MR ASQUITH’S REAL TROUBLE.

Evening Star, Issue 14635, 3 August 1911, Page 5

MR ASQUITH’S REAL TROUBLE.

Why do .the Irish party “accept” what tliev know can never satisfy them ? To say the least (says the special correspondent of tho ‘Morning Post’), it is suspicious. The Grattan Parliament secured ite independence by its volunteers marching through Dublin with their cannon labelled “ Freetrad© or speedy revolution ” when England was getting beaten in the American war, ami now when the Irish party, are accepting another maimed Legislature we have their paymasters in America boasting of their scheme to fight with Germany against the British. Do the Irish party depend on that for what they cannot get the Radicals to put in tho Home Rule Bill, and if so have their Ministerial allies been taken into confidence ? It ia hardly a scheme to which a Prime Minister of England ought to be a party, even unknowingly. The only other motive that one can conceive for Mr Redmond’s acceptance is to get hie Parliament from the Freetraders With Irish representation at Westminster, and then to join with the Tariff Reformers in getting it reconstructed for a free Irish market in Great Britain, and the largest possible import duties on food products imported from elsewhere. That would bo awkward for the Freetraders, and if they have power to create an Irish Parliament, the Tariff Reformers must have power to amend its constitution when their time comes. Should the Liberals really start an Irish Parliament, they had better be ~careful that, it does not end in destroying the most valued aims of Liberalism. With the incidence cf Ireland’s external taxation reserved to Westminster the Irishmen still there would be Protectionists almost to a man, and the subject of thoir own incidence would b© one on which they could not well be prevented from voting. Egaasasa