HOME RULE.

HC Deb 24 April 1911 vol 24 cc1371-437

Viscount CASTLEREAGH

On a point of Order. I would like to draw your attention, Mr. Chairman, to the fact that an Amendment standing in my name on the Paper, and dealing with the same subject as the Amendment to be moved by the hon. Member for Mid Armagh (Mr. Lonsdale) has been omitted from the Paper. This is the second time on which Amendments have been omitted from the Paper. They were reinstated on my making representations to the Clerk of the Table. I should like to know whether this practice of omitting Amendments dealing with the same subject as other Amendments on the Paper is to be continued?

The CHAIRMAN

Where was the Amendment of which the Noble Lord gave notice?

Viscount CASTLEREAGH

The Amendment was after the word "a" ["If any Bill other than a Money Bill "] to insert the words "Bill establishing a legislature for any part of the United Kingdom, or a Bill repealing or altering the powers of any such legislature, or a "—That is an entirely different proposal, and it has been removed from the Paper without any representation being made to myself.

The CHAIRMAN

The Noble Lord has not answered my question. I wish to know what word it was before?

Viscount CASTLEREAGH

It was before "Money" and after "a."

The CHAIRMAN

The Amendment moved the other night by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Sir W. Bull) takes us to a later point in the Bill than those words, and that is why the Noble Lord's Amendment is not on the Paper.

Mr. LONSDALE

I beg to move after the second word "Bill" ["If any Bill other than a Money Bill "] to insert the words "or a Bill to establish a separate Parliament and Executive for Ireland."

I propose by this Amendment to exclude entirely from the operation of this Bill any measure of Home Rule for Ireland. In other words, I desire to see the question of Home Rule removed altogether outside the region of this controversy. If this can be done, if we can be assured that no attempt will be made to satisfy the demands of the Nationalist party, during the time the Second Chamber is in a state of suspended animation, then I venture to think that the greatest obstacle to a final settlement of the constitutional question will be removed. I cannot say that I make this proposition with much hope that it will be accepted by the Government. I have no doubt there are several hon. Gentlemen on the Radical benches who would feel very much more comfortable in their minds if Home Rule could be postponed. But that is the last thing the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) will permit. Indeed, it is on this point that the Nationalist Leader has been most dictatorial. We will not tolerate any postponement of the question. That is what he said at Chicago. We will make the Government toe the line. That was his elegant phrase at Buffalo. The hon. and learned Gentleman has also said:— If, when the veto of the House of Lords is abolished, the Liberal Party go back upon their pledges to Ireland, we will hurl them from office. That is a clear and explicit declaration, and it is not surprising to find that the Government have made a virtue of necessity. The Prime Minister has toed the line. The right hon. Gentleman has stood at that Table with an independent bearing which I am afraid has disguised a subservient soul, and he has declared that the first task to be undertaken after the Veto Bill has passed is a measure of Home Rule for Ireland.

Although I do not cherish any illusions as to the fate of this Amendment, I move it as a matter of duty, and I believe I shall be able to support it by the most convincing arguments. I presume it would not be in order for me upon this Amendment to argue the pros and cons of the Home Rule question. At all events I have no intention of doing so. We on this side believe that Home Rule would be ruinous to Ireland as a whole and fatal to the liberties of Ulster and the loyal minority. We believe further that it would involve serious dangers to Great Britain and be absolutely destructive of Imperial unity. On the two occasions when it was submitted to the electors as a clear and definite issue the people of the United Kingdom showed in the most unanimous manner that they are utterly opposed to Home Rule.

4.0 P.M.

There is not a scintilla of evidence that the country is now prepared to reverse that verdict. So far as the last three elections have any bearing upon this question, the results go to prove that the electors are still of the same mind as they were in the years 1886 and 1895. What happened in 1906? The Radical party deliberately placed Home Rule outside their programme, and they were returned to this House with a majority of seventy-six over all other parties combined. In 1909 the Prime Minister made his famous Albert Hall speech. Speaking for his party, he resumed liberty of action on the Home Rule question. He went further, and gave a pledge to deal with it, and laid down a formula, which appears to him so perfect that he is not able to improve upon it. What was the effect of that declaration upon the country? In the General Election of January, 1910, the Radical party lost 100 seats. Their independent majority was swept away. The Government were placed in a position of subservience to the Nationalist party, and the December election did not relieve them from their humiliating position.

The Prime Minister—when he introduced this Bill—spoke boastfully of his majority of 120 for the United Kingdom, and of sixty in Great Britain. But why did he stop short in his analysis? What has become of his majority in England? England is the predominant partner in the United Kingdom, and England still re- turns a majority of Unionists. I maintain that these facts and considerations justify our belief that if Home Rule ware submitted as a definite issue to the electorate—whether by a Referendum or a General Election—the verdict would be unchanged. No one knows that better than the Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) himself, and that is why any suggestion of submitting Home Rule to the electors is so repugnant to him. We deny that the Government have any mandate to deal with Home Rule. Whatever may be said of the authority which they claim to have received to settle the constitutional question, it is a preposterous contention on their part that the country has declared itself in favour of Home Rule. Home Rule was not so much as mentioned in the election address of the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Chancellor of the Duchy, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Minister for Education, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or the Postmaster-General, and fifteen other hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who occupy positions of less responsibility in the Government were equally reticent.

An hon. Member of this House has examined 883 election addresses, and he has given the results of his investigation in a letter to "The Times." Of 432 Radical and Labour candidates in England and Wales at the last election 241, or 56 per cent. of the total, made no reference whatever to Home Rule in their election addresses. In other words, 44 per cent. of the Ministerial candidates made no allusion to this subject at all; and it is a remarkable fact that there was a larger proportion of defeats among the Radical candidates who declared themselves to be Home Rulers than among those who preserved silence on this subject. In fact, throughout the election, Members of the Government and of the Radical party said as little as they possibly could about the Irish question, and it is both absurd and dishonest for them to pretend now that they have authority from the electors to pass a Home Rule Bill into law. I must say I agree most profoundly with one sentence which I find in the report of a speech made by the Chief Secretary, at Bristol, on 1st December. The right hon. Gentleman said:— Home Rule is one of the questions which ought to-he left to the judgment of the whole people. I am satisfied to base my case for this Amendment upon that contention.

The Government, however, do not intend to leave Home Rule to the judgment of the people. The programme which they have laid down—or which has been arranged for them by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford—is somewhat on these lines: Having abolished the Veto, a Home Rule Bill may be brought in early in the Session of 1912. It may be taken for granted that the measure will be strenuously opposed in this House. It must reach the House of Lords a month before the end of the Session. To accomplish that it will be necessary to prolong the Session to an inordinate length, or to adopt the custom which has been very prevalent in this Parliament of curtailing debates in this House. Whichever of these courses the Government may adopt the House of Lords may quite reasonably contend that a bare month is not sufficient for the consideration of what must be a long and complicated measure—involving questions of the highest constitutional importance. They may reject the Bill on those grounds. That will be rejection No. 1. If the same Bill is brought in again in 1913, it will no doubt be passed by a most summary process through this House, and the House of Lords may then give it a thorough examination, but I anticipate they will reject it. That will be rejection number two. Then, in 1914, the Bill may be brought in a third time under the Closure—thrown at the heads of the Lords under a time limit, and, if not passed by them, will, in accordance with the provisions of this Bill, become law—in about three years from the present time.

I ask the Committee is it to be expected that the people of Ulster and the Loyalists of Ireland will recognise the validity of a law passed under such conditions? They would, of course, regard it as having no moral sanction whatever. They have declared already that if an Irish Parliament is set up they will not acknowledge its authority, and they will neither obey its decrees nor pay its taxes. I venture to say that if Home Rule is forced through—without a mandate and under a mutilated Constitution—this House, and the Government responsible to this House, would have no moral right to coerce the people of Ulster. The Prime Minister has said a great deal about the safeguards which he claims to have provided against the risks of Single-Chamber Government. He says, first of all, that a House of Commons may outstay its mandate; or it might pass a Bill by a small and accidental majority; or it might force through a piece of hasty and slovenly legislation.

What are the right hon. Gentleman's so-called safeguards? He proposes to shorten the duration of Parliament. He proposes to allow a delay of two years in cases where the Suspensory Veto is brought into play. He says, in the third place, that every House of Commons has power to reverse the legislation of its predecessor. It is not my purpose on the present occasion to discuss the question whether these safeguards are a sufficient protection against the dangers which the Prime Minister admits might arise. I will only venture to say this—that for a statesman of his position and experience the right hon. Gentleman shows a curious levity of mind when he contemplates, with apparent unconcern, successive Parliaments busily engaged in undoing the work of their predecessors. But whatever view we may take of these so-called safeguards, the point I wish to make is that they have no sort of application to a measure of Home Rule. The Prime Minister says:— It is certain as daylight that in ninety-nine cases out of 100 a new House of Commons both could and would reverse legislation which had been shown by a General Election to be opposed to the will of the mass of the electorate. The Committee will observe that the right hon. Gentleman admits there is a hundredth case to which the power of reversal could not be applied; and I think it will be generally admitted that Home Rule would come within this category. I submit, therefore, that in this Parliament Bill the Government have ignored entirely the greatest danger which could possibly confront us under a Single-Chamber form of government; that is to say, the danger of a House of Commons, controlled by a Government, which in its turn is absolutely dominated by a faction, and forced to pass legislation which has not been approved by the majority of the electors, and which, if once passed, could not be reversed. That is the situation which confronts us to-day. This Government is at the mercy of the Nationalist party; a party which, as one of its own Members admitted on the Second Beading of the Bill, constitutes an alien and hostile element in this assembly. They care nothing for the British Constitution or the British Empire. Their purpose is to smash the Constitution in order that they may dismember the Empire The Government not only make light of this danger, but they seem determined to throw down the great Parliamentary barrier which has for so long stood between the Nationalist party and their goal. That is why I move to place Home Rule outside the scope of this Bill. If the absolute Veto of the House of Lords is to disappear, let us at least preserve means by which the Veto of the people shall be effectual in a matter of this supreme magnitude. What does the country know of the details of this stupendous change which the Government propose shall be made in the Constitution of the United Kingdom?

The Prime Minister has told us there is to be an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive responsible to that Parliament. Beyond that we know very little indeed, except that this Irish Parliament and Executive are to have control of all Irish affairs. But we know quite enough of the intentions of the Nationalist party to convince us that any scheme of Home Rule which they will accept will not settle the Irish question. It will certainly bring about a bitter conflict between the two races in Ireland. It will, beyond question, increase irritation and ill-will between Nationalist Ireland and Great Britain. Home Rule will be worked by the Nationalist party to drive Ireland towards what the hon. and learned Member for Water-ford described last year at Buffalo as the "great goal of national independence." The Member for Waterford and other Members of his party have during the last few weeks been exhibiting themselves as models of loyalty and toleration. They appear to imagine that by a lavish display of rhetoric they can efface the memory of crime and outrage, of countless acts of disloyalty and of repeated demands for separation which are associated with the Nationalist movement. I think they overrate the effects of their own eloquence; and they certainly underrate the intelligence of the British public. At all events, we who represent the Unionists of Ireland demand that, before Home Rule is carried into law the people of the United Kingdom shall be invited to pass judgment upon it, with a full realisation of all that it means, and the vital consequences which it must entail. The Prime Minister talks glibly about maintaining the "indefeasible supremacy" of the Imperial Parliament, and he appears to think that having coined the phrase he has laid once and for all the bogey of separation.

I would venture to ask the right hon. Gentleman this question: How does he propose to make that "indefeasible supremacy" effectual when he is proposing to destroy the Second Chamber for all practical purposes? When this Veto Bill has passed—if it does pass—the House of Commons alone will remain as an effective force in the Government of the Empire. This House may be in the future, as it is now, under the dominance of the Nationalist party, determined to weaken the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament and to secure complete independence for Ireland. How would it be possible to maintain the "indefeasible supremacy" of the Imperial Parliament in those circumstances? The difficulties and dangers of Home Rule cannot be disposed of simply by calling them "unsubstantial nightmares," as I think the Prime Minister called them. They will prove real and tangible, and I submit that this House owes it to itself, and to the people of the United Kingdom, to make quite certain that the will of the electors is effectively ascertained, before establishing a system of Home Rule, which, once granted, it would be beyond the power of any Government and of any Parliament to withdraw.

Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD

The question which has been raised by the hon. Gentleman opposite is one in which the Labour party takes special concern. I am not going to follow the hon. Member into his discourse upon the merits or demerits of Home Rule. We will deal with that in about a year from now. The question which has to be settled by the Committee on the present occasion is whether—using the much misunderstood and too frequently used word "mandate"—the mandate which the Government received includes a mandate to pass Home Rule under the cover of this Parliament Bill. Dealing with this question of mandate, I am not quite sure whether the inferences drawn from the two Home Rule elections, in which Liberal Governments were defeated, are very sound. I have noticed for a great many years past that hon. Members opposite are not exceedingly anxious to analyse their own election addresses in those two elections. I remember very well an experience I had. The right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite, who now represents the two Scotch Universities, and then represented Inverness Boroughs (Sir R. Finlay), was a candidate. I happened to be a member of his constituency during the second of those Home Rule elections, and I walked one afternoon along the Priory of Beanley Road, and on the way I was confronted by a number of large bills announcing that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was a candidate, and also detailing his programme. There were other bills which attracted my attention, but not a single one of them referred to Home Rule. The most frequent appeal was, I remember, "Vote for Finlay and Social Reform." I was also compelled, quite recently, for other purposes than this debate, to go very carefully through the speeches delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham during those years. Going through those speeches, without the least touch or taint of partisan feeling—because this was not for political purposes at all—I was very much struck by the fact that if the Unionist party of that day received a mandate that could be covered by the great political speeches delivered by the leaders of the country, that mandate to the Unionist Government was far more in favour of Old Age Pensions than a stand against Home Rule.

What was the result? The people of the country waited twenty years before they got Old Age Pensions, and then they got them from the other party and not the Unionist party. I only recite these points because I dare say to-day we shall hear a great deal about mandates. We have heard a great deal already, and I suppose the cry will be renewed this afternoon. I refer to the last contest when the Liberal Government was defeated apparently upon a Home Rule issue to remind this House that mandates are things which are very easily talked about, but which are exceedingly difficult to define. Then there is another interesting light upon mandates. I do not know if my election address was one of those supervised by a writer of German mind, whose letter appears in "The Times" of this morning—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"]—I mean "German mind" in another sense than that in which it is apparently understood by the hon. Gentlemen opposite. I am exceedingly sorry, and only this moment it has flashed across my mind that my words might have a double meaning. What I mean is that the "German mind" is a mind that goes laboriously into details, and I mean the words in that sense, a complimentary sense I think. I thought the peculiar type of mind that went through some hundreds of addresses in order to analyse and classify them was a German mind. I am exceedingly sorry if any other possible meaning was likely to attach to my words; it was not intentionally on my part. In his detailed labours, analyses, and investigations I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman examined my election address. If he did he would dis- cover that I did refer to Home Rule. My address, as originally drafted, did not include a reference to that subject, and it was only when I got my proof of it that I inserted a paragraph about Home Rule. Why? Not because I regarded Home Rule as occupying a secondary position at all in the election, but because I had assumed all through that this Parliament Bill, if we got a mandate to pass it, involved everything.

