"Now we have our own Quebec." That was the pithy summation of one British newspaper columnist last week after Scots voted massively in favour of establishing a Scottish parliament at Edinburgh. Indeed, separatists in Quebec City were quick to draw their own parallels, seeing the success of the Scottish referendum as a foretaste of the inevitable triumph of their own cause.

In some ways, of course, Scotland has always been Britain's Quebec -- more nearly so, certainly, than Ireland. Though joined under the British crown by the Act of Union in 1707, Scotland, like Quebec at Confederation, was a willing participant, retaining a strong sense of its own identity, together with a defined territory. The Scots kept their own schools, church, legal system, even their own version of the pound, notwithstanding Britain's nominally unitary system of government. In symbolic terms, Scottish nationhood is in fact more formally acknowledged than Quebec's, to the extent that Scotland fields its own soccer teams in international competition.

But until now there has been one critical distinction. Scots had no formal legislative expression of their collective sense of self -- that is, separate from the delegation of Scottish members of Parliament at Westminster. They still won't, in the sense that separatists in Scotland or Quebec would like. The referendum -- organized by the British government, not Scottish nationalists, and won with a majority of 75 per cent, not 50 per cent plus one -- will give birth to a Scottish government with limited powers, in most respects well short of those the provinces of Canada already enjoy.

Under the terms of the white paper produced by Britain's new Labour government, Scottish tax revenues will be transferred to the Scottish government in proportion as powers -- and the share of public spending these represent -- are also delegated. Beyond that, Edinburgh will have the right to raise or lower income taxes by only 3 per cent from the British standard, and will be severely restricted in its ability to borrow.

What seems equally clear, however -- and here the parallels with Quebec are discomfiting -- is that the process of devolution will not end there. It is one thing to conjoin formerly independent states in a federation, as happened at Philadelphia. It is quite another to attempt, as the Blair government is doing, to devolve a unitary state into a federation. (Confederation, like most things Canadian, was a bit of both: a joining of the province of Canada with the maritime provinces, at the same time as it was a severing of Upper and Lower Canada.)

The process is likely to engage larger and more destructive forces than are anticipated in Whitehall, where it is hoped a measured devolution -- a still more limited exercise is envisaged for Wales -- will lance the nationalist boil. Instead, as is already evident, it has satisfied nobody, and settled nothing. Tartan nationalists are interpreting the result as a downpayment on independence. "If Scotland can succeed running some of our affairs," says the Scottish Nationalist Party leader Alex Salmond, "then the logical conclusion is we should run all of our affairs." Scottish unionists, meanwhile, are predicting chaos, and plenty of second thoughts among their countrymen.

And Scots are by no means the only group whose passions have been aroused. Already there are demands from some English MPs for a separate assembly for England, to match those intended for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland -- that is, for a truly federal system, rather than the hybrid unitary-federal system the Blair plan envisages.

As well they might. Their vision undimmed by thirty years of constitutional squabbling, British commentators can see clearly what Canadian enthusiasts for asymmetric federalism or special status miss. It is called the "West Lothian question," after the MP who raised it: If MPs from England may no longer legislate in certain areas for Scotland, how is it fair that MPs from Scotland may vote on the same legislation as it applies to England? If the question is provocative with regards to Scotland, with 10 per cent of the British population, think how more urgent it must be in the matter of Quebec, with a decisive 25 per cent of the Canadian population.

It will not be enough, as the Blair government pretends, merely to reduce Scotland's present over-representation at Westminster. The demands will grow to bar Scottish MPs from voting across a wide range of questions.

Which will only reinforce Scottish alienation, and fuel reciprocal demands for more and more powers to be ceded to Edinburgh.

Without a parliament, Scottish separatists might have been easily dispersed, much like that ragtag band in northern Italy. But now they have been given a platform, a focal point for their frustrations, a cunning sniper's nest from which to rain fire on the union. Britain will rue the day.