THE HOME RULE BILL.
ON Thursday evening the House of Lords rejected the Home Rule Bill. The fact that the passage of the Bill through the Commons and the discussion in the House of Lords have roused comparatively little public attention is being used by Liberal writers and speakers as a proof that the nation has " come round " on the question of Home Rule, and now approves the experiment, or, at any rate, is willing to acquiesce in its being tried. Those who entertain this view are living in a fool's paradise. The reason why there has been apparently so little public interest in the question is not conversion to Home Rule, but the knowledge that the House of Lords was certain to reject the Bill, and that therefore there was for the present no fear of its coming into operation. Let any sincere-minded person consider for a moment what would have been the feeling if there had been any danger of the House of Lords accepting the Bill or if the division had been likely to be a close one. Who can doubt that in such a case we should have had public interest enough and to spare ? Rightly or wrongly, it is the habit of Englishmen never to get excited about things which in any case are not going to happen till the year after next ? They deal with the needs of the moment, but refuse to look further, confident that they will be able to tackle the situations of the future when they arise. That such confidence often amounts to recklessness we fully admit, but our belief will not alter the habits of our countrymen. If, however, we ever reach the point where the House of Lords will have twice rejected the Home Rule Bill and the third reading of the measure is before the House of Commons, we can promise our Liberal friends that there will be plenty of stir in the country and that they will find no signs of apathy upon which to found theories of conversion. At present the House of Commons votes, and the country knows it votes, for Home Rule largely because it has the pleasant security that the House of Lords will save it from having to meet the bills so lavishly employed in purchasing the Nationalist Party. When, however, we get to determining whether this paper shall or shall not be met in hard cash, we shall, we venture to say, see a great change in the public mind. " You had no right to put out that paper in our names, and you shall not now accept it on our behalf," will then, we prophesy, be the decision of the English electors—a decision, too, which they will know how to enforce.
As a matter of fact, however, we are certain that the present Home Rule Bill will never come to the third time of asking in the House of Commons. Before that stage is reached there will be an appeal to the country, an appeal at which the essential issue will be the preservation of the legislative Union. We have always held that it would. ultimately prove to be to the interests of the Liberal Party to hold another general election before the final passage of the Home Rule Bill, and we have been confirmed in that belief by the very significant incident in regard to Ulster which took place recently in the Commons. During the course of the third reading debate and in the most public and formal way Mr. Asquith obtained from the leader of the Unionist Party a declaration that if the country were consulted on the Home Rule Bill at a general election, and if it gave its endorsement of that Bill, he should not feel justified in supporting Ulster in resistance to Homo Rule. He could not control and therefore of course could not answer for what the Ulster people might themselves do, but after such a result of a reference to the voters he and his party would not feel justified in giving assistance to Ulster. On the other hand he made it quite clear, and here we desire to associate ourselves whole-heartedly with Mr. Bonar Law, that if the Bill were passed under the Parliament Act without a further appeal to the country he and the Unionist Party would do all in their power to encourage and help the people of Ulster. Now note what happened next. Mr. Asquith, as Prime Minister, did not, as might have been expected, turn upon Mr. Bonar Law and denounce him as a potential rebel and traitor, a man who had announced that he intended not to observe what would be in every legal sense the law of the land. He made no effort to brand Mr. Bonar Law and the Unionist Party with the crime of rebellion. To encourage and incite men to resist the law is of course technically nothing less than rebellion. Instead he merely took a note, as it were, of the terms offered him by Mr. Bonar Law, folded it up, and put it into his pocket for further use.
In our opinion this shows that Mr. Asquith, though it would not be convenient for him to announce the fact just now, has decided in his own mind that there must be another appeal to the country before the Government takes in hand the coercion of Ulster. If that had not been the decision it would obviously have been Mr. Asquith's game to have made the most of Mr. Bonar Law's declaration that he meant to break, and help others to break, the law of the land. In other words, it is obvious that if the Prime Minister meant to face not only Ulster, but Ulster supported by the Opposition, he would have at once begun to take steps to make the nation realize that the policy of the Opposition meant civil war. To put the matter in another way. The Government know quite well from the confidential reports that they have received from Ulster that the Ulstermen really mean business. That, of course, does not necessarily imply surrender on the part of the Govern- ment. It does mean, however, that the Government are confronted with a grave difficulty. They desire to minimize the work of coercion before them. But if it is a question of making the work of coercion easier, it is clear that they must prefer to coerce an Ulster unsupported by the Unionist Party rather than an Ulster supported not only by men and money drawn from this side, but by a fierce Opposition campaign throughout the country. We must remember that an appeal to the country would not take the Bill out of the operation of the Parliament Act. A dissolution between the second and third time of asking would, granted the Liberal Party were successful, not even delay the passing of the Act. In a word, a dissolution at which the Government won would prove infinitely the most powerful and most practical instrument for coercing Ulster. Without such an electoral endorsement of coercion, the Government, we may be sure, feels at heart very doubtful of success. Who knows but that a great many Nonconformists who now vote for Homo Rule might suffer a sudden con- version when a thousand or so Ulster Protestants had been shot down in street fighting in Belfast. The present writer remembers a striking remark made to him by an American who could recall the outbreak of the war of the North and South. "There were thousands of us," he said, " who did not know till the first blood had been shed whether we were on the side of the North or the South. Directly the killing began we knew, and many of us were surprised to find that though we thought we were on the side of the South we were really Northerners." Mr. Asquith, we venture to say, is not unaware of this peculiarity in civil strife.