I am bound to confess that I assume that the British elector has got a certain amount of common sense, and that if you asked the British elector to vote for something which gives this House larger authority than it ever has had, and something that puts this House in a sovereign position of the Constitution, that the British elector knew perfectly well that certain things were going to happen as soon as the Parliament Bill was carried, and that one of the things that was bound to follow was a measure giving Home Rule to Ireland, and various other things as well. I am borne out in that' contention by the addresses of Conservative members themselves. I happen to have the honour of being represented in this House by two Conservative Members. In both their election addresses they appealed to me to vote for them because, if I did not, Home Rule would be sure to come. I did not vote for them, and one of the reasons why I did not vote for them was that I wanted Home Rule to come. I am bound to assume that the great mass of the intelligent electors voted in precisely the same way. We knew perfectly well that the Parliament Bill was not an end in itself, and that certain things were bound to follow the passing of the Parliament Bill, and that any mandate given to the Government to-pass a Parliament Bill included a mandate to pass certain other first-class proposals on the Liberal legislative programme. That is not the whole situation. I feel convinced, and I am not at all sure that I shall not carry with me the assent of a good many Members opposite, that the time has now come when a substantial number of people who voted Unionist previously are convinced that something must be done for the establishment of some kind of Home Rule in Ireland. From the point of view of this House we must have Devolution, from the point of view of Imperial organisation we must have Devolution. The very interesting series of speeches delivered in this House last Wednesday night had the Devolution idea in the background. You cannot have Imperial Federation until you have some system of Home Devolution.

That is not all, we are congratulating ourselves at the present moment that the Foreign Secretary has advanced the Peace propaganda to a stage that it has never reached before; we all devoutly hope and rejoice at the beginning of the settlement of a treaty of peace between the United States and ourselves that will make war between ourselves and the United States absolutely impossible. How is that possible? It is because hon. Members opposite believe that within twelve months a responsible Government is going to produce a Home Rule Bill. It is possible simply because the idea of Home Rule being about to be granted, and of some substantial measure of justice being done to Ireland, has so seized upon the mind and imagination of our hon. Friends' compatriots abroad that they are willing to unite with the other sections of the American people in order to make that treaty possible. If you take home affairs, if you take Imperial affairs in relation to the world, and if you take the forces of peace and war all over the world, Devolution, Home Rule, and the prospects of something being done in connection with both are the most precious things that are aiding our Ministers at the present moment. To return to the question of mandate, which, after all, is really the only question with which the Committee need concern itself to-day, there is not an elector in the country, I do not care how mean his intelligence that voted for the Liberal, Labour, or Nationalist candidate at the last Election that expected there was to be any exception to the scope of, this Bill. They were naturally encouraged to come to that conclusion. I know that so far as I was able to keep trace of the contest, this was the one point I kept my mind most vigilant upon. I think I read every speech delivered by the Prime Minister, and wherever this question was raised no expectation was given to the weak-kneed elector, but that everything he was afraid of was going to follow, so far as it was on the Liberal programme, as the result of a mandate in favour of the Parliament Bill. The Parliament Bill, he was told, was going to come into operation at once, and as soon as it came into operation he was informed that the Liberal programme was going to be put into operation. Nothing could be clearer from that very set of speeches, and if mandates mean anything at all, then undoubtedly the Government has got a mandate to accept no exception either of Home Rule, Disestablishment, or anything else.

Moreover, the right hon. Gentleman, the Prime Minister, was perfectly explicit in his Albert Hall speech, and that was admitted by the hon. Member who has just spoken for Ulster. The Liberal party came into office in 1906, pledged not to raise the question of Home Rule. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, in opening his appeal to the country, at the end of that Parliament said perfectly clearly that Home Rule again took its place on the Liberal programme. What more do you want to have? But that is not all. That pledge was repeated and reiterated in the election of December last year; it was supported by the speeches and the addresses of hon. Members opposite, and it is really an insult, if I may put it in that way, to the intelligence of the electors of this country to come and tell us to-day that those of us who are in favour of the Parliament Bill and in favour of Homo Rule have only got a mandate for one, and that a doubtful one, and no mandate for the other at all. As a matter of fact, so far as the imperfect machinery of elections can ever be a mandate, and in so far as you will ever be able to get a mandate in a country like this, with its huge population and its complexity of interests, in so far as any political machinery can ever be devised which will enable any majority in this House to come and say to the whole House, "We have got a mandate to carry out a programme," then the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister and those who are going to support him in carrying this Parliament Bill are entitled to say that we have got that mandate as openly, as honestly, as clearly, and with as little reserve, as any majority in this country will ever be able to get any mandate at all.

Viscount CASTLEREAGH

I cannot say I agree with the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald), but I think he is to be congratulated on the fact that in some remote corner in his address he had the honesty, which other hon. Members did not have, of saying that he was in favour of Home Rule being granted to Ireland. The attitude which the Prime Minister has taken up admits of very little misunderstanding on our part now. He has told us that the country was perfectly well aware that it was his intention to introduce a Home Rule Bill when the machinery of the Par- liament Bill has been set up. I think that is indeed a bold assertion to make, and it only shows to what lengths a harassed Prime Minister will go when he depends for his position on two or three factions of his party. The action of one faction of the Coalition concerns us directly tonight. All I can is, that if Home Rule for Ireland is the result of this unholy alliance, the electors of this country will have been tricked and deceived in the most shameless manner possible. The Prime Minister now asserts that the electors of this country were fully aware of his determination when once this new machinery was set up, and that they understood it in the clearest and most explicit manner. I must say I disagree with that profession of the right hon. Gentleman. Does no reference whatsoever in the address of the right hon. Gentleman carry out that contention? Does no reference in most of the addresses of hon. Gentlemen who sit opposite support that same view? To my mind the whole contention that the electors of this country were aware of this departure on the part of the Government is a delusion. I do not believe there is a Member on the opposite side who is prepared to say that the majority who returned him to the House of Commons were absolutely aware of the fact that it was contemplated to pass into law a Home Rule Bill as the direct corollary of the passing of the Parliament Bill. [An HON. MEMBER: "Certainly."] My hon. Friend says "Certainly," but I will venture to say if there are no electors in that position in his constituency, there are electors in all parts of England, which, after all, is the predominant partner, who have supported this Government, and who are deliberately opposed to the granting of Home Rule for Ireland.

The Prime Minister considers that Amendments dealing with exemptions from this Parliament Bill should be brushed on one side, because he asserts that the electors, in returning him in December last, have given him the opportunity to do exactly as he pleases. That is a view which has been put forward by the hon. Gentleman who represents Leicester, that we are to understand that the electors, by returning hon. Gentlemen with a majority in December last, have given the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister the opportunity to use this new machinery which we are setting up for passing any measure which he desires into law, with or without the express mandate of the people of this country. Representative Government theoretically contains a certain amount of independence, but I venture to say that that independence will be contrary to the duly expressed wishes of those people who send representatives to this House. Undoubtedly you have had no opportunity of knowing what the direct views of the electors of this country are on this subject in reference to Home Rule. What is known about the question of Home Rule in this country? We know that twice it has been referred to the electors and it has been condemned. We know that in the last two elections it has been kept studiously in the background, and no more studiously than by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. I am perfectly convinced that any individual contemplating this action of the Government from a dispassionate point of view could only assert that every principle of democracy, to say nothing of the ordinary canons of honesty, have been broken by the methods which the Government are taking in this matter. There are widely divergent views about a mandate. The hon. Member for Leicester has very curious ideas of mandates, if I may be allowed to say so; but if the Government received a mandate at the last election I am perfectly prepared to admit that it was that some change should be brought about in the Constitution of this country. I go further, and I say they received a negative mandate, and that was with regard to the food question in this country. Beyond that they have received no mandate whatsoever. I admit it is the fault of the Government themselves that they have received no further mandate; they did not ask for any. I say that when you receive a mandate to alter the Constitution and to set up a machine you have no right to pass legislation through that machine without receiving the direct sanction of the people with respect to that legislation. That is the moral side of the question.

The practical side of the question is that it is recognised on all sides that any legislation dealing with the Constitution—that is, altering the manner in which this country is to be governed—must certainly be placed upon an entirely different footing from legislation of a domestic character, such as the ordinary Bills which are passed through this House. In all civilised foreign countries of importance there are no two views on this point. In most of those foreign countries it is expressly laid down that no great constitutional legislation shall be carried out without the direct and express will of the electors being first ascertained. Rigid procedure is laid down, so that no such changes can be carried out by a bare majority of the electors. What is the course the Government are endeavouring to adopt? They propose to allow a great constitutional change to be carried out by a bare majority of the electors, and by means of that change to carry out a particular proposal which a large section of this House are desirous of seeing carried. It is for that reason that they are going to use this entirely new constitutional machinery. With respect to granting Home Rule to Ireland, it is only within the last few days that we have been absolutely certain that that is the intention of the Government. It is true that most of us have never lost an opportunity of endeavouring to persuade the electors that, although the right hon. Gentleman did not say so in his address, and although it was not stated in his speeches in various parts of the country, it was the intention of the Government to carry a measure of Home Rule for Ireland. But surely it must be recognised that a change of this description cannot be carried out without vitally affecting the Constitution of the country; because no such grave anomaly would ever be allowed as that Members of this House should be unable to have any say whatsoever in the Government of Ireland, whereas hon. Gentlemen from Ireland would be able to control English affairs. That supports my contention that if you ever grant Home Rule you will vitally affect the Constitution of this country and Empire. The hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. J. Redmond), who I am sorry is not in his place, occupies a somewhat curious position. He endeavours to persuade us that he is a great supporter on democratic principles, and yet his frenzied actions on these occasions are due to the fact that he considers that this is a wonderful opportunity to smuggle through the House of Commons a Home Rule Bill without the democracy of the country being consulted. He no doubt holds the view concerning democracy which is held by hon. Members opposite, namely, that the democracy is right when it agrees with them but entirely wrong when it does not, and whenever they think the democracy will not agree with them that is the time when the democracy is not to be consulted.

The defence of the hon. Member for Waterford alters from day to day. I do not know whether at present he goes in for separation. I think he carefully tells us that he does not. The attitude of hon. Members behind me as to a Parliament in College Green should be a warning against setting up a Parliament in Ireland. Whatever may be the view of the Nationalist party in this House, it is necessary and only right that the electors of this country should be consulted on this question. The hon. Member for Waterford is naturally in a hurry. He sees that this is the one opportunity that he will ever have of vindicating his political career. He knows that if he waits a little longer there will be no desire in Ireland for Home Rule. He knows that he and his colleagues depend entirely upon agitation, and that as soon as beneficial land legislation has had its effect there will be no demand whatsoever for an alteration in the Act of Union. I have no doubt that in the course of this Debate we shall have his usual plaintive cry that we who are connected with the North of Ireland are always endeavouring to belittle our country. I deny that contention. It is true that we endeavour to throw merited discredit on the hon. Member of Waterford and his colleagues, and we shall continue to do so, for the simple reason that they depend for their political existence upon grievances—

The CHAIRMAN

We are not concerned with the merits of Home Rule except so far as they bear upon Clause 2. It is simply a question of exempting Home Rule from the category of Bills which can be dealt with under Clause 2. I hope the Noble Lord will remember that.

Viscount CASTLEREAGH

I entirely bow to your ruling. But as the Amendment will be supported very strongly by hon. Members from Ireland, who are always declaring that in our efforts to withstand Home Rule we are endeavouring to throw discredit on our country, I should have thought we were entitled to assert the position we occupy in this matter. By this kind of argument hon. Members from Ireland endeavour to throw dust in the eyes of the electors of this country, and we who live in the North, who really fear that Home Rule will be carried, are surely entitled to show-that Nationalist Members do not represent Ireland, but that they simply represent themselves and a small caucus which lives upon agitation, and which endeavours to foment and foster grievances which are not really in the minds of the people of Ireland. For these reasons I have the greatest possible pleasure in supporting the proposal that a measure for Home Rule should be exempted from the operation of the Parliament Bill.

The PRIME MINISTER

The Amendment, which is the only subject before the Committee, is to exempt from the operation of this Clause any Bill for establishing a separate Parliament and executive for Ireland. It seems, therefore, to be irrelevant—and you, Sir, have already intimated from the Chair that it will be out of order—except incidentally and by way of illustration to discuss the merits or demerits of what is called Home Rule for Ireland. I think it is equally obvious, although it seems to have been lost sight of by those who have supported the Amendment, that it is not a question of passing a Home Rule Bill here and now. Any Home Rule measure which may hereafter be brought forward will have to pass through the ordeal of this Clause, and I for one, so far from regarding this Clause as setting up anything in the nature of Single-Chamber Government, regard it as interposing a most serious obstacle and, indeed, making it impossible to carry-through Parliament and to obtain the Royal Assent any ill-considered measure which cannot stand the brunt of public opinion and public criticism. Any Home Rule proposals which may hereafter be brought forward under the operation of this Clause, if this Clause becomes law, will have to pass through three Sessions in two years, of Parliamentary and public discussion, and if they can survive that ordeal I am perfectly satisfied that, they will not be fraught with any sort of injustice or injury to any class of His Majesty's subjects. The point of this Amendment, which has been put with can-dour, I might almost say with crudity, both by the hon. Member who moved it and still more by the Noble Lord opposite, is this—a suggestion that His Majesty's Government are going to take advantage of the operation of this Clause, if and when it passes into law to secure the assent of Parliament to a measure which, to use the language of the Noble Lord, would be a measure of trickery and deceit. [Opposition cheers.] They are very faint cheers, but still that charge receives a certain volume of rhetorical support on the other side of the House. That is the only charge which I am concerned to answer. What I am prepared to demonstrate—it is a very easy task and will take me a very few moments—is that, from the very first moment that these propositions were put before Parliament and the country, it was made perfectly clear by Members of His Majesty's Government, and equally clear by the Opposition, to everybody concerned, that if the electors of the country returned a majority in favour of this Bill the powers conferred by the Bill would, and must, be used for the purpose of carrying into law a measure of Home Rule for Ireland. That is the proposition I am going to demonstrate, and I never had an easier task in my life.

I will begin with what I said on 10th December, 1909—that is to say, before the General Election of January, 1910—in a speech in which, speaking on behalf of my party, immediately after the House of Lords had rejected the Budget and a dissolution of Parliament became necessary, I explained what would be the policy and the programme of the Liberal party if they were returned to power. It is quite true, as has been said in this Debate, that the Parliament of 1906 was disabled in advance from dealing with the question of self-government in Ireland. But on the date to which I have referred, dealing with the subject of Ireland, I said, speaking on behalf of my colleagues, and, I believe, of my party:— The solution of the problem can be found only in one way—by a policy which, while explicitly safeguarding the supreme and indefeasible authority of the Imperial Parliament, will set up in Ireland a system of full self-government in regard to purely Irish affairs. There is not and there cannot be any question of separation. There is not, and there cannot be, any question of rival or competing supremacies. But, subject to those conditions, that is the Liberal policy, for reasons which I believe to be adequate, the present. Parliament (that is, the Parliament of 1906), was disabled in advance from proposing any such solution, but in the new House of Commons the hands of the Liberal Government and the Liberal majority will lie in this matter entirely free. 5.0 P.M.

