Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 1893. THE HOME RULE BILL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3051, 14 August 1893, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 1893. THE HOME RULE BILL.

" Final arrangements have been made in the Houeb of Lords for the debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bil 1." So runs the latest despatch by cable in regard to the Bill and the House of Lords. What will be the fate of the Bill in the Upper House is matter of mere conjecture of course, but as the straws in the air indicate how the wind blows, go there are not wanting indications of the drift of things when the Lords come to handle Home Rule. The Unionists, but especially the old Conservative Unionist?, appear to be allowing the clauses which they wished to have added to the Bill to go by the board, and to be withdrawing from the fight, leaving Mr Gladstone an easier path to the end of the trouble on the floor of the House of Commons. This quieting down of the fighting men on the Opposition side we do not for a moment regard as m sign ! that these warriors accept the situation as one of final defeat for themselves. Had they been satisfied that the end was to be reached only in the House of Commons, the war would have been carried on to the bitter end, and every possible log of obstruction would have been flung before the wheels of the Home Rule chariot in its course through the House of Commons. The Opposition know that the really decisive fight will now begin, and we judge that they feel safe as to the result and have ceased useless obstruction in the Lower House. Should the Lords reject the Bill, it seems to us that an appeal to the country must inevitably follow, and the issue put before the country would be the single one of " the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill" or—nothing. It is not easy to point how such an issue would be decided. But it is easy to show that every year's delay brings the Grand Old Man nearer and nearer to that point at which he must, in obedience to the law of nature, step out from the leadership of his party and leave the guidance of this great movement to younger hands. The Unionists have all along held that the support given by the House of Commons to Home Rule is given less to the principle contended for than to the leader who contends for it. An appeal to the country on this single issue would be watched with tremendous interest, more especially after such a record as this session will add to the history of the nation. During the session the ablest orators on both sides have spoken, and while the main body of the people have long been familiar with the intense desire of the Nationalist party for an Irish autonomy, it was left for the events of this session to show how bitter was the aversion of the other side to the gratification of that desire. 3he intensity of this bitterness was a revelation to many who easily accepted—from the Nationalist point of view— the right of the Irish people to manage their own domestic legislation, and this revelation iray be a strong factor one way or the other in the election. But should the Lords, as we fear they will, throw out the Bill, occasion will be given to the extreme Radicals to initiate another movement which, though it has never yet taken any real form, may on this occasion assume not only form but substance—amovementdirected against the House of Lords itself, and threats in this direction have already been made in quarters not by any means destitute of influence.