NEW LEADER OF THE HOUSE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 78, 2 April 1914, Page 7

NEW LEADER OF THE HOUSE

SIR EDWARD GREY. COERCION A GRAVE, SERIOUS, AND OMINOUS THING. LONDON, Ist April. The second reading of the Home Rule Bill was taken in the House of Commons to-day. * Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary, speaking as Leader of the House, said that he did not know that the last word had been absolutely said by the Government, but beyond the six years' exclusion | of Ulster they were not prepared to go. j The country must settle the question at the end of the six years. The Government would not agree to any settlement that did nob place the Bill on the Statute Book. . Force had nob provided a solution in the past. He (Sh 1 Edward Grey) looked with the gravest reluctance— almost despair — to any solution of the Ulster problem by i force. Embarkation on a policy of actual coercion to make Ulster submit to an authority which she was determined to i resist by force was a grave, serious, and ominous thing. He had never contemplated the use of force until after an election. He could not conceive of any Government embarking on such a policy j without consulting the country. If a I provisional Government were established in Ulster, or a disturbance occurred before the Irish Parliament was established^ the Army must uphold the authority of the frown. If ever the Army, or any large section of me Army, took_ active sides between the political parties, the country would be faced by a more serious and a graver question than had been known for three centuries. Lord Hugh Cecil said that if the Government definitely and precisely put forward a proposal in. regard to the exclusion of Ulster by consent, it might be that both sides were agreed to the principle and differed only as to the machinery. The Unionists were as opposed as ever to Home Rule, but anything would be better than dissolution by civil war.