In face of that declaration, made before the beginning of the election, it was impossible for any elector voting in the election of January, 1910, for a Liberal candidate not to know that he was voting in favour of a party which would use the recovered freedom of the House of Commons to grant Home Rule for Ireland. I pass now to the next stage in the history of this transaction. The electors returned us, with an adequate majority as we thought and as events proved, to the House of Commons. In pursuance of the pledges which we had given to them we introduced, in the first place in the form of a Resolution, proposals upon which this Parliament Bill is founded. The second of those Resolutions was in terms substantially identical with the Clause which is now before the Committee. When it came on for discussion on 14th April, 1910—I am passing now from December to April—an hon. Gentleman, I believe the representative of an Ulster Constituency, moved an Amendment substantially the same as that which is now before the Committee; an Amendment to omit from the operation of the Resolutions Bills dealing with the delegation of administrative or legislative powers to subordinate Parliaments of the United Kingdom. That Amendment was discussed at some length. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, speaking on behalf of the Government, used these terms, than which nothing could he more explicit and emphatic. He said:— We consider that if a Home Rule Bill passed through the House of Commons in three successive Sessions, and over a period of two year", that immense and prodigious process of parliamentary strength and sustained exertion of the national will through the only recognised channels, and the only imaginable machinery by which the national will can be expressed, namely, through the elected representatives fresh from contact with their constituents. … He considered that if all these processes were carried out— Ample safeguards will have existed, and that the measure which finally receives the assent of the Crown will embody the settled will and convictions of the majority of the people of the United Kingdom."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th April, 1910, col. 1473.] After that declaration the House divided upon the Amendment, which was rejected by a majority of over one hundred.

Mr. LONSDALE

In April?

The PRIME MINISTER

14th April, 1910, more than a year from the day on which we are now considering it. Therefore, you have my declaration at the Albert Hall before the election of 1910; then the Resolution submitted to the House of Commons; an express point raised by way of amendment, an explicit declaration on behalf of the Government in the terms I have just quoted; and a considered decision by the then House of Commons. After that came the Conference, when it was found impossible to arrive at an agreement. That was followed by the General Election of December of last year.

Much has been said about the omission of expressions of opinion in favour of Home Rule from the election addresses of myself and other Liberal candidates. My election address was confined, as I suspect many of those of my hon. Friends were, to one proposition, and one proposition only. I said: "Give us, the Parliament Bill; give us power to limit the Veto of the House of Lords, and not only Home Rule, but all other causes on which the purposes, intentions, and desires of Liberal and Progressive politicians are set will, at any rate, have an even chance of being carried into law." I think it is absurd to attempt to argue from the omission from election addresses of the specific enumeration of particular measures that any one of those measures are left out of account either by the candidates or those whom they address. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members opposite seem to be sceptical about it. Let us see. Let me go one step further. Election addresses are one thing and election speeches are another. I took the opportunity at the very earliest possible moment before the election began, indeed before, if I remember aright, Parliament was dissolved, certainly before the earliest Writs were issued, of speaking again, not only for myself, but as far as I could for the party which entrusted me with its confidence. I spoke at the National Liberal Federation gatherings at Hull. In contemplation of the approaching election, I spoke on 25th November. I am sorry to trouble the House with my own words, but as I am accused of trickery, fraud, and chicanery in this matter I am bound to do so. The language I used before the election, before a single poll had taken place, was:— In a speech I made at the Albert Hall nearly a year ago I dwelt on some of the causes that. I believe are in our keeping. I adhere to everything which I said then. I spoke of Welsh Disestablishment, and proceeded to this point:— I spoke—and in view of the shameful things which are being said, I feel bound to emphasise that point—I spoke of our views of the proper solution of the problem of Irish self-government. What I then said I repeat: to it I adhere, and I believe the Liberal party adheres. I do not in the least grudge the Tory party any electioneering capital that they can extract from Mr. Redmond's American dollars— [HOY. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I have not finished yet. I went on, with regard to that ridiculous and grotesque charge, to show the source of the so-called American dollars, and added:— There is indeed a great deal of significance in it. In our efforts to secure self-government for Ireland in the future, efforts which I hope will be followed by further efforts to set free the Imperial Parliament from much local work which congests its machinery and which of necessity it does so ill, we shall have with us, I believe, the sympathy of an overwhelming majority of the great Dominions over-seas who have learned how easy it is to combine local autonomy with Imperial loyalty. That was the programme which I laid down at Hull in the name and on behalf of the Liberal party before the General election of December last, I made one or two other speeches, and, after being detained in various parts of the country for that purpose, I went to my own Constituency. I have been told I omitted any mention of Home Rule from my election address. Well, the first night I met my constituents I made two speeches. This was on December 7th. I have refreshed my memory on these matters by referring to the reports in "The Times" newspaper. I see in large letters heading the column which reports my speeches "Mr. Asquith pledged to Home Rule." I made a speech at St. Andrews. I am very sorry it was not more fully reported, but that was not my fault. "The Times,"' which summarised their report, said:— Mr. Asquith said that they were told that it was really Mr. John Redmond who had dictated the Dissolution, and that he (Mr. Asquith) and his colleagues were puppets and marionettes whose movements were being controlled by Mr. Redmond's omnipotent power. Mr. Redmond had no more to do with the Dissolution than the man in the moon. To-day they had got another phase of that multiform and variegated method to which Mr. Balfour had just given currency. 'What,' he asked, 'was the meaning of all that suspicious silence about Home Rule?' 'Depend upon it,' he said, 'they had received the word of command not to mention Home Rule, or to mention it in the vaguest and most ambiguous terms lest they should frighten the British electors.' Mr. Asquith said he was sorry to dissipate that fiction also. It had not had much success; at any rate it was not likely to have much success in Scotland. He had not said much about Home Hole because he had been talking about a matter which came before Home Rule, which came before any great progressive legislation of any kind, namely the emancipation of the House of Commons from the thraldom under which it at present lay. He had never given any uncertain sound about Home Rule. A year ago he laid down at the Albert Hall a programme which was universally accepted by his colleagues, a policy of Home Rule which was free from ambiguity, a policy which commanded the whole-hearted support of Liberalism throughout the length and breadth of the land. On the first occasion that I had the opportunity of meeting my own Constituents I repeated those statements in language which was as clear and as explicit as I could find. I repeated those statements at Bury St. Edmunds, and at Gloucester in the following week. So far as I am concerned, what is my record in this matter? I made a speech in the Albert Hall in December, 1909. My colleagues repeated the assurances on amendment in this House in April, 1910. In the speech I made at the National Liberal Federation before the Election, I, in most explicit and emphatic terms, repeated those assurances, and on the first opportunity on which I met my Constituents I reiterated them in language quite as explicit. Is there anybody that, in view of these facts, will venture to repeat and persist in the charge, so far as I am concerned, that I tried to trick and deceive the electors, that Home Rule was not an issue at the last Election? It is not merely what I said, but what other people said. It is not merely what other people said, but what the general understanding of the country was! It was what the general understanding of the country was. A week ago, during our very brief Easter holiday, I was driving, on a beautiful sunny day, through a sequestered part of the county of Surrey, and amid romantic surroundings which I am bound to say were very much disfigured by what I am about to describe to-the House. I saw on an old-fashioned English barn a placard which had survived the stress both of our winter and of our spring. It had evidently been there since the month of December, 1910. What did it say? I was curious. One sometimes recognises a familiar but forgotten object. "Vote for So-and-So"—I think the hon. Member is now a Member of the House, and I will not give his name, because I would be sorry to associate him with the reason given to the electors for voting for him. Vote for so and so and … shall British votes, be sold for foreign gold. For the moment I was a little, puzzled. Then old memories revived. What did it mean? What was it intended to convey to the electors? What did it convey to the electors of that constituency I Was it not this, that the issue before them was the issue of Home Rule, with the hon. and learned Member for Waterford with the American dollars in his pocket, pulling the strings, to revive the quotation I have already cited to the House, of us puppets and marionettes, and that the passage of this Parliament Bill was merely the first step towards the granting of Home Rule to Ireland. But it does not depend upon isolated placards in some Surrey village. I see that Lord Lansdowne, the accepted Leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords, and the authorised exponent of the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite at the last election, speaking at Glasgow, apparently on the very same night on which I made the speech to which I have already referred at Hull, on Friday, 25th November, 1910, used this language— What would happen suppose this now dispensation comes into force. That is the Parliament Bill. Some of us have strong views upon Home Rule. Like the hon. Member who moved this Amendment. Home Rule will go through at once without further ado. We defeated it in 1893". Next time Observe Lord Lansdowne's prescience. Next time in 1913 it goes through. 1913! Two years from the time in which we are now assembled here— In 1913 it goes through if a composite majority can be secured in the House of Commons in its favour. That is the opinion of the Leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] And the hon. Gentleman opposite agrees. Another very distinguished Member of the Front Bench opposite, who unhappily, for reasons we all regret, is not with us this afternoon, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain), speaking on 8th December—I think it was the same day I was addressing my Constituency in Fife—said:— What was the Government going to do if they had do majority? They are going to abolish the veto of the House of Lords, and next they are going to establish Home Rule for Ireland. Something has been said about election addresses. Therefore I will venture to trouble the Committee with a quotation from one or two election addresses from right hon. Gentlemen opposite. My right hon. Friend the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Mr. Lyttelton), said:— Mr. Redmond has declared this election is above all and beyond all else an Irish election, and states that the Prime Minister is pledged not to devolution but full self-government for Ireland—in a word to the 'Home Rule of Parnell.' The Parliament Bill once passed, a Radical Government, if faithful to its pledges, would carry Home Rule. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand (Mr. Long), in his election address, said:— To destroy the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland is the professed policy of our opponents. I am not going to trouble the Committee with further quotations. I am sorry to have troubled them with so many. Has anybody ever seen, either on the floor of this House or in a Court of Law, a more complete catena of proof drawn from both one side and the other, that whatever else was in doubt at the last General Election, no doubt was left either by us who support the limitation of the Veto or by those who are opposed to it that one of the results, and indeed one of the first results of that change in our constitutional system would be the carrying through Parliament of a Bill for the grant of self-government to Ireland. If that is the case, what is left of the charge of the Noble Lord who has just sat down that I and my friends tricked and be-fooled and deceived the electors, and that we have kept stealthily and to set purpose in the dark this sinister intention to use the new power, but what I call the recovery of the liberties of the House of Commons with regard to legislation, to grant a measure which over and over again, in the clearest and most emphatic language, we have declared to be, in our opinion, necessary to-the reconciliation of two unhappily estranged peoples and setting this Parliament free for the discharge of its proper duties for the consolidation and real unity of the Empire. That is the case I submit to the House of Commons, and I should be glad to hear what answer there is to it.

Mr. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman in his closing words expressed an ardent desire for an immediate answer to the case which he has just made. I hasten to the best of my ability to gratify his curiosity. Shortly before he reached the end of his speech he said he had made a case which would satisfy, I think he said, either Westminster or any Law Court in the land. If the case for us at this moment was as to whether the right hon. Gentleman had or had not declared in favour of Home Rule, and if the Trial before us was as to whether many of the Gentlemen sitting on the Front Bench opposite had done the same thing, I say nobody ever doubted that. Nobody has ever doubted it. The right hon. Gentleman did not quote from any of my speeches, not because he could not have quoted from my speeches sentiments of precisely the same tenour as those he quoted from the addresses of my right hon. Friend, the Member for St. George's, and my right hon. Friend, the Member for the Strand, and my right hon. Friend, the Member for East Worcester, and many other Gentlemen sitting round and behind me—I am quite sure if he brought down my speeches, I do not recollect them, but I am quite certain I must have over and over again said exactly what they said—namely, it was quite clear that the Government from their declaration did mean if they got these powers to use them for the purpose of carrying Home Rule. Has anybody ever doubted that? Did I for one say anything contradictory of that? What we complain of is, not of course that the Government abstained from making declarations on-Home Rule—there was the declaration at the Albert Hall, referred to again later in the day—what we complain of is that through the whole course of the elections they laid the emphasis of their whole dialectics and rhetoric upon the immediate prejudices connected with the Upper House, and upon the immediate prejudices which they raised against the Upper House and all else was thrown into the background. That is our argument. Take the speech of the right hon. Gentleman himself at Hull, from which he quoted. It has been put into my hands while he was speaking by a friend of mine, and there is in that speech, which took three columns to report, no doubt the passage about Home Rule to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. It is a brief statement, I quite agree it is clear and that there is no ambiguity about it, I have not suggested there was. Hon. Members opposite do not know the ground of our complaint. [HON. MEMBERS: "Trickery and deceit."] Is it trickery to a great electorate who cannot from the nature of things follow these matters as we follow them, to be treated as they were treated. I do not think I ever used the word trickery, but is a Minister absolved from a perfectly just condemnation if he makes a statement as clear as grammar can make it, but yet throws the whole emphasis of countless speeches, and of countless speeches made by his friends as well as by himself, not upon that issue but upon other issues; and that is what the right hon. Gentleman did. I have here his speech at Hull, the first speech in which, as far as I am aware, he referred to Home Rule at all during the General Election; that was on 26th November. He made the statement at the end of a very long and very able speech about Home Rule which he has just read to the House. Then, as a peroration, he said:— How easy it is to combine local autonomy and Imperial loyalty—(loud cheers)—but for the moment, and this shall be the last thing that I shall say to yon, let us concentrate on our first and greatest' task of passing the Parliament Bill. That statement was perfectly clear in itself, and I think the Prime Minister was amply justified in saying that he stated during the election that Home Rule was part, of the issue. He did state it, but I appeal to any man who went through the election whether I am not absolutely right in saying that what the country decided upon was not Home Rule, what they had before them was not Home Rule, that what was present to their minds, what moved their votes, and stirred their passions was not Home Rule. It is vague to tell me that because here and there in the great and vast and obligatory mass of rhetoric which we are obliged to call forth on these occasions there was a clear and precise statement from the Prime Minister on this matter that that deals with the charge which I have made against hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. That is no new view of mine. I have felt that all through this long dispute, and over and over again, I have done my very best to explain it to my countrymen, to bring home to them as far as my voice would carry that they were not deciding, as they thought, simply upon some change in the relation between the two Houses or the hereditary principle; I tried to explain that and to bring home what is the truth, that the verdict they were giving upon one general issue was going to be used to deal with other general issues in a way they totally disapproved of. When I hear speeches like those delivered by the Prime Minister and others in this Debate, it seems to me that they really shut their eyes to the verities of our electoral system by talking as if everything formally put forward in any speech by a man in authority was present intelligently to the mind of every man who gave his vote.

