HOME RULE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 55, 6 March 1914, Page 7

HOME RULE

BILL INTRODUCED GOVERNMENT AMENDMENTS TO BE READY ON TUESDAY. (By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright.) (Received March 6, 10 a.m.) LONDON, sth March. Mr. Birrell has introduced the Home Rule Bill. There were loud Ministerial and Nationalist cheers. Mr. Asquith informed Mr. Bonar Law that the Government's proposed amendments to the Bill will be ready for circulation on Tuesday. There is -little doubt that Mr. Asquith's Home Rule proposals will have ' Mr. Redmond's concurrence, though there are some Ministerialist fears of the attitude of the Nationalist Convention if called on to sanction the changes. Lord Dunraven, in a letter to the press, says that a fair chance of settlement is only obtainable by referring Mr. Asquith's proposals to a conference on the lines of Lord Loreburn's suggestion. Coercion is impossible, and the exclusion of Ulster unthinkable. A general election would be useless as a solution. Lord Hugh Cecil, in a letter, says that the difficulty in the way of a conference is insuperable. He draws an analogy between General Botha's action irt South Africa and possible happen-, ings in Ireland as creating two centres of sovereignty. He says that nobody will deny that the deportations were altogether indefensible. Nobody can be^blind to the outrageous scandal of the infliction of perpetual exile by retrospective enactment. The true sovereignty lies with the South African Parliament and General Botha, not with the British Crown. Such are the consequences of Home Rule.