It is a
curious irony of the present situation that many of those Britons who
refuse self-government to Ireland are most diligent in watching the
action of Russia in relation to the powerful and--up to the
present--almost independent Parliament of Finland.
THE GERMAN EMPIRE
If we pass from Russia to the other great human combinations, we shall
find the principle of Home Rule far more extensively and powerfully
developed. Take China, a combination of 400,000,000 of human beings,
now changing before our eyes from an absolute monarchy to a
constitutional republic. But whether as a monarchy or a republic, China
has always rested her rule on gigantic and almost autonomous provinces,
under separate Viceroys. Those provinces have doubtless been subject to
the same autocratic control as China herself, but with the change in
her central government they will probably pass by an easy transition
into Home Rule provinces. Or come nearer home to an Empire which most
Englishmen imagine to be the most centralised in the world--the German
Empire. That Empire rests upon a basis of twenty-six autonomous
governments, varying from autocracies at one end to republics at the
other.
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