We know that was not the case, and it cannot be the case. We know that the most you can hope for at a General Election is that the country shall give some broad decision in favour of a particular party, perhaps even of a particular leader, and that will be very often, though not always, associated with a general expression of approval of one particular line of policy on one particular subject. That really is all you can ever hope to get at a General Election, and everybody knows that that is so. A friend of mine who is not a member of this House, but was an unsuccessful candidate at the last election, was speaking to an audience obviously hostile in a county constituency, and he said: "I quite recognise that you do not agree with me, and that I have very little to expect from you in the way of votes, but I should like to ask how many of you are in favour of dealing with the hereditary principle." The whole audience, with one consent, held up their hands. Then he said, quite recognising that verdict: "I saw that you did not take my view, but I should like to put to you another question. How many of you are in favour of Home Rule?" A mere fraction of the audience held up their hands. That may show, of course, that that audience really only thought of one thing, and very likely many of them had only thought of the thing that loomed largest in the controversy of the moment. But supposing both issues were present to their minds, how could they vote for both at that election? Supposing a man felt strongly, what the Prime Minister feels strongly that the House of Lords ought never to have thrown out the Budget. Supposing he felt strongly, what the Prime Minister does not feel strongly—namely, that the House of Lords ought to be reformed; supposing, holding those views strongly, and feeling that the only way to give expression to them was to vote for the Radical or the Labour candidate at the moment, how else was that man to vote, whatever his view might be on Home Rule? Supposing, as many of them do from the bottom of their hearts, they fear and distrust the whole policy of Home Rule, whatever Home Rule may mean; supposing from the bottom of their souls they distrust and fear it, still they would have voted for the Radical party, because the immediate issue before them was one on which they felt strongly, and on which they thought that the Radical party, and not the Unionist party, would carry out their wishes. Everybody knows that was what happened, and that is what must happen.

That makes the theory of "mandates," as it is sometimes rashly and loosely expressed in this House, utterly absurd and misleading. I associate myself in this respect with what fell from the hon. Gentleman who is the leader of the Labour party when he said that the word "mandate" is much too often used and much too often abused; but I think it is an unhappy word to introduce into politics as a term of art. The fact is you cannot expect, and if you do expect you will inevitably be deceived, that the whole complex field of possible politics will be present to the mind of the elector when he gives his vote at the General Election. It cannot be done, and the essence of my complaint against hon. Gentlemen opposite is not that they did not say now and then in perfectly grammatical and unambiguous terms that they were in favour of Home Rule, but that that greatest of all issues was disguised from the electorate and that the electorate, without seeing the full results of what they were doing, are in process of bringing into being a legislative machine by which their own settled will will be overridden by a Single Chamber. That is what it comes to, and I do not see that a single word which has fallen from the right hon. Gentleman has touched that which is the main essence of the matter. I do not think anybody wants confirmation of that general view, which I do not think will find many honest dissentients in this House.

You may say that the country knew perfectly well that Home Rule was going to be passed if this new machinery was carried into existence. Did they know what Home Rule was going to be passed? Does the Government know what Home Rule it means? I noticed on the Paper au Amendment in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Aberdeen, in which he gives expression to the opinion held by some of his political friends in Scotland that Home Rule should include Home Rule all round. All the analogies which the Prime Minister is now so fond of drawing from our over-sea Dominions point, not the least in the direction of what Mr. Gladstone called Home Rule, but in the direction of some new provincial scheme which shall embrace and divide the whole United Kingdom. But now these are two quite different policies, different in origin, essence, and results, requiring to be embodied in Bills utterly different in framework. If the country at a General Election knew that they were voting for Home Rule they must have known which of these two rival and absolutely inconsistent schemes they were voting for Well, which were they voting for? Does the Government know for which they were voting? I do not believe the Government have the least idea which of those two rival schemes they themselves mean. I do not believe the hon. Member for Leicester, who spoke earlier in the afternoon of Home Rule in enthusiastic terms, had the least, idea what kind of Home Rule would be passed Yet the two are utterly different. Home Rule which is to bring into being an Executive and Parliament into Ireland is evidently utterly distinct from the Home Rule Bill which is to bring in an Executive and Parliament in Wales, and Executive and Parliament in Scotland, and an Executive and Parliament in England. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Those are not modifications of one scheme, but they are utterly different schemes, as everybody knows who has considered the question.

Mr. PIRIE

Is it not possible for one scheme to be an extension of the other scheme?

Mr. BALFOUR

That argument may appeal to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. I make this observation to the hon. and gallant Gentleman in perfect confidence as to what his answer will be. Does he not know that Mr. Gladstone, who was the greatest, the most enthusiastic, and the most powerful advocate of what, ten or fifteen years ago, was known as Home Rule, would have regarded with nothing less than horror the suggestion which commends itself now to the hon. and gallant Gentleman and his Friends. If you told Mr. Gladstone that after all four Parliaments, four executive Executives, in addition to the Imperial Parliament and the Imperial Executive for the United Kingdom, were a modification of what he conceived to be a restitution of the liberties of Ireland, he would have laughed in your face, and he would have been quite right to laugh. Do not let any hon. Gentlemen suppose that those are two modifications of one root idea, because they are quite different ideas, to be carried out in quite different ways, and it is folly to tell me that the constituencies at the last election gave an intelligent and self-conscious decision as to the form of Home Rule, when even those whom they sent to represent them have not the least conception of what kind of Home Rule it is that is going to be introduced.

When the right hon. Gentleman tells us, as he told us at the beginning of his speech, that it is an adequate safeguard against any eccentric aberrations on the part of this House that the matter should be discussed three years in succession, when he told the Committee that no ill-considered measure, no measure which had not behind it a great mass of popular support would have a chance of surviving those three years; when, in other words, he puts those three years as a substitute for the safeguard we have hitherto possessed in the form of an effective Second Chamber, I say he utterly deceives himself and the Committee. The Government that has committed itself to Home Rule in one Session of Parliament and has carried Home Rule through by anything like a majority which they see fit to accept as representing the views of the people on the question—do you think they are going to be frightened by being told that during the three years in which it is in process of being passed into law there will be hostile meetings and hostile resolutions carried against it—will they be frightened by the reflection that it may turn out that at the next General Election they will not be brought back with a majority. That is not the way our Parliamentary institutions work. A Government which has determined upon anything so momentous as Home Rule in the first or second Session of a Parliament, which has committed its whole fortunes to that question, which has been given the machinery by the country which will enable them to carry it through, they are not going to falter in using that machinery to its utmost extent. Hon. Gentlemen opposite assent to what I have said. And they are right. Therefore, we are brought back to this position. You have got your present position in this House, as a collection of three separate parties, by joining together and using all your forces to raise, legitimately, from your point of view, a feeling upon the relation of the two Houses, and upon the constitution of the Upper House. Having got that, and having induced the country unknowingly to part with that which is the greatest safeguard of the Constitution, you are going to use the powers you have thus obtained surreptitiously for a purpose on which I have not the smallest doubt the country would express the strongest possible view could that issue, and that issue alone, be presented to it in isolation. I do not care what the opinions of hon. Gentlemen are. I know I am speaking the absolute truth, and a truth in which hon. Members, wherever they sit in this House, will agree with me—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] You have not heard it yet. Let me tell you what it is. After a Home Rule Bill has gone through the ordeal of full discussion in this House, with all the complex problems it raises as to the relations between; the different parts of the United Kingdom, all the questions it raises with regard to the minority in Ulster, all the questions it raises with regard to Imperial finance and the contributions to be made out of British pockets to Irish needs—after that, there is not one of you, I do not care where he sits, who would not view with the utmost distrust and doubt the result of putting that issue, and that issue alone, to the test of a General Election. Some of you might think the election would be successful, and others might be pretty confident it would be unsuccessful, but none of you would regard it as a certainty. For my own part, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend who so ably moved this Amendment, that at this moment the opinion of the country is what it was in 1885 and in 1893, and that if the issue could be put before it as it was in those years the same results would be declared. Therefore, those who under cover of this Bill are going to pass Home Rule are deliberately running in face of what they know to be the opinion of the people of this country.

Mr. JOHN DILLON

The only conclusion the House must draw from the speech to which we have just listened, is that the Leader of the Opposition has a miserably poor opinion of the intelligence of his countrymen, the electors of this country. This Amendment is one of a very long series, and it proposes to exempt from the operations of the Parliament Bill the question of Home Rule for Ireland. I should say that of all the questions which are dealt with in these Amendments, the very question which it would be most unjust and monstrous to exempt is this question of Home Rule for Ireland, because more than any other question dealt with in these Amendments it has been before the people for many years, and has been fully debated. The party to which I belong, and which for thirty years has now maintained its position of isolation and peculiarity on the floor of this House, exists for one object and one object alone, and that is to win Home Rule for Ireland. Are we to be told in face of that extraordinary phenomenon, unparalleled in the history of the British House of Commons, that the people in this country are not aware that such an issue is in existence at all? I say to the Leader of the Opposition, and to the party that sits behind him, that the very name of their party is a fraud and a delusion if this question has not been fully debated. What do they call themselves? On what have they appealed to the electors of this country; not at one election, but at four successive elections? What is the issue on which they have appealed for confidence? They have appealed to the electors, because they are "the defenders of the Union, and the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland." That is the new name of their party, and I say the name is an imposture and a fraud if the electors of this country do not know what is the meaning of Irish Home Rule, as we were told by the Leader of the Opposition, and do not know it is a main and leading issue of the politics of this country.

Let me turn for one moment to what was said by the mover of the Amendment. He fell into a very common error, an error which has been accepted almost un- contradicted in this House when it has been frequently repeated. He spoke of what happened in 1895 when, according to him, Home Rule was last defeated. I deny that Home Rule was defeated in 1895. Anyone who went through that election will remember well that, in spite of the efforts of the Irish party, Home Rule was not a clear issue at that election. I say, therefore, Home Rule has never been defeated by the electors of this country since 1886, when it was really put as a clear issue, and I say no man in this House can prove, or has any right to say, that Home Rule as an issue has ever been defeated by the electors of this country for the last twenty-one years; and, when the hon. Member says it was again defeated or laid aside in 1906, I absolutely deny it. What is the real reason why Home Rule was not put as a clear issue to the people in the interval between 1892 and the last two elections? It is exceedingly simple. It is because Liberal Ministers had come to the conclusion it was no use, to use the words the Prime Minister used many years ago, "to plough the sands," and that, until the Veto of the House of Lords was limited an appeal to this country on the issue of Irish Home Rule was idle. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] An hon. Member said "Hear, hear," but I think it clearly makes out my case. The Leader of the Liberal party and the Irish party had come to the conclusion that in order to win Home Rule the first necessary work to be done was to clear away the obstacle of the Veto of the House of Lords. It is entirely untrue to speak of Home Rule as having been defeated at three different elections in this country.

The hon. Gentleman in moving his Amendment went on to analyse the results of the last election, and he asked why the Prime Minister stopped in his analysis when he spoke of the majority of sixty in Great Britain in favour of Home Rule, and why he did not go on and examine what the majority was in England. These are the Gentlemen who call themselves Unionists! They put up the doctrine that no measure of Home Rule is to be passed until a majority is obtained in England. They indulge in the extraordinary and unconstitutional theory which I think I may fairly and truthfully describe as separatism gone mad, and propose to split themselves into Welsh, Scotch, and English votes, and say no reform is to be allowed until a majority of each separate nationality is obtained. It reminds me of a speech I read in the London papers on Thursday by an alderman in the City of London, a gentleman very well qualified to voice the sentiments of hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway. What did this respectable City alderman say? He said the people of this country were witnessing in the visit of the hon. Member for Water-ford (Mr. John Redmond) to Holyhead the development of a great Celtic conspiracy to conquer and trample upon the superior race of these islands, the superior race, he then went on to explain, being the English race. These are the Gentlemen, I say, who call themselves Unionists! [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] "Hear, hear," says an hon. Member, that is their idea of Unionism, Unionism based on the theory that the English people of these islands are the superior race, and that the Celts, I suppose, must be a servile race under their control! That is their idea of Unionism! I think any intelligent politician of this country will see to what results such separatism will bring the country. Take the last General Election. I do not think it is necessary for any one to add an extract to the quotations given by the Prime Minister in order to prove—and this is my point—that, if the electors of this country are decently intelligent and are qualified to take any voice whatever in the Government of the country and in making the laws of the country, they must have known that by voting for the Parliament Bill they were clearing the road for Home Rule for Ireland. After the General Election, we heard the old hackneyed expression used by the Leader of the Opposition:— They did not know what kind of Home Rule."' How long does the right hon. Gentleman think it will take to debate Home Rule and pass it through this House and into law? Is it not enough that it was debated for twenty-five years in every shape or form? If the electors have any intelligence, they must have known what the Prime Minister meant when he spoke of "setting up a Parliament in Ireland with an executive responsible to it to deal with purely Irish affairs." Let me add two more quotations to those given by the Prime Minister. I take the first from Professor Dicey, an old enemy of ours and a prophet of the Unionist party in this House. He wrote a manifesto on the eve of the General Election, in which he said:— He who supports the Parliament Bill most assuredly gives a vote for Home Rule for Ireland. Then the hon. Member for the Strand Division (Mr. Long), who, I think, has been already quoted, said:— The Veto Bill would enable the Government to pass measures through Parliament in a most peremptory manner, and one of the measures they would pass would certainly be Home Rule for Ireland. That was on 5th December last. The hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool (Mr. F. E. Smith), who is a very important Gentleman on the Benches above the Gangway, although not a Member of the late Government, said:— If the Government were returned, they would have to pass in two months— He put it more vehemently than any of us. a Bill which would hand over the police, the magistrates, and the judges in Ireland to the Nationalist party. It would be perfectly easy to multiply to any extent quotations of this kind, and, although these quotations become somewhat wearisome, yet, when the issue in Debate is whether the people got sufficient warning, you have to establish your case by the multiplication of warnings in order to judge to what extent this question was before the electorate. The Prime Minister quoted from Lord Lansdowne at Glasgow, but Lord Lansdowne did not only speak in the North. He went down to Portsmouth, and on 31st December he said:— If the Government were returned to power, the Nationalists would be paid in full, and would get Home Rule of the Parnellite type. That was what Lord Lansdowne said in Portsmouth before the election. He did not tell the electors there was any vagueness about the Government programme when they were looking for votes. He told them the Government were quite clear and distinct in their programme, and that if they passed the Parliament Bill the Irish Nationalists would get Home Rule of the Parnellite type. I do not know whether it would be offensive to say it is trickery to tell the electors before the election that the Government were quite clear as to their programme, and after the election to say the Government were vague. Then I come to the Leader of the Opposition himself. He had no doubt he had said something on the same lines. He certainly did. He sent several messages in all directions. Here is one to Mr. Parker, the Unionist candidate for Barnstaple:— The avowed intention of the Government is in substance to abolish the Second Chamber, and then, without any reference to the electors, to grant a sweeping measure of Home Rule to Ireland. 6.0 P.M.

Mark the words, "The avowed intention of His Majesty's Government." To the Unionist candidate for the Market Harboro' Division of Leicestershire the Leader of the Opposition sent word that— It was the intention of the Government to destroy the Second Chamber … and this is a policy most dangerous to the interests of all classes of the community and humiliating to the nation. Again, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) sent a message to the candidate for East Wilts to the effect that the present election meant settling two quesions, Tariff Reform and Home Rule; and, in another message, on 8th December, to the Unionist candidate for North Worcestershire, he stated that:— The issues are first Home Rule, to which Redmond attaches chief importance, and which every Unionist will do his utmost to defeat once more and secondly, Tariff Reform. Therefore it is absolutely idle, and, I really think, hardly honourable, for any man to stand up in this House and say that Home Rule was not an issue at the last election and at the previous election, and that the people of this country were not perfectly well aware of that fact. Surely when it is proposed to exclude from the operation of this Clause this question of Home Rule it is something peculiarly cynical and cruel. All sections of Members of this House have suffered bitterly from the oppression of the House of Lords, but there is no section that has suffered like the people of Ireland. We have a long score against that House. There is not one single representative there of this country; there never has been a representative there of the people of Ireland. All other sections of this House have representatives in the House of Lords. They may be in a great minority, but the fact remains that the Irish people have no representatives there at all, and never have had. Therefore they have a particularly strong case to be emancipated from the obstruction of that House.

