IRISH HOME RULE BILL

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1912, Page 6

IRISH HOME RULE BILL

THE FOUR COUNTIES AMENDMENT.

REJECTED BY 59 VOTES

[PER PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT.]

LONDON, June 19.

In (he House of Commons there was a heated debate on the Hon. T. C. AgarRobartes’ amendment to the Home Rule Bill to exclude Antrim, Armagh, Down and Londonderry from the Bill. The Right Hon. Augustin© Birrell, said that it was abshrd to suppose that the Government regarded lightly the possibility of a civil war, but they did not believe that any Ulster man thought his life and liberty in danger. Mr. Bonar Law said that the Government dared not employ troops to expel Ulstermen from the Union. r ■ Any Government giving such on order would run the risk of , being lynched in London. The Amendment was. rejected by 320 votes to 251. Messrs Pinie, Sir Clifford Cory, Right Hon. K. 0. Munro—Ferguson, and William Henry Cowan supported the motion. Thirteen laborites were absent. WILL ULSTER FIGHT? A correspondent of the ‘‘Westminster Gazette” gives the following impression of the attitude of Ulster towards Home Rule: “Those who talk most glibly about the determination of Belfast to resist Home Rule by force speak in the language of the Belfast of the past. For a great change has already come over the thriving city of northern Ireland. The town is realising itself as a place of importance and of dignity which can no' longer afford to indulge in the pranks of hot-headed youth. Belfast with its magnificent city hall, its streets of rich shops, and its notable public buildings, would be a city to sack, but the citizens themselves have the strongest objection to any public movement w'’ eh endangers the proparty. ‘A iMt here means that our windows are broken and our shops are looted,’ said a tradesman in one of the principal thoroughfares. Ther© can he little surprise that the man who talks loudly about what will be done if a Home Rule Bill is passed goes home and, ;surveying his possession, prays that the older temper will not be again born in the people. ... | “One cannot but think of the whole proceedings in connection with Mr. Churchill's visit to Belfast without feeling that . there is a deep-seated change in the chief city of Ulster. The religious feud is not so potent as it was despite evey effort to keep it alive. Belfast is less turbulent and more responsible. It was not for nothing that the whole of the engineers of violence came from outside the city. Few people in Belfast have any fixed belief that the town would rise against Home Rule. Turbulence, if it comes, will come from the more rural districts which have not had the educative, influences at work in a great industrial area. There the old spirit of antagonism is still kept alive as a fiery flame, fanned by the heated blasts from Unionist leaders which can be studied in the long reports of their speeches in the Ulster papers. Belfast is too occupied with its own affairs, too confident of itself, to lie readily stirred to any movement which would endanger its prosperity. The feuds which will arise in Belfast are far more likely to spring from conflicts between capital and labour than from religious or political differences. And the Belfast citizen in his moments of quiet talk reveals himself as conscious of that truth.”