HOME RULE BILL

Evening Star, Issue 17350, 12 May 1920, Page 6

HOME RULE BILL

THE CRUCIAL STAGE. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. Imperial News Service. LONDON, May. 10. (Received May 12, a* 12.10 p-m.) The House of Commons has entered the Committee stage on the Home Rule Bill. Before the discussions opened, the Chairman of Committees ruled out a number of amendments embodying alternative schemes as equivalent to negativing the Bill, but permitted Mr Asquith to move an amendment providing for a single Irish Parliament with county option far Ulster for a limited period of six years on the lines of the 1914 Act.. Mr Asquith maintained that the duplication of Parliaments, the Executives, and the Judiciaries, gave every opportunity for friction. The Govemment'a plan -was not countenanced by any section of Irish opinion, and would not be a stoppingstone to Irish unity. Mx Bonar Law emphaticallv asserted that Mr Asquith did not realise all that had happened, during the last six years. While it was true that the Irish members had not voted on the Government's Bill. it, was equally true that they would have opposed Mr Asquith's proposal. Ulster's attitude was an immense advance on the 1914 Act. _ Whereas Ulster then insisted on exclusion, it now accepted local government for the whole of Ireland. Mr Bonar Law stressed the extent to which the Government had suffered from the unformed foreign and Dominion comment, which asked : " Why not let Ireland govern herself?'' If th» Government's proposals were adopted we could say to Ireland and the world: "We have given you as generous a measure of local government as we think possible on conditions which mean that the moment. Irishmen can agree among themselves they can have it completely in one Parliament." The Government's object was to make rnity easier.

Sir Edward Carson regarded the six-year proposal a3 retrograde and impracticable, although he detected the idea of breaking up the Parliament of the United Kingdom. He pledged himself in the interests of an attempt at peace that Ulster would do its best to work its Parliament if enacted. Mr Asquith's amendment was defeated bv 25S votes to 55.