Let us consider for one moment the plea of the utter ruin which is to be done to Ireland by Home Rule. I am not going into the American case at all. We have here representatives of the Loyalists in Ireland. They have given Members of this House a very interesting display of the Ulster idea of loyalty. It consists of going to the head of this House, and saying, "You must do as we tell you, or our loyalty ceases." That is Ulster loyalty, and the Leader of the Opposition is not ashamed to tell us that if this law is passed and the King's sign-manual put to it the people for whom ho speaks will never obey it. Personally I do not believe in these things coming to pass. I only allude to them for the purpose of showing to this-House what is meant by Ulster loyalty. I want to say this, and I say it with the deepest conviction, I do not know whether the hon. Member will bear me out or not supposing that his Friends were to-day or to-morrow faced with the alternative of being forced to make a choice between twenty years of Radical Government in this House and Home Rule for Ireland: which would they select? I believe that they would select Home Rule; in fact, I am convinced of it. [An HON. MEMBER: "Wait and see."] Twenty years would be a long time for either my hon. Friend or myself to wait, but I believe that if he had to select an alternative that alternative would be Home Rule for Ireland. Hon. Members use a great deal of strong language about the results of Home Rule and the ruin and destruction and disorder it may produce in Ireland.

I want to put a point to hon. Members opposite, and particularly to hon. Members who may doubt the wisdom of this policy. I would ask them to cast their minds back three or four years to the Debates about South Africa. What would have been the position if the Lords had had a Veto on the South African question? When the Liberal Government came into office in 1906, owing to the genius of that true Liberal, Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-man, a great measure of liberty was offered to South Africa. But that Government would have been no more able to give that liberty to South Africa than they are to give it to Ireland, though willing and anxious to give it, had it not been for the discovery that they could give it by Royal Proclamation, which they cannot do in the case of Ireland. If they had been blocked in the case of South Africa, as in the case of Ireland, South Africa to-day would have been in a very different position indeed; and when the Coronation-comes South Africa, like Ireland, would have been absent. You would have had no-Ministers present at the Coronation entitled to speak for South Africa, as you will have none for Ireland. I ask hon. Members above the Gangway on this side of the House to recall the language used by the Leader of the Opposition and by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Mr. Lyttelton) describing the awful sufferings of the loyalist minority and the tyranny of the Boer majority and of an association called the Het Volk in very much the same language as the Ancient Order of Hibernians has been referred to in the case of Ireland.

The history of England shows she has done a great many glorious things and a great many bad things, but never has she done anything so glorious as giving the Constitution to South Africa. Don't you see, don't you think, like our friend the London alderman, who was concerned lest there was going to be a revolt of the Celtic race, that the only real path to union is the path of conciliation, equality, and liberty. At the conclusion of a very powerful speech delivered on Thursday last, the Leader of the Opposition turned round to these benches and charged the Government with throwing over the history of the past in order to satisfy those who care neither for you nor for your Constitution. If those words had been true it would have been the greatest condemnation ever laid against this Government. If, after governing Ireland for twenty years, the only result has been to send into this House eighty-two Members, speaking for four-fifths of the people of Ireland, who care neither for you or for your Constitution, the Government which had produced that effect stands condemned. I tell the Leader of the Opposition that his words are false; it is not true to say that we, or those who went before us, care neither for the people of England nor for the Constitution. We have never enjoyed your Constitution, but, in spite of all that we have suffered under it, I am one of the greatest admirers of it, and it is because I am under it that I want to bring its blessings to Ireland, where we have never enjoyed it. Our people have had no voice in the government of their country, and when you turn to us and make that reproach I say it is a cruel reproach. From the days of Daniel O'Connell down to the days of Parnell and Redmond, the Irish Nationalist Members have always been the champions of the millions of workers in England. I tell the Leader of the Opposition that while it is perfectly true we are enemies of the House of Lords and of reaction in this country, we are and always have been, and I trust always will be, the friends and champions of democracy.

Mr. PIRIE

I beg to move to amend the proposed Amendment by adding at the end thereof the words "unless such Bill provides for the establishment of legislatures for the other parts of the United Kingdom."

I confess I had some fears as to my duty when I put down the Amendment which stands in my name, but those fears have been removed by the speech of the Leader of the Opposition. As a very strong Liberal and a very strong supporter of the Government, I would be the last man to wish to embarrass them, but if I want any reassurance as to the policy and necessity of taking the risk I have done, I think the speech of the Leader of the Opposition has removed any doubt as to the wisdom of the course I am taking. After a long experience of the right hon. Gentleman's speeches, I do not think I have ever known a case in which he gave himself so completely away as he has done on the principle of Federal Home Rule and Devolution in his description of what he supposes very wrongly to be the action of Mr. Gladstone on that question. I should have thought he would have been more accurate on that point. I will relate an interesting incident which constitutes my only connection in any way with Mr. Gladstone. At my first election, in 1895, when I had the honour of standing for West Renfrewshire as an untried politician, I had no personal knowledge of Mr. Gladstone, but some kind friends of mine, who knew him, forwarded him a copy of my election address, in which, as in all my addresses ever since, I dealt with this question of Scottish Home Rule. Having received that address, Mr. Gladstone wrote a letter to the electors of West Renfrewshire warmly eulogising the address and warmly supporting the view of reform and of Scottish Home Rule I had advocated. That is a most complete refutation, I think, of the imaginary attitude which the Leader of the Opposition has ascribed to Mr. Gladstone. Equally erroneous was his description of the attitude of the Irish leaders on this question of Devolution, or Federal Home Rule. I could read quotation after quotation from the speeches of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) and other members of the Irish party, especially the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), to the effect that part and parcel of their programme was a perfect willingness and readiness to fight for the smaller nationalities of the United Kingdom in the same way as the smaller nationalities are fighting for them. But I even go to the right hon. Gentleman's supporters, and I hark back to last October and November, when Unionist paper after Unionist paper, Unionist writer after Unionist writer, were all advocating this very system of Devolution and Federal Home Rule on which the right hon. Gentleman has attempted to cast ridicule to-day. I have in my hand a quotation from the "Observer," by Mr. Garvin, who is now writing for another Conservative paper. It is dated 30th October, and he says:— In resisting even a strong and safe scheme of Irish or general devolution, in repudiating the federal solution which is the very principle of union for all modern States in dealing with problems like this the sister States would not be with us. Even the party of Preference and Tariff Reform would find itself appealing to Greater "Britain in vain.

Mr. BALFOUR

Was that published before the election?

Mr. PIRIE

That is before the election. They were advocating a public conference, and I still hope that the question of Federal Home Rule may be considered by a public conference of representatives on both sides. Under these circumstances, I am happy to move my Amendment to the Amendment which is on the Paper. My view on the question of Irish Home Rule is absolutely at one with that expressed in a letter written by the hon. Member for Denbighshire which I saw in the papers last Friday, in which he said:— With regard to Irish Home Rule, I am profoundly convinced that to press the claims of Scotland and of Wales, is to advance rather than to retard the prospect of accelerating Home Rule for Ireland. It is because I think that advocating Home Rule for other parts of the United Kingdom accelerates and is an advantage to the cause of Home Rule for Ireland that I put this Amendment on the Paper today. I wish this Government to avoid Mr. Gladstone's error which he made in 1884 and 1885. Had Mr. Gladstone introduced a Home Rule measure on federal principles, I am convinced that the question would have been settled very many years ago. I should like to clear up a question which is exciting many ardent supporters of Home Rule as to the possibility of the scheme of federalism causing a difficulty in regard to the question of priority. I can see no difficulty in the Government bringing in a scheme of devolution dealing with a much larger question than that of Ireland, for it has been proved to us to-day that in all probability the Irish Home Rule Bill may have to go through this House for two or three Sessions before it becomes law. Therefore a scheme for one country could only be dealt with by means of one Bill in a Session, but there is no reason why a broad scheme for several countries might not come into simultaneous operation and that would do away with all questions of priority as regards the question of date. The connection of this Parliament Bill which we are discussing and the Home Rule Bill is a most important one and I should like the Committee to consider the possibility of what may happen in the future.

Supposing this Parliament Bill is passed this year—and I look upon it as a certainty—there are two alternatives. Then the Home Rule Bill goes up to another place, having passed this House next year, and is rejected. Therefore it will go up for two Sessions afterwards before it will become the law of the land on the supposition that we maintain a Government and remain in power. Let us look for a moment at the other alternative. This Veto Bill passes this House and goes up to another place and is refused by the House of Lords. That would result at once in all probability in a sufficient creation of Peers to give a majority. Then this Veto Bill becomes law. What would be the effect of that upon the Home Rule Bill if it is passed next year in the House. It would be sent up to the other House and there would be a larger House of Lords, and it would become the law of the land. I think those plain facts give plenty of food for reflection and ought to be taken into consideration. I would only say in conclusion that I do venture to express the hope that this great constitutional question may find its solution by the absolute consent of both sides. I hope the precedent which was set last autumn will be revived and we shall get both parties to consider this question of Home Rule so that the welfare of the State and of the Empire generally would be advanced on the basis of integrity, nationalism and Imperialism.

Mr. MORETON FREWEN

This is the first opportunity which I have had of contributing to the Debates in this House, and nothing can exceed the pleasure which I feel in following the Member who last spoke. I have long watched the development of the Irish question, being largely Irish myself and domiciled for some years in Ireland, and I have come to the conclusion from studying the younger democracies of the world that if this question is to be settled satisfactorily it will have to be settled on some federal lines. I cannot help thinking that at the present moment there is a great chance of settling this question without appeal to party faction. I believe that in this country, if only this sentiment can be avoided, there is the strongest possible desire in this Coronation year to settle a constitutional question of this magnitude without smashing National assets. I am aware that my Friends on these Benches are not at one with me in the attitude that I take to the Parliament Bill. I find that the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond), and more particularly the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), are desirous of destroying the only simulacrum of a Second Chamber which we have, and yet in their speeches both in Canada and the United States they have announced themselves to be good Federals. For my part I can no more think of a Federal system without a strong Second Chamber than I can think of a monarchy without a king, and in the course of the very interesting speeches that my hon. Friend the Member for the Scotland Division made in Canada, he emphasised on every possible occasion his adherence to the entire system of Federalism obtaining in Canada. He said that the relation of the governing Parliament, which ought to be kept at Westminster, was the relation which the Imperial Government occupied with reference to the Federal Government at Ottawa.

I maintain that every speech that was made by those two illustrious Irishmen in Canada last year was made on the Federal solution. I know that Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in supporting my friend the Member for the Scotland Division—actually supporting him with a money contribution—is, of all men in Canada, one of the most ardent Federals, and the idea' that anybody should entertain the notion that in securing a Federal arrangement of these islands, we are going to dispense with the security which a Second Chamber gives us seems to me to be absolutely preposterous. There is the constitution of the United States of America, which I and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire (Mr. Pirie) would like to see copied in these islands. We have there a Senate which the promoters of that Constitution, whose services in securing it have attracted the acknowledgment of all our modern philosophers, invented in order that democracy should be protected against democracy. They invented a Second Chamber, which is absolutely immutable. I wonder if hon. Members here are aware that, whereas you can secure any amendment of the United States Constitution by the consent of the majority of the States legislatures and by consent of a majority of the Congress, yet the representation of the States in the Senate is absolutely unchangeable. There are forty-seven States in the American Union, and yet if forty-six of those States or their representatives in Congress agree that the representation of the State of New York, with its ten millions of people, in the Senate shall be greater than the representation enjoyed by the little State of Nevada, notwithstanding that forty-six of the States are in favour of that amendment, without the consent of Nevada it cannot be obtained.

The position of the Federal system I take to be this. When I was in Canada, as long ago as 1879, I was staying at Ottawa, and my relations with the then Sir John Macdonald became very intimate. Sir John, who was not then thinking at all of the solution of the Irish question, said to me one evening, "Look at the problem that we in Canada settled by the British North America Federal Act," which was then eleven years old. He said, "In Canada half of our people were Celtic Catholics. They hated us for our commercialism and pushfulness. They regarded us as their conquerors, and for a hundred years half of our people had been on the threashold of civil war. We deliberately broke up the union existing in Canada, which had been arranged under the Durham Act, and made seven States with seven legislatures, and so far the system has been working admirably. "But," he said, "if you cross the room and speak to the then Leader of the Opposition and ask him what he thinks of the British North America Act you are likely to hear some lurid language." I crossed over, and my friend, who is still alive, said, "Yes. The British North America Act has been working for eleven years, and so far with no disaster, but you handed over the property of our coreligionists in the great State of Quebec to be plundered by Papists." That settlement of a long-existing quarrel by the British North America Act has worked like a charm. No property has been plundered by Celtic Catholics. The relations of the States within Canada to one another has become closer and closer, and if ever a tree was known by its fruits the emergence of Federalism in the last fifty years has entirely justified itself. I think there is much more in the proposed Federal structure than we who are attempting to build it at present know. I believe that the congestion of business in this House is a most serious bar to the National education. The intention of the legislatures of the world has not been merely for the purpose of making laws. The intention of legislation is that the useful Debates of that legislation shall go round and shall act as the nation's schoolmaster. Do we get useful and interesting Debates in this House to-day? Are the great questions of the Empire possible of discussion here?

The CHAIRMAN

I am sorry to interfere with what I understand is a maiden speech, but I am afraid the hon. Member is treating the matter much too widely. It is not a question of whether we are to have a Federal system or not, as opposed to Home Rule for Ireland; but whether a certain exception under Clause 2 is to be made with reference to Home Rule for Ireland alone or with reference to a Federal system for the whole of the United Kingdom.

Mr. CHIOZZA MONEY

May I ask whether the Debate is now confined to the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend (Mr. Pirie), or whether both the original Amendment and the Amendment to the proposed Amendment may now be discussed.

The CHAIRMAN

That is a matter for the general convenience of the Committee. Unless a special arrangement is made, it will be confined to the Amendment to the proposed Amendment.

Mr. BALFOUR

May I appeal to you, Sir, with the assent of the House, to say that, as time is limited, it will be very much more to our general convenience if the whole question can be debated together.

The PRIME MINISTER

I venture, if I may, to concur in that appeal.

The CHAIRMAN

That is quite agreeable to me on the usual understanding that we decide both matters at about the same time.

