the eighty-six Parnellite members) for these ostentatious offers of Home Rule to Scotland by patronising English newspapers and their more simpleminded correspondents? Has the complete merging of the two nations undergone lately any sudden check? On the contrary, never was there so much intercourse between the two. As for legislation, the tendency of recent years towards assimilation of laws has been stronger than ever. In recent legislation the practice of dealing by the same Act of Parliament with the whole island is increasing. The strongest instance probably of this was the passing of one Reform Act for the three kingdoms-an entirely unprecedented example of

the identity of political sentiment as regards electoral qualifications, and of the similarity of circumstances in the three countries.

And not merely is the assimilating tendency of the times observable in the statute law; the same tendency is observed in the case law of the two countries. The highest Court of Appeal, constituted of the most eminent lawyers of Scotland, England, and Ireland, applies, no doubt, Scotch law in the decision of Scotch appeals, English law in appeals from England; but the presence and consultation together of eminent judges trained in the different systems, hearing the arguments of Scottish advocates and English barristers, acquainting themselves with the decisions of the courts and the writings of learned authors in both countries, must tend to the advantage of law in each country, and to a kind of assimilation at which every liberal-minded man must rejoice.

Instead of there having been lately any check to the process of merging of English and Scotch, the fusion between the two nations. has been becoming more complete than ever. The distinction between Englishmen and Scotchmen, between the English nation and the Scottish nation, has become of as little practical importance, and is almost as little considered, as the geographical boundary between the two countries. It has become, fortunately, as impossible really to revive the two separate nations as to give back their old glories to the Carter Fell and the Kershope Burn. Why, then, should we play at doing so? The Scotch Borders are full of recollections of the old wars with our southern enemies. Old houses in Hawick tell by their architecture of days when English foes were the chief danger to the burgh householder, and the ruined abbeys of Jedburgh, Melrose, and Kelso still attest the ruthless nature of the warfare carried on by the armies of Henry the Eighth. If the spirit to keep up ancient hatreds, to foster the remembrance of old wrongs, and to perpetuate bitter animosities between races, existed on the Borders as it does amongst Irishmen, both in and out of Ireland, there are few parts of the United Kingdom where more material for maintaining it could be found than on the Borders. But the old feeling of hatred is absolutely dead, whilst the old feeling of patriotic pride in the deeds of an heroic ancestry is as strong as ever. In March 1799, in debate in the House of Lords on the Irish Union, the Lord Minto of that day spoke of the sentiment then existing on the Borders :

I will venture to assure your Lordships, and to speak for my neighbours as well as for myself, that at this day we see without humiliation or regret those towers and beacons which were very necessary appendages of our independence at least before the union of the Crowns, when we had a predatory enemy within ten miles of us; we behold, I say, without mortification or concern those badges of Imperial dignity mouldering and in ruin on our rocks, while we can see the plain below covered with crops, which he who sows is now sure of reaping, and while we can extend our views of national instinct and dignity, and all our public feelings, whether of pride or of affection, not only beyond the little range of hills that we look upon, but to the remotest extremities of the habitable globe.