Leading Article: Yes, yes is the best and bravest answer

If The Independent had a Scottish electoral address, it would be voting yes today. Twice yes: yes to an elected assembly and yes to its having limited tax-raising powers. Devolution is a matter of principle. It is a way of protecting citizens against an over-centralised state. Relocating the power to decide is a way of bringing more people into the business of self-government, bolstering democracy and improving decision- making. Hard decisions, for example about taxing and spending, may not get easier the closer they are taken to people but they are more valid, since they get made in conditions of greater trust between government and governed.

There is also a particular British case for devolving power from Westminster. Britain is bottom-heavy: too much clout rests in the far south of its main island. The Palace of Westminster and its bureaucratic servants try to do too much about too many parts of the nation about which they know too little. Indeed, an Edinburgh parliament could improve governance in Penzance as well as Peterhead. It would reduce the load on the Commons and the Westminster executive; it would promote experiment and better recognise the truth that plural government is not only healthier but eventually likely to be more effective than monolithic administration.

Britain is pretty new. A version of Britain - especially a version of Anglo-Scottish relations - was made in the 18th century. In the 21st century it may come to take very different forms indeed. Britain was always a means to an end - the unified polity exists in order to improve the lives of citizens from Plymouth to Inverness, in part by assuring their identity and protecting them against conflict. All that will, we think, be helped by recognising that Scotland is a genuine British nation with a valid claim to self-government. This may or may not throw up questions about English nationality and self-government but there is no necessary reason why it need destroy a political entity called Britain, with its rich common heritage and mingled populations.

There is, to be sure, a "Scottish" case for devolution grounded in history, identity and a lingering belief that the Act of Union was not a final settlement of the Scots' relationship with the rest of Great Britain. The referendum is Scotland's rather belated rendezvous with modernity, the point at which its history flows into that of Europe and the wider world. A self-governing Scotland within a United Kingdom framework "fits" the modern frame. Federalism does not of course explain the success of the United States but its internal pluralism and readiness for experiment is a vital ingredient in that great nation's energy and innovativeness. Spain now flourishes so self-confidently partly because Galicians and Catalonians have a grip on their destiny. The political stability of modern Germany hinges on the fact that Munich is home to a prime minister, who is no less German than the chancellor in Bonn.

Meanwhile small nations blossom, from Estonia to Ireland, not pretending to autarky or financial independence but exulting in their capacity for autonomous politics and self expression free of neighbouring hegemons. The intellectual failure of all those 19th-century nationalisms - including that spoken for by the Scottish National Party - is to see "independence" as the be-all and end-all of their political life. No nation, large or small, can escape the international division of labour or those processes of trade and capital investment conveniently labelled globalisation: now is the time, above all, for economic and financial alliances and unions.

What the referendum offers Scotland is self-government within those inescapable bounds. For too long Scotland has wallowed in a culture of political dependency. Political attitudes north of the border have often been juvenile: blame somebody else, blame Westminster, blame the English. Nursery politics have prevailed, with the implicit threat that unless higher levels of spending are delivered, Scots would throw a tantrum and start breaking up the furniture. Psychologically, this has had a deleterious effect on the Scottish political temperament and manufactured an enervating culture of complaint. Has Scotland, through the latter half of this century, been the country of can-do and self-reliance it was once celebrated for? Hardly. Voting yes for a parliament but no to financial powers would perpetuate this.

Self-government is not an easy option. The polls have been indicating that many Scots do not wish to face up to it, some of them perhaps preferring the whingeing life. That is why today's vote is a critical test of a nation and the political maturity of its inhabitants. It is a test, too, of the party which has for so long been dominant in Scotland. Labour stumbled into the Constitutional Convention and ambled into the election commitment which, with admirable speed, it has now placed before the residents of Scotland.

That the party has pledged that the assembly be returned on the basis of proportional representation is a tribute to the political pluralism of Scotland itself, and now of the Blair era. It is hard to see how the creation of an assembly could spell anything but trouble for the existing Labour set-up in Scotland; it could and should spell the end of Labour's stranglehold on west central Scotland, symbolised so handily by party politics in Paisley. It seems hard to believe, too, that the other parties, including the SNP and the Liberal Democrats, would not be drastically shaken up by the opportunities an assembly would give to reflect what is after all an internally diverse country with marked differences between its regions and its interest groups.

It is that fact that has led some commentators, not necessarily cynics, to wonder whether the people of Scotland do want more politics, even the opportunity for a new and different domestic politics. Won't they prefer the quieter life, the easier life of blaming and bemoaning? Our sense, and our wish, is that Scottish voters will take the adult part and seize, enthusiastically and realistically, the option offered them today for home rule. It could be a disaster. It could also be the beginning of the rebirth of a vibrant, energetic, happy land. But that will, or should, be up to the Scots.