Mr. MORETON FREWEN

I will revert to the question of Ireland. I entirely agree with the views expressed by my hon. Friends behind me that there is no question that Ireland is so interested in. But, on the other hand, I think the passage of the Parliament Bill will be a real blow to those who, like myself, believe that we can get a Federal solution, and in that way settle the question of Ireland. I think the statement made by the hon. Member (Mr. Pirie) to the effect that Mr. Gladstone favoured a Federal solution is in error. All Mr. Gladstone's utterances at the time were distinctly anti-Federal, and I think it was the extreme anti-Federalism of Mr. Gladstone that made it impossible to pass the Home Rule Bill. If we can get a Federal measure before the country, if we can show that the State Legislatures of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales will occupy themselves with local business, leaving the affairs of the Empire to a Federal Chamber, we shall have gone a very long way indeed to settle the most important problem of our time. Mr. Gladstone's mind was distinctly anti-Federal. In the throes of that great Federal crisis which resulted in the war of secession, Mr. Gladstone declared that Jefferson Davis had made a nation. Gladstone's mind was rather bent on nation making. I think he was anti-Federal and that statement, which did so much harm to our diplomacy in the West, was the statement to which he adhered for the rest of his days. The Federal system is being held up to us as a solution of this question, but I believe there is much more in the Federal question than merely the settlement of the political relations of these Islands. As the Federal system emerges peace has followed it. If you take out of the forty-seven States of the American Union—

The CHAIRMAN

This is not in order. The hon. Member is discussing the question of Federalism at large. That is not the point before us at all.

Mr. MORETON FREWEN

I represent probably a small minority in the South of Ireland extremely anxious for a settlement of the Irish question, and extremely anxious to be once more able to play a part in the politics of their country. Surrounded as I am by Catholics in Ireland—for I myself am not of that creed—I should feel perfectly happy if there were a State Legislature in Dublin with those powers which each of the Federal States, both of Canada and the United States, possesses. I believe, holding that view of the settlement of the Home Rule question, we can all look forward to conditions of peace and security.

Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSON

The party opposite are trying to wriggle out of the consequences of their proposal. This Clause, if passed without any Amendment, leads to nothing but the autocratic despotism of a Single Legislative Chamber. It is not necessary to say that the people's representatives on the Benches opposite will refrain from plunging into an orgy of constitutional revolution. They will take care not to be too extreme for their own sakes when they have to face the constituencies at a later stage. That consideration might act as a moderating influence, other things being equal, but I do not think that is any safeguard when the spirit of revenge is abroad. Such a party will be quite prepared to risk unpopularity in the country if it can only deal a damaging blow at its political opponents. We have a signal instance of this in the last Licensing Bill. We had another conspicuous example in the Budget of 1909, which wiped 100 off the majority of its promoters at the subsequent General Election. The Government did not study the political barometer then when they wanted to give vent to their political rancour, and I do not think there is much chance that they will pay much heed to it hereafter, when their weapons are even sharper than they are now. The best thing to do is to save them from themselves and to exclude, at any rate from the ambit of this Clause, those more important classes of legislation which might give them an opportunity of satisfying those illiberal tendencies to which I have referred. Their incitements to class hatred during the last few years show the bent of their minds. If I may use the expression, they are out for blood, and I do not believe any consideration, not even the instinct of self-preservation, would be allowed to stand in their way. This Clause places an all-powerful instrument in their hands. I am not surprised that hon. Members opposite are anxious to keep its purview as wide as possible. They see their opportunity. It may never present itself so favourably again. If they can abolish the Veto and stave off reform much may be done in the next three or four years. At the end of that time the electors will probably desire a change of administration, but the present Government will take the risk and will argue to themselves that what by then will have been accomplished will never be able to be effectually repealed. Therefore I feel that it is of extreme importance for hon. Members on these benches, and also the duty of all fair-minded politicians wherever they may sit, to exclude the graver kinds of legislation from this Clause before it is carried into law.

It is especially important, considering the Cymmerian darkness in which we have been left as to the intentions of the Government in regard to Home Rule. The Prime Minister has stated that a measure will be introduced next year for setting up some sort of Executive in Ireland which is responsible to some sort of representative body. What the Prime Minister has not vouchsafed to explain in explicit terms is whether he intends, however meagre his majority on that Bill may prove to be, however strongly feeling may develop against it in the country, to force it into law without in the last instance referring it to the decision of the electors. We heard not long ago that the last election was won by the party opposite on Free Trade. We have also been told that the Veto of the House of Lords was the dominant issue before the electors. We now see that the Government have an exclusive mandate for Home Rule. The Prime Minister seems to be in a somewhat awkward predicament. He is between the devil and the deep sea, between Moderate Liberals, on the one hand, and the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. John Redmond) on the other. Up to now he has spoken fair to both and preserved an attitude of benevolent inactivity. But the situation has now become acute and requires the manipulation of a master hand. It is a case to draw out all those great gifts of Parliamentary finesse which the right hon. Gentleman has brought to such perfection. He has to convince Moderate Liberals that Home Rule on separatist lines will never form part of ins programme. On the other hand, he has to persuade even the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. John Redmond) that Home Rule, thorough-going Home Rule as Parnell understood it, will be placed without further delay on the Statute Book. The task is worthy of the right hon. Gentleman's abilities and his supreme faculty of promising everything, satisfying everybody and being committed to nothing. No doubt during the coming months he will emerge triumphantly from the ordeal. It is this ambiguity in regard to the policy of the Government which makes this Amendment all the more vital. The Irish party know very well that if there is no prospect of something being done in the near future the generous stream of subscriptions which comes to them from America will very soon cease to flow. Irish-Americans are not going to contribute year after year to hunt a will-o'-the-wisp. They are business men who know their own minds, and their hearts are full of haste. The hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) is a very gifted and eloquent speaker. He exercises great authority in the Nationalist councils of Ireland, and in the United States they crowd his meetings and cheer him to the echo, but does anyone in his senses suppose that the Irish in America are organised in their thousands for the purpose of listening to a series of perorations from the hon. Member, and to let the matter rest there? They will admire the hon. Member's oratory so long as his oratory means business. They have not forgotten the emigrant ships which carried their ancestors over-seas. They have not forgotten the horrors of the '40's. They want to see the separation of Great Britain and Ireland, and parish pump devolution is not going to satisfy these people. It has got to be snapped once and for all, and hon. Members know that their allies in America subscribe with that object, and with that object alone. They want to see something done. Having paid large sums out of their pockets for that purpose, and for that purpose alone, who can from their point of view blame them if that is their purpose? If the Prime Minister wishes to force Home Rule through Parliament under colour of altering the relations between the two Houses, is it very likely that it is going to be a devolution to Ireland of the management of purely local affairs? Is that what Americans have been asking for all these years?

Mr. CHIOZZA MONEY

May I ask if the hon. Member is entitled to discuss the merits of Home Rule on this Amendment?

The CHAIRMAN

He is entitled to discuss the merits of Home Rule only in so far as they affect this particular Amendment.

Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON

I will do my best to keep my remarks in order. Is that what the Irish party are going to accept at the hands of the Government which they have kept in power and had at their mercy during the last twelve months, and which they hold at their mercy still? Surely that would be very inadequate remuneration for such services. IE it is not that kind of devolution what is it going to be Is it to be the Home Rule which the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) preached in Canada, or the Home Rule which the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) preached in the United States? Is it going to be the Home Rule so parsimoniously and grudgingly expounded by Liberal candidates on platforms at question time during the General Election? I am sure the hon. Member for the St. Ives Division of Cornwall (Sir Clifford Cory) would be gratified to have an answer before he gives his vote on this Amendment.

Surely we have a right to demand that such a grave constitutional issue as Home Rule should be submitted to the people before it passes into law. Surely the Government trust the people. If so, they cannot have any objection to referring Home Rule to the people, or do they shrink from the result of such an ordeal? Are they afraid that their scheme would stand no chance if the electors were consulted before it was passed? We are not living in the eighteenth or the nineteenth century. The historic hatreds between Great Britain and Ireland are gradually fading away. Old sores, the result of ancient persecutions and misconceptions, are healing. The Irish people are better known and better appreciated, and there is an effort to understand their particular grievances, and to deal with the various problems affecting the land in which they dwell. A settlement of the Irish question can never be effected except by a proper understanding of the two peoples, and the mutual consent of both parties in the State. That is not the object the Government have in view. They propose recklessly to reshape the Constitution in order to facilitate the consummation of certain legislative experiments in the future. Hon. Members on both sides of the House—certainly those on this side, have a perfect right to demand that before this very great constitutional issue of Home Rule is decided it shall be, at any rate, excluded from the machinery which this Clause provides. If the Government refuse to accept the Amendment, hon. Members on this side of the House cannot be blamed if they do their utmost to oppose the Bill at every stage of its discussion.

Captain WARING

It was my intention to support the Amendment to the Amendment, but I understand from your ruling that we are not entitled to discuss the merits of the Federal system. I shall bow to your ruling. The Debate is now confined to a very small issue, and I hope that the Government will give a sympathetic reply to the principle which lies behind the Amendment. Most of us who stood as candidates for Constituencies in Scotland put this question of Federal Parliaments, including Home Rule for Scotland, in the forefront at the General Election. I have always spoken in support of it in my own Constituency, and I know that my Constituents are in favour of it. I would merely echo in support of this Amendment the words of one Cabinet Minister. Lord Haldane said:— It is our hope at a later stage to endeavour to free Parliament from the burden which is paralysing its power to deal adequately with great questions, such as those of Foreign Policy and National Defence, by delegating the mass of local business by which the House of Commons is to-day overwhelmed. Ireland—which has advanced markedly within the last ten years in the development of its people and their industries—presents a case where we think this should be done, and Ireland is not the only case in point. That is an extract from the last election address issued by the Noble Lord to the electors of East Lothian. Therefore, at least one Cabinet Minister included the question of Federal Home Rule in his programme. I have every reason to believe that the present representative of that county (Mr. J. D. Hope) has, if anything, enlarged upon and emphasised that particular point. We claim, as Scottish Members, that this Amendment to the Amendment is entitled to some consideration and to a sympathetic reply on the part of the Government. I believe the whole country desires it, and if the Government can see their way to accept the Amendment to the Amendment, at all events, in spirit, I believe that ultimately they would succeed in obtaining a solution of this constitutional question, and securing a settlement which would procure in the end lasting peace and contentment to the country on those matters which are exercising our minds at the present time.

Mr. CHARLES CRAIG

In the few remarks I have to make to the Committee I do not propose to deal with the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Pirie), for the simple reason that if Home Rule is ever granted to Ireland it would be a matter of absolute indifference whether Scotland, England, or Wales had Home Rule also. Home Rule for Ireland will so extinguish in my part of the country interest in the question that the fate of England, Scotland, or Wales will be of very little interest to us. I propose to deal with the remarks that fell from the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon). He said he was a great admirer of the British Constitution. Well, it was news to me to hear that either the hon. Member or any of his colleagues was an admirer of the British Constitution, for, in spite of his assertion on the subject, I must say that every speech which I have ever read, I do not say by the hon. Member for East Mayo, but certainly by the majority of hon. Members below the Gangway, has been in exactly the opposite direction.

Mr. DILLON

I defy the hon. Member to quote a single passage in which I have referred adversely to the British Constitution.

Mr. C. CRAIG

I said I excepted the hon. Member, for I do not remember any speech of his in that sense, but I am sure it will be in the recollection of any Member of the House who has read the speeches of hon. Members below the Gangway on the subject of Home Rule that almost on every occasion they have said everything bad they could of the English Government and the English Constitution. The hon. Member went further, and said that in Ireland they had never enjoyed the British Constitution. I ask, how is that? It is simply because they have never made any attempt to enjoy it. They have refused to take part in the government of this country. At any moment hon. Members from Ireland might have joined themselves to one or other of the parties in this House, and, if they had done so, they, with the ability which everybody acknowledges they possess, would have received their full share in the Government of the country, and they would have risen in some cases to the highest offices which the Government have to give them. They have deliberately thrown that opportunity away, and they have for years banded themselves together on the question of Home Rule. If they have never enjoyed the British Constitution, I say it is altogether their own fault. They might have enjoyed it to the extent of other Members of this House. The hon. Member said it would be most unjust to exclude the question of Home Rule by the Amendment now before the Committee. He said that the question has been before the country for the last twenty-six years. I venture to say that during the last twenty years in the ordinary constituency in England there has been no question in which less interest has been taken than the question of Home Rule. As lately as 1906 a friend of mine went over from Ireland to try to influence the electors of England in the direction of keeping sound the Union, and time after time he was refused a hearing on the ground that the Home Rule question was not before the country. That was the case as lately as the General Election at the beginning of 1910. I admit that at the last General Election it was more before the country than on the previous occasion, but only to a very small extent. The hon. Member for East Mayo read a considerable number of extracts from speeches of hon. and right hon. Members of this House. May I ask why he did not refer to statements by the rank and file of hon. Members opposite? Throughout the whole Debate we have been referred to speeches by the Prime Minister.

Mr. DILLON

We have not referred to their speeches because they are not running away from their statements. They stand by them.

7.0 P.M.

Mr. CHARLES CRAIG

Had the hon. Member tried to prove that the Home Rule question was before the electors, he would have pointed to a number of speeches by hon. Members opposite to that effect. We fully admit we did all in our power in this country to move the country to an understanding of the fact that Home Rule was the most important issue at the Election. We did that, and we failed, I admit, or we did not seem to make much impression on the minds of the people, for the reason which, I think, is a very plausible one, at any rate, that if a Unionist came on to a political platform and said that this Bill meant Home Rule, and if, immediately afterwards, a Radical candidate got up on a platform and never mentioned Home Rule, people were entitled to believe, or probably thought that the Unionist was simply drawing a red herring across the trail. I see an hon. Member opposite laugh; but if this question of Home Rule is as important as we assert it is, and as I believe the majority of Members of this House admit it to be, quite as important an issue as the Veto Bill itself, is it conceivable that two-thirds of hon. Members opposite, if they thought this Bill was so imminent and important as it undoubtedly is, would have left out any reference to it from their addresses?

Out of 272 Members, only eighty-four mentioned it in their addresses at all, and 186 left it out altogether. The Prime Minister, speaking this afternoon, said the question of Home Rule was left out in the addresses because the Parliament Bill included all these other issues. I admit that possibly if an hon. Member opposite had said that the great question before the country at the present time was the Veto Bill that might by some be taken to include these other issues, but if the right hon. Gentleman will examine the election addresses of the vast majority of hon. Members opposite he will find that not only did they refer to the Veto Bill at the beginning of their address, but that they then proceeded to deal with other political questions which they considered important. I say in the case of hon. Members who referred to the Veto Bill in their addresses and then spoke of other questions, but did not speak about Home Rule, that the Home Rule question was not put before their constituencies as it ought to have been. In face of those figures that only eighty-four out of 270 Liberal Members in this House mentioned the words Home Rule in their election address, it is absolutely absurd to say that the question was properly put before the electorate.

The Prime Minister claims that because he, as head of the Government, made a more or less specific statement in the Albert Hall more than a year ago, and that he referred again to that statement at the last election on three or four occasions, and that he elaborated, in very little detail I must say, this question of Home Rule, therefore the country was fully aware of the intention of the Government to introduce a Home Rule Bill. I think he even goes so far as to say that they knew practically what that Home Rule Bill was going to contain, and that because he, as head of the Government, made it perfectly clear that the Government was going to introduce a Home Rule Bill at some convenient opportunity, therefore we were debarred, no matter what else happened, from claiming that Home Rule was not an issue at the last election. That is a perfectly absurd claim. The statements of the Prime Minister are, of course, read by a large number of people throughout the country, but there is also a very much larger section of the community that never reads the statements of probably the leaders on either side of the House, and when it comes to an election these people have to depend entirely on what they hear from the candidates.

