It is the commonest and most legitimate of Parliamentary practices
to amend a Bill in Committee and then to vote against the Third Reading. Though one objects to the Bill as a whole, if it must pass it had better pass in its least bad form. An example will easily prove to Liberals the reason- ableness of the course wb recommend. If a future Govern- ment brings in a tariff in which are included food taxes, the Liberals will dislike and oppose the whole of the tariff. But, while pressing on with this opposition in. tote, they will endeavour to get food exempted from the proposed taxation, and they will laugh if the Protectionists tell them that they have no right to demand the exemption of food from taxation unless they are prepared to swallow the rest of the tariff. Free Traders will, of course, answer that though they are opposed to the tariff as a whole, if it must pass they prefer it in its least dangerous form. With all due respect to the Unionist leaders we are bound to say that they missed a great opportunity of defeating the Bill by not pinning the Govern- ment to the exemption of North-East Ulster. Had they done this the Government would have been in a hopeless difficulty. They must have either thrown over Mr. Redmond or else made it clear that their offers about Ulster were the merest shams.
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