But, it may be urged, it cannot be Mr. Asquith's intention to dissolve before the third time of asking. By the very nature of the position, he is subservient to the Nationalists, and they, quick politicians as they are, would have realized what were the influences at work in the mind of the Premier, and by this time would have presented him with an ultimatum and obtained a pledge from him that there should be no dissolution before the final passage of the Bill. But in that case, as we have just pointed out, it would surely have been essential for Mr. Asquith to have stamped at once upon Mr. Bonar Law's declaration as to helping Ulster. By refraining from forcing the label of rebels and resisters to the law of the land on the Unionist Party, he showed his hand to those who watehed him closely. If the Nationalists approached him on this matter we expect that Mr. Asquith said in effect something of this kind : " You recognize as I do that the Ulster problem is our great difficulty. That difficulty might be got rid of if we were to exempt Ulster. But this you say is absolutely impossible, because the people of Ireland would not hear of the political disintegration of Ireland. So be it—but remember that this means that Home Rule must involve the coercion of Ulster. You know as well as I do that the coercion of Ulster will be no easy job, and that if we are forced to undertake it we had better do so at an advantage and not at a disadvantage. But clearly we shall have to do it at an enormous disadvantage if we have the Unionist Party attacking us in the rear. On the other hand, we shall coerce Ulster at a very great advantage if the people of this country have given us a, mandate to put the steam roller over the Ulstermen if they resist. In these circum- stances,. as sensible men you must surely see that the wise thing will be to get an endorsement of our Bill from the British people. If we get it, all will go well. If we can- not get it, the Bill will no doubt fail, but note that in that case it could not have stood anyhow, for its passage would have to be followed by a dissolution, and if we lost at that election the Home Rule Act would at once be repealed by our successors. Taking everything into consideration, the best chance for the firm establishment of Home Rule is to get our Bill endorsed by the country before and not after we have coerced Ulster."
Before we leave the subject of the Home Rule Bill we desire to say a word as to the curious argument employed by the Westminster Gazette, that " no one says now that there is no Irish question or prescribes the status quo with a dose of resolute government as the final word." Of course no one now says that there is no Irish question. As far as we know no sensible person ever has said that there was no Irish question, in the Westminster Gazette's meaning of the term. What Unionists have always said, and still say, is that the only true solution of the Irish question, which is with us now and has been with us for the last five hundred years, is the maintenance of the legislative Union and the political incorporation of the two islands. As we have pointed out again and again in these columns, the legislative Union came about not from any original sin on the part of Mr. Pitt and his colleagues, but simply and solely because every other plan for regulating the political relations between the two islands had been tried and had ended in misery, bloodshed, and confusion. Accordingly Pitt tried the Union, and although it has not as yet absolutely solved the Irish question, it has done what no other system of regulating our relations with Ireland ever did. It has preserved peace and order in Ireland for over a hundred years. It was not the Union but Grattan's Par- liament that brought on the hideous atrocities of the Irish rebellion of '98 and the well-nigh equally hideous atrocities with which that rebellion was put down. The Union brought peace, and its maintenance is bringing prosperity. The Union, in spite of everything that can be urged against it, is the form of government which divides Irishmen least. We make, then, the Westminster Gazette a present of the admission that there is an Irish question, but we also desire to remind it that Home Rule will not get rid of that question any more than the Union will. What it will do is to throw us back at once into the old condition of civil war from which the Union saved us. No doubt it will be a different form of civil war this time, but that will not alter the fact that it will be war. As we have told the Liberal Party again and again during the last four years, they have got, whether they like it or not, to face the Ulster question. Mr. Asquith has always realized this, and unless we are mistaken a great many of his supporters have individually already found it out. If it ever comes to bloodshed the remainder will on that day be enlightened. We venture to say, however, that it will not come to blood- shed, and for this reason. Before the Bill is passed under the Parliament Act there will be a dissolution, and at that dissolution the people of this country, in spite of the gross over-representation of Ireland, will decide that the Union shall be maintained and not destroyed.
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