The practice in the past—they have changed it now—undoubtedly has been for every candidate to put fully before the constituency, not only in his election addresses, but in his speeches on public platforms what are, so far as he knows, the intentions of the party to which he belongs. That was not done at the last election, and it is absurd to say that it was done. That is proved by the figures which I have read, and by the still more significant figures that I might read of the number of Ministers of the Crown who left out all reference to this question of Home Rule. Only about half the Cabinet Ministers mentioned it, and even a smaller proportion of other Ministers mentioned it in their election addresses; and the records show that there was no reference to the question at all by most of these gentlemen, and that, in the cases where there were references, they were very meagre and very few. The Prime Minister said he regarded this Bill as interposing very serious difficulties in the way of passing a Home Rule Bill. Where does the difficulty come in? Apparently he means that the fact that this Bill has to pass the House of Commons three times constitutes a difficulty. He has got a majority of 130, or whatever it is. Suppose, as presumably will be the case, a Home Rule Bill is introduced next year and passed by the House of Commons, where is the particular difficulty of passing it through a second time? Having voted for the measure a first time, presumably hon. Members will not have changed their mind and will vote for it in the June of the next year. Then how are we to expect any serious falling off in the number of those who vote for it in the June of the following year?

Suppose there is a change in the feeling of the country, or suppose, what I say is the simple truth, that the country has not given a mandate on this subject at this last election, and desires to show that it is not in favour of Home Rule as has been claimed by the Prime Minister, how is it going to do that? It seems to me that, owing to the fact that Home Rule is to be passed by the same Parliament as passes this egregious Veto Bill, there is no possibility of the will of the country being manifested so as to affect the particular Parliament, and I would point out to hon. Members opposite that though a future Unionist Government may revise or repeal altogether the Parliament Bill, nothing can possibly annul or revise a Home Rule Bill except an armed force sent by this country to Ireland. There is a very great difference between this question of Home Rule and all other questions. You cannot go back on Home Rule without sending an armed force to Ireland and causing bloodshed and making the position of Ireland much worse than it is to-day. All these other questions are a mere bagatelle compared to this question of Ireland. Therefore I claim that special attention should be given to this question, and, far from being unjust, as the hon. Member for Mayo has said, for a Home Rule Bill to be excluded from this measure, it is nothing more or less than the merest justice to that portion of Ireland which is so determined in its objection to Home Rule that this question should be fairly and squarely put before the country. For those reasons I shall support this Amendment.

Mr. WALTER LONG

The very short time which the Government see fit to allow us to discuss the different parts of this Bill and the different Amendments which arise in connection with it make it impossible to deal in anything like an adequate manner with this among other grave questions. But I think my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. Lonsdale) will feel, if he entertained any doubt at all upon the subject, that his action in moving this Amendment has been abundantly justified even by the very short Debate which we have had this afternoon. Let us remind the Committee of what has been discussed this afternoon. This is the first occasion on which it has been possible to approach the Government on one or two of these issues. We have discussed to-day not only the position of the Government in regard to Home Rule, but also the much wider scheme of Federal Home Rule for the whole country upon an Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Aberdeen (Captain Pirie), and we had the advantage of a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork (Mr. Frewen) who speaks with great experience and knowledge on this federal question.

It would be interesting to learn from the Government their reception of this federal question; I shall be very much surprised if we do not find that the advocates of a federal form of Home Rule led by the hon. Member for Aberdeen will have to find consolation in the adoption of the practice which the Government have already made their own, namely, that when the Home Rule Bill for Ireland is introduced, there will be included in it a preamble, setting forth with the necessary preliminary language that later on Home Rule is to be granted to Scotland, Wales, and perhaps to different parts of England. But I question whether they will get any more consolation from the Government than that which they may derive from having a paragraph in the preamble to the Home Rule Bill. My belief is based on the fact that while the hon. Member for Aberdeen and others have comforted themselves with the knowledge which they tell us they possess that Irish Members are in favour of the federal scheme and offer no opposition to it, yet their support of Federal Home Rule has been of a purely negative kind. What they have said to Federal Home Rulers is: "By all means come on with your plan, but Ireland must come first and the Irish scheme should be considered by itself." Therefore, whether I judge of the future by the action of the Government or by the previous actions of the Nationalist party, I do not think that the Gentlemen opposite who have declared themselves so firmly attached to the federal scheme will not get much comfort out of the Debate which we have had. Let me come to the allegations to which the Prime Minister has taken such great exception, namely, that the attempt of the Government to carry this Parliament Bill, to be followed by the immediate introduction of Home Rule, is really taking the country by surprise, which is unaware what it is really proposed to do. The Prime Minister objects to the use of such words as "trickery," and so forth. I do not want, nor has it ever been my practice, to indulge in language personally offensive to anybody, but I am bound to say, as a very ordinary and plain individual, that I cannot understand what the meaning of language is if it does not imply and correctly imply that, in circumstances to which I will refer in a moment, the people have been deceived by the action and policy of His Majesty's Government. We were told in a previous Debate that the Parliament Bill had been clearly put before the country. In that Debate I do not think that anyone will be able to contradict me, when I say that while undoubtedly the Parliament Bill had been before the country in the sense in which it had been declared by the Prime Minister and many of his colleagues to be the object of hon. Gentlemen opposite, yet it had been pressed upon the people, how? Not by explaining what the Parliament Bill means, not by expatiating upon its merits or the advantages that would flow from its passage, but, in order to secure votes for it, they told the people, in their cottages and in their homes, that certain terrible results would follow if they supported their political opponents.

We have heard to-day a Debate that has ranged over a very considerable field—Federal Home Rule and Home Rule for Ireland—but we have not yet heard in this Debate one word from the Government indicating what their idea of Home Rule really is. The Prime Minister made his speech to us early in the afternoon, and it would have been easy indeed for him, with his great Parliamentary gifts, to have yielded, if only for an inch or two, and told the country something of what is meant by Home Rule. Was the country told anything during the election? What was the policy adopted in the constituencies? I am going to quote an instance in the county adjoining my own. I think the Prime Minister will find that with methods like these—and this is not a singular instance—you made it impossible for the electors of the country to know what was meant by Home Rule, or what was the real intention of the Government. I take the address of one Radical candidate—plenty of others can be obtained. He issued, as a form of address, a reply to "misstatements." I call the special attention of the Committee to the address of this Gentleman, standing as a Radical candidate, and who was directing the notice of the electors to what he called the "misstatements" of his opponents. What were those "misstatements"? Amongst others one was that the Government was pledged to Home Rule on the passage of the Parliament Bill. I have here a list of the "misstatements," and I pass over the earlier ones which are not now germane. No. 10 is this:— The liberals are not in favour of Home Rule, Mr Asquith says— And then he quotes, in inverted commas, whether accurately or not I do not pretend to say:— We will give to Ireland more power to deal with purely local affairs, but there must be no question at all of separation. It is quite obvious what the "misstatement" was, and that is the contradiction of it, and how it was made perfectly clear to the electors of this country that Home Rule was to be the immediate result of the Parliament Bill. The Prime Minister himself was subjected to what is known as heckling, and, of course, if the Prime Minister has to undergo that fearful process, small people must necessarily also be subjected to it, and in the particular case to which I refer, this is what happened. The question was asked the candidate:— How, under Home Rule, can we safeguard the interests of the Protestant minority in the North of Ireland? Here is the answer:— We shall not give to Ireland any further power than merely to deal with local affairs such as the County Councils do here. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name."] This was in a county where they returned a majority of candidates who support the Unionist cause. But if hon. Members attach more importance to declarations of this kind when made by those who won, we will have one. In my own county there was a very well-known case. A gentleman who is not now a Member of Parliament, and who has been translated to a more distinguished position, then made a direct statement upon the Home Rule question, and he preceded his statement by giving a very interesting domestic history of the Front Bench opposite. He told us that he was on the most intimate terms of friendship with the Patronage Secretary, and that he was his right hand man. He then went on to tell us about the hierarchy of power and the Patronage Secretary, the other ego of the Prime Minister; that whatever the Prime Minister knew the Patronage Secretary knew, and whatever the Patronage Secretary knew, he knew, "and you may take it from me," he said, "that I am in a position to make a full and accurate statement of Liberal policy." Then he went on to make his speech, and he told us that there were two Home Rule policies before the country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Quote."] I am quoting from memory; this is a very well-known case. I was present on the occasion, and I think the Committee will take my word for it. He then proceeded to lay down quite clearly that there were two Home Rule policies—one advocated by "us"—that is the hierarchy—and the other advocated by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford. He explained what the difference was, and he made it perfectly clear that one form meant limited local Government, whereas the other meant a much more extended form of Home Rule.

Hon. Members know perfectly well that it is of no good trying to belittle the value of what I am saying by asking whether a man was elected or not; they know perfectly well, whether it was in regard to the Parliament Bill or Home Rule, that in order to win elections, in order to get votes, the electors were told, not what would be the effect of a full Home Rule measure, not what would be the effect of Single-Chamber Government by passing the Parliament Bill, but, on these matters, the case was put before them in the most agreeable form, and Home Rule was represented to be something very different from that which we anticipated it would be; and not only what we anticipated it would be, but something very different from what hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway on this side of the House would allow the Government to produce, or accept if they did produce it. The Prime Minister may take exception to the use of language of the kind to which I have referred. All I can say is, for my part, that I do not know what the meaning of words is if it is not deceiving the people to ask them to give the Government powers to use for a particular purpose, described in vague and general language, while saying that the dangers we talk of and the statements we make are not true. Yet they come here and claim that they have a mandate from these same people, under the powers of this Parliament Bill when it passes, to give full effect to their policy, not as they and their friends have described it, but as we, their political opponents, have described it. I want to say a word upon what is the strangest argument of all used by the Prime Minister himself and by hon. Gentlemen opposite. They say: "You declare Home Rule was not before the country; you declare that the Parliament Bill was not fully before the country. Why, you yourselves have brought them before the country." In other words, they are suggesting that the Government are justified in claiming that their policy was explained by those who are opposed to them. What does that really mean?

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition stated the case for the Opposition fully and completely on many occasions. We naturally backed him up, and made our statements in a smaller way. Did the Government and hon. Gentlemen opposite accept my right hon. Friend's definition of policy as being correct? Did they at the time agree that lie had given a true interpretation of their plans and proposals? If they did not accept his view as being correct, if they did not admit that he was rightly interpreting their views, they have no right to come here to-day and say, because the Leader of the Opposition made that speech, and because the Opposition took this or that view, that therefore they are justified hi stating to-day that their policy was before the country at the time of the election. It is not possible now to discuss the gravity of the proposal of the Government, which is to be forced through this Bill. This Bill has a Preamble, and when the Prime Minister tells us that this Parliament Bill was before the country, and that on that Bill the people voted, he is surely strangely forgetting or ignoring the fact that it is only a part of the Bill we are now discussing. We know now that as soon as they have got part of the Bill giving the necessary powers to pass other legislation, the Preamble will disappear from sight, and we will hear no more about it. If you get your power under the Parliament Bill you intend to use it and force upon the country Home Rule, of which the electors know nothing, and of which you have told them nothing. I venture to say, without using language which may be held to be personally offensive, that this is unworthy of a great and powerful Government; it is not a course likely to lead to good legislation and wise reform; and if you really believe in this policy, and are really convinced that the country is behind you, then lake the country into your confidence. You are fraid to do that. We at all events are not afraid. We believe that the action of the Government and the course they are taking is one which is unworthy of themselves and full of danger for the country over which they preside.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir John Simon)

The right hon. Gentleman began by pointing out the wide extent of the topics which have been touched upon in the course of the discussion. It is quite true that a number of matters have been touched upon in this Debate, but the question which is involved in the Amendment is a short and simple question. I venture to think that the Committee will consider that the actual question raised in this Debate is one which does not admit of so varied an answer as seems to be suggested. The question is this: Assume that the Parliament Bill is a Bill which this House is prepared to adopt in principle; assume that Clause 1, dealing with Money Bills, is already incorporated in the measure, then come to Clause 2, and ask this question: Is there any justification for excepting from the general operations of Clause 2 the measure pointed out in the Amendment of hon. Gentlemen opposite? I make bold to say that whatever may be the ex- tent of our dispute as to what happened at the General Election, however varied one man's experience may have been as compared with another's, there is not a Member of this House, on one side or the other, who ever heard of a candidature being put forward or a speech made on the issue, Shall we have a Parliament Bill which applies to everything except Home Rule? I care not whether you take those who speak in the name of the Government or those who speak as representing the leaders of the Opposition; I care not whether you take hon. Gentlemen belonging to the Labour party or to the Irish party, or to any English party, or to any English combination—some may have held one view of the Parliament Bill, others another—but nobody held the view which is embodied in this Amendment that the Parliament Bill was to be applied as a solution of disputes between the two Houses, but that it was not to be applied to what is the classic case of the opposition of the House of Lords to democratic aspirations, and that it was not to be applied to the special case of Home Rule for Ireland.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, who intervened in this Debate in order to raise the special case of Scottish Home Rule, I am sure will agree with me when I suggest to him that he does not desire, and those who feel most keenly upon Scottish Home Rule do not desire, to cut out from the general application of the Parliament Bill any particular topic of legislation whatever. He and his friends agree with the Government and with the rest of their supporters. May I point out to my hon. Friend, whose intervention we all appreciated, what I am sure he, with his long devotion to the cause of Scottish Home Rule, well knows—namely, that this very subject of Scottish Home Rule was, in the year 1894, brought in the form of Resolution before this House. I think on that occasion the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir Henry Dalziel) moved the Resolution. The Government of the day supported that Resolution, and the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who then as now opposed Home Rule, made a speech against that Resolution. Many of those who now form the present Government supported that Resolution in the Lobby, and it was carried in that year, 1894, by the unanimous approval of those who represent Liberal opinion. What was true in 1894 is true now. The enemies of the natural and proper aspirations of Scottish nationality are the enemies of the proper and natural aspirations of Irish nationality. The Friends of Ireland in this matter are the Friends of Scotland in this matter, and I recognise no such difference of opinion or of temper, or of spirit, as would justify the attempt, artfully made as it is from the other side, to distinguish between those of us who feel keenly on behalf of Scottish Home Rule and those who feel keenly with regard to Irish Home Rule.

I will venture to make one observation about it, and that is this: that the Scottish case is a case which it is well worth while to consider, because it disposes for ever of the unfounded slander that the nationality which desires a measure of self-government is disloyal to the British Government. This Government happens to contain a great variety of Scottish Members, who may be expected to be not unfriendly towards the aspirations of their constituents. Whatever may be the view which Irish Unionists take of their fellow-countrymen who ask for local control over local affairs, at any rate it is due to Scottish Unionists to say that they never had the hardihood to accuse their own fellow-countrymen of want of loyalty, of want of devotion to the British Constitution, because they believe it to be possible, as I believe it to be possible, to combine a measure of self-government with the essential solidarity and union of the United Kingdom. The situation which is presented by hon. Gentlemen opposite really has its element of humour. The situation is that they are faced with the undeniable and uncomfortable fact that as the result of the election a Home Rule Government is in power, supported by a Home Rule majority and pledged to introduce a Home Rule Bill. So far that is a fact which no one can gainsay.

