LIBERALS & HOME RULE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1098, 10 April 1911, Page 5

LIBERALS & HOME RULE.

SPEECH BY MR. BALFOUR.

AN IMPUDENT AND COMPLICATED PLOT.

THE POLICY DENOUNCED.

Uy Telegraph—Press Association-Copyriebt London, April 7. Mr. Balfour, Leader oi tne in a speech delivered to turee inousauu youthlul members oi the Junior Imperial iicaguo at Lambeth Baths, said lie did not blame tho Nationalists for consenting to swallow the budget and other unpalatable closes provided tho Government nauded over tho country to a single chamber which would carry Home Kuic. Such a plot was too complicated and too impudent for the ordinary elector to grasp. The question was; What was the Government doing to replace Gladstonian Homo Eule? At the. first blush, the Government's suggestion to give the United Kingdom a constitution not differing fundamentally from those of the great colonial democracies might appeal to the Imperial instincts of Britons. The overseas dominions had, however, moved from separation to centralisation, but the Government was favouring a policy with regard to Home Rule which was the precise converse of that which had made a great Australia, , a great Cape Colony, a great Canada, and a great Germany,

IRISH MEMBER RESIGNS IN , PROTEST. (Rec. April 9, 5.5 p.m.) London, April 8. Moreton Trewen, Independent Nationalist member for Cork Cuunty (N.E.), has resigned his sent. He stales that he has taken this step as he is convinced that the Veto Bill will prove a repellant method of winning English opinion to the support of Home Rule. GOVERNMENT POLICY DEFINED.. MR. ASQUITH ON "TRUE IMPERIALISM." Speaking in the House of Commons on lebruary 15 Mr. Asrjuith, in reply to charges that tho Liberal policy with regard to Home Rule was obscure, quoted a number of speeches in which he had dealt with the matter, and many others that were delivered at the Albert Hajl, London, in December, 1909. The passage ran: "Speaking on behalf of the Government in March of last year, I described Ireland as tho on» undeniablo failure of British statesmanship. I repeat here to-night what I said then—speaking on behalf of my colleagues and I believe of my party —a solution of the problem can be found in only one way, by a policy which, while expressly safeguarding tiie sunrome and indefeasible authority of tho Imperial Parliament, will set up in Ireland a system of full self-government with regard to purely ■ Irish affairs. There is not, and there cannot be, any question of separation. There is not, and-there cannot bo, any question of a rival or competing supremacy. But, subject to those conditions, that is the Liberal policy. For reasons which I believe to be adequate the present Parliament was disabled in advance from proposing any such solution in tho new House of Commons, but the hands of the next Liberal Government with a Liberal majority will be in this matter entirely free."

"It is the policy,"; said tlic:.Pi:imft..Hin-_ ister in concluding his speech, "which has been applied over and over again in every part of the Empire. Seventy years ago it was applied 'in Canada. Upper and Lower Canada were'just as much'at issue then as Ulster has been with the rest of Ireland at any time in her history. It has been applied in our own time under our own eyes within the last few years in South Africa. What is the result there? Why should not the same remedy, ffhich has been applied with so much success —that is to say, the combination of complete local autonomy with Imperial supremacy—why should not that remedy be applied at home and at our own doors? I confess I do not understand, and never did understand, the argument that this was a policy of separation and disintegration. I; look, and have always looked, at it from an entirely different point of view. I believe it follows strictly on tho lines of our Imperial and constitutional development. Wo see, or we look forward to seeing, French and English, Boer and Briton, Celt and Saxon, each bringing his tributary to mingle their confluent waters on the stream of Imperial unity—one throne, one empire, one people, diverse in origin and in race, all alike charged and endowed in the fullest measure with liberty and responsibility of self-povernnient in their own local affairs. Onp people in the sense that they are one in heart and in snirit—that surely is the goal of really true Imperialism, and it is to that goal that our steps are set."