Lord HUGH CECIL

What do you mean by Home Rule?

Sir JOHN SIMON

I understood this whole Debate proceeded on this assumption that the Government in power was supported by a Home Rule majority, that it was proposing to introduce a Home Rule Bill, and that the difficulty is that some explanation should be made of the situation which has produced that result. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are so certain that there can be no honest or reasonable explanation of that that they are driven to explanations, most honestly given I am sure, but explanations which certainly do not do much credit to hon. Gentlemen on the other side, or indeed do much credit to the electorate themselves. The real explanation is simple enough, and it is that the British electorate is not as frightened of Home Rule as hon. Gentlemen opposite are. That is a perfectly simple and easy explanation, but the right hon. Gentleman and his friends opposite cannot give that explanation, and they cast around for some other. What is the explanation that is to be offered of this uncomfortable and undeniable fact that there is a Home Rule Government in power going to produce a Home Rule Bill? The first explanation is that it is a fraud, that it is trickery, that it is chicanery and all the rest of it. That is an explanation which I desire most frankly to acknowledge has not been put forward in any way by the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. It is an explanation which falls to pieces when it is examined, and that explanation having gone, what is the next explanation which the Opposition are driven to adopt to explain the uncomfortable but undeniable fact that the electorate has returned a Government supported by a Home Rule majority? [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] There are some topics on which I might admit the contention of hon. Members opposite, but they will excuse me for saying that those who sit on these benches are the best judges as to whether this is a Home Rule Government or not.

What is the next explanation; it being no longer possible to say that this dreadful consequence is due to fraud or chicanery or trickery? The second explanation is that it is due to the fact that the electorate are so stupid, and that they cannot have understood what was meant. The right hon. Gentleman on Thursday almost in terms delivered himself of this very curious statement. He says, "I and my friends did our very best to point out to the country that Home Rule and all these dreadful consequences would follow the passage of the Parliament Bill, but," he says, "in spite of that the country has put in power the Government that is going to carry the Parliament Bill." What could be the explanation? The only explanation that occurred to him was that they did not understand it, that he addresses the British electorate "we mourned unto you, but ye did not lament." He thinks that the only explanation is that the British electorate did not hear him mourning. Why, the British electorate are sick of his lamentations. There was not a hoarding in the land that was not plastered with those fine appeals to national sentiment in the form of American dollars and "Dollar Dictator." There was no election carried through but in which the greatest efforts were made, and most successfully, by hon. Gentlemen opposite to point to the awful fact that Home Rule would follow the Parliament Bill, and the country does not mind.

Lord HUGH CECIL

made an observation which was inaudible.

Sir JOHN SIMON

If the hon. Member the Member for Oxford University will allow me to say so, the hoardings of Oxford University were not. When he asks me whether a Referendum on Home Rule is going to take place I can give him a very plain and short answer—the answer is "No." Allow me to point out that that suggestion is not made now for the first time. It was made for the first time at the Albert Hall by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Why? Why was it made if Home Rule in his view and in the view of those he was addressing was no part of the issues he was discussing? The only explanation is that in his view and in the view of reasonable people who took part in this contest this Instrument we are now engaged in forging was going to be used to carry through the British Parliament that which we believe the British democracy desire in spite of the House of Lords. The real truth is that the delusion hon. Gentlemen opposite have is that they do not understand that the people of this country may perhaps desire a reasonable measure of Home Rule, and that produces confusion in the arguments they address to us.

With all respect, I venture to say that they are labouring under two delusions. The first is that they seem to think that no English Liberal desires Home Rule for its own sake, and that no Liberal desires

to see what he regards as a tardy measure of justice carried, whatever be the adjustment of parties in this House. The second delusion is that they seem to think that to impose the permanent and unqualified obstacle of the House of Lords to measures which might pass again and again through this House is to make some special arrangement for safety and security in the dominions of the King. It is not true. Inaction is not the same thing as safety. If there is any subject of public policy the history of which proves that I am right it is this very subject of reform in Ireland. When we claim that the majority which supports the Government and the majority in the country which returned that majority to this House, is a majority in favour of proposals which we hope to make, we make that claim not because of any of those discreditable manœuvres which hon. Gentlemen opposite find it so easy to imagine, but because we, from our hearts, believe that this is a measure of high policy and justice, too long overdue, desired now by the masses of the people throughout the Empire who take a pride in the spread of British institutions. We would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to exercise in this regard a little of that imagination which is so abundantly at their disposal when it comes to attributing evil motives to hon. Gentlemen on this side, and to realise that it is possible, and it is the fact, that the people of this country see that this is not the way to anarchy and revolution, but the way to a fairer distribution of equality of democracy, calculated to strengthen and not to weaken the Empire.

Mr. PIRIE

I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment to the Proposed Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question put, "That those words be there inserted."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 190; Noes, 284.

Division No. 169.]	AYES.	[7.50 p.m.
Aitken, William Max.	Barnston, Harry	Boyton, James
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Barrie, Hugh T. (Londonderry)	Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell
Archer-Shee, Major Martin	Bathurst, Hon. Allen B. (Glouc. E.)	Bridgeman, W. Clive
Ashley, Wilfrid W.	Bathurst, Charles (Wilton)	Bull, Sir William James
Astor, Waldorf	Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks	Burdett-Coutts, W.
Bagot, Lieut.-Colonel J.	Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Burn, Colonel C R.
Baird, John Lawrence	Benn, Ion H. (Greenwich)	Butcher, John George
Baker, Sir Randolf L. (Dorset, N.)	Bennett-Goldney, Francis	Campion, W. R.
Baldwin, Stanley	Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish-	Carlile, Edward Hildred
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City Lond.)	Bigland, Alfred	Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.
Banner, John S Harmood-	Bird, Alfred	Cassel, Felix
Baring, Capt. Hon. G. V.	Boscawen, Sackville T. Griffith-	Castlereagh, Viscount
Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)	Boyle, W. Lewis (Norfolk, Mid)	Cator, John
Cautley, Henry Strother	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Cave, George	Home, Wm. E. (Surrey, Guildford)	Peel, Capt. R. F. (Woodbridge)
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Horner, Andrew Long	Perkins, Walter Frank
Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University)	Houston, Robert Paterson	Pole-Carew, Sir R.
Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.	Hume-Williams, W. E.	Pollock, Ernest Murray
Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry	Hunt, Rowland	Ratcliff, R. F.
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk. (Bath)	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Clive, Percy Archer	Ingleby, Holcombe	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Cooper, Richard Ashmole	Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, East)	Rolleston, Sir John
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Joynson-Hicks, William	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Courthope, George Loyd	Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr	Rothschild, Lionel de
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Kerry, Earl of	Reyds, Edmund
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Kimber, Sir Henry	Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby)
Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Craik, Sir Henry	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement	Samuel Sir Harry (Norwood)
Crichton-Stuart, Lord Ninian	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Sanders, Robert Arthur
Croft, Henry Page	Larmor, Sir J.	Sanderson, Lancelot
Dalrymple, Viscount	Law Andrew Bonar (Bootie, Lanes.)	Sandys, G. J. (Somerset, Wells)
Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. S.	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)	Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange)
Dixon, C. H.	Lee, Arthur Hamilton	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)	Spear, John Ward
Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)	Stanier, Beville
Duke, Henry Edward	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Long, Rt. Hon. Walter	Starkey, John Ralph
Falle, B. G.	Lonsdale, John Brownlee	Staveley-Hill. Henry
Fell, Arthur	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo. Han. S.)	Steel-Maitland, A. D.
Finlay, Sir Robert	Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich)	Stewart, Gershom
Fisher, W. Hayes	MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh	Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)
Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.	Mackinder, Halford J.	Swift, Rigby
Fleming, Valentine	Macmaster, Donald	Sykes, Alan John
Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)	Magnus, Sir Philip	Talbot, Lord E.
Gardner, Ernest	Malcolm, Ian	Terrell, George (Wilts, N. W.)
Gastrell, Major W. Houghton	Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)
Gibbs, G. A.	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)
Gilmour, Captain John	Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, N.)
Goldman, C. S.	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Tobin, Alfred Aspinall
Goldsmith, Frank	Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas	Tryon, Captain George Clement
Gordon, John	Morrison-Bell, Major A. C. (Honiton)	Tullibardine, Marquess of
Goulding, Edward Alfred	Mount, William Arthur	Walker, Col. William Hall
Greene, Walter Raymond	Neville, Reginald J. N.	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Gretton, John	Newdegate, F. A.	White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)
Guinness, Hon. Walter Edward	Newman, John R. P.	Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)
Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne)	Newton, Harry Kottingham	Wolmer, Viscount
Hambro, Angus Valdemar	Nield, Herbert	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Hamersley, Alfred St. George	Norton-Griffiths, J.	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford)	O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid)	Yate, Colonel C. E.
Harris, Henry Percy	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.	Yerburgh, Robert
Henderson, Major H. (Abingdon)	Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William	Younger, George
Hickman, Colonel T. E.	Paget, Almeric Hugh
Hill, Sir Clement L. (Shrewsbury)	Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Viscount
Hillier, Dr. Alfred Peter	Parkes, Ebenezer	Valentia and Mr. H. W. Forster.
Hills, J. W.
NOES.
Abraham, William (Dublin Harbour)	Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)
Abraham, Rt. Hon. William (Rhondda)	Brace, William	Dawes, James Arthur
Acland, Francis Dyke	Brady, P. J.	Delany, William
Adamson, William	Brocklehurst, William B.	Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas
Addison, Dr. Christopher	Brunner, John F. L.	Dewar, Sir J. A.
Agnew, Sir George William	Burke, E. Haviland-	Dillon, John
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Doris, William
Alden, Percy	Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Duffy, William J.
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbarton)	Buxton, Rt. Hon. S. C. (Poplar)	Duncan, J. Hastings (York, Otley)
Allen, Charles Peter (Stroud)	Byles, William Pollard	Edwards, Enoch Hanley
Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)
Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A.	Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)	Elibank, Rt. Hon. Master of
Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)	Cawley, H. T. (Lancs., Heywood)	Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Chancellor, Henry George	Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Chapple, Dr. William Allen	Essex, Richard Walter
Barnes, George N.	Clough, William	Falconer, James
Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick B.)	Clynes, John R.	Fenwick, Charles
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Ferens, Thomas Robinson
Barton, William	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Ffrench, Peter
Beale, W. P.	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Field, William
Beauchamp, Edward	Cotton, William Francis	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward
Beck, Arthur Cecil	Crawshay-Williams, Eliot	Fitzgibbon, John
Benn, W. W. (Tower Hamlets, S. Geo.)	Crean, Eugene	Flavin, Michael Joseph
Bentham, George Jackson	Crooks, William	France, Gerald Ashburner
Bethell, Sir John Henry	Crumley, Patrick	Gelder, Sir W. A.
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Cullinan, J.	Gilhooly, James
Black, Arthur W.	Dalziel, Sir James H. (Kirkcaldy)	Ginnell, L.
Boland, John Pius	Davies, E. William (Eifion)	Glanville, H. J
Booth, Frederick Handel	Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford
Bowerman, Charles W.	Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Goldstone, Frank

Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough)	M'Laren, F. W. S. (Lincs., Spalding)	Richardson, Albion (Peckham)
Griffith, Ellis J.	M'Micking, Major Gilbert	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)	Manfield, Harry	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Hackett, John	Marks, George Croydon	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Hall, Frederick (Normanton)	Marshall, Arthur Harold	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)
Hancock, John George	Mason, David M. (Coventry)	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)	Masterman, C. F. G.	Robertson, John M. (Tyneside)
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Robinson, Sydney
Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Meehan, Patrick A. (Queen's Co.)	Roche, Augustine (Louth)
Harmsworth, R. Leicester	Menzies, Sir Walter	Rose, Sir Charles Day
Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Millar, James Duncan	Rowlands, James
Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)	Molloy, Michael	Rowntree, Arnold
Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)	Molteno, Percy Alport	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)
Harwood, George	Money, L. G. Chiozza	Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)
Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Mooney, John J.	Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)
Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry	Morgan, George Hay	Scanlan, Thomas
Haworth, Arthur A.	Muldoon, John	Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir C. E.
Hayden, John Patrick	Munro-Ferguson, Rt. Hon. R. C	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Hayward, Evan	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Seely, Col., Rt. Hon. J. E. B.
Helme, Norval Watson	Needham, Christopher T.	Sheehy, David
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Neilson, Francis	Sherwell, Arthur James
Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)	Shortt, Edward
Henry, Sir Charles S.	Nolan, Joseph	Simon, Sir John Allsebrook)
Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor	Norman, Sir Henry	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)
Hinds, John	Norton, Captain Cecil W.	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)
Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.	Nugent, Sir Walter Richard	Spicer, Sir Albert
Hodge, John	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.
Holt, Richard Durning	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Strachey, Sir Edward
Hope, John Deans (Haddington)	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Sutton, John E.
Horne, C. Silvester (Ipswich)	O'Doherty, Philip	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	O'Dowd, John	Tennant, Harold John
Hughes, Spencer Leigh	Ogden, Fred	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Hunter, W. (Govan)	O'Grady, James	Thomas, James Henry (Derby)
Isaacs, Sir Rufus Daniel	O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)	O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Johnson, William	O'Malley, William	Toulmin, George
Jones, Edgar R. (Merthyr Tydvil)	O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Jones, W. S. Glyn- (T. H'mts, Stepney)	O'Shee, James John	Verney, Sir Harry
Jowett, Frederick William	O'Sullivan, Timothy	Walsh, J. (Cork, South)
Joyce, Michael	Palmer, Godfrey Mark	Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince)
Keating, Matthew	Parker, James (Halifax)	Ward, John (Stoke upon Trent)
Kelly, Edward	Pearce, Robert (Staffs., Leek)	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Kennedy, Vincent Paul	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Wardle, George J.
Kilbride, Denis	Pearson, Weetman H. M.	Waring, Walter
King, Joseph (Somerset, North)	Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)	Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay
Lambert, George (Devon, S. Molton)	Phillipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton)	White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)
Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Lansoury, George	Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Whitehouse, John Howard
Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)	Pirie, Duncan V.	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld, Cockerm'th)	Pointer Joseph	Whyte, A. F. (Perth)
Levy, Sir Maurice	Pollard, Sir George H.	Wilkie, Alexander
Lewis, John Herbert	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Logan, John William	Power, Patrick Joseph	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich)	Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Williamson, Sir Archibald
Lundon, Thomas	Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Lyell, Charles Henry	Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Lynch, Arthur Alfred	Pringle, William M. R.	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestershire, N.)
Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Raffan, Peter Wilson	Winfrey, Richard
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)	Rainy, Adam Rolland	Wood, T. M'Kinnon (Glasgow)
Maclean, Donald	Raphael, Sir Herbert H.	Young, Samuel (Cavan, E.)
Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Young, W. (Perthshire, E.)
MacNeill, John Gordon Swift	Reddy, Michael
Macveagh, Jeremiah	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.
M'Callum, John M.	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)
McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Richards, Thomas