ULSTER.

Manawatu Standard, 2 October 1913, Page 5

ULSTER.

GOVERNMENT AGAINST COMPROMISE. NO RESPONSE TO OPPOSITIONAPPEALS. (Bt Electric Tblegbaph—Coptbiqit.) (Peb PBESS ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, Oct, 1. No decision on the Home Rule question ;s likely until Cabinet meets. Libera] circles in London !>eliove the Government does not contemplate making any approaches to the Opposition. Strong current opinion in the Liberal party is averse to a conference. AN APPEAL 10 THE PEOPLE. PROMINENT UNIONIST DESPAIRS OF CONFERENCE. LONDON. Oct. 1. Lord St. Aldwyn (who. as Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, was a noted Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Salisbury regime), in a letter to the press, states that he has had a personal bias towards settlement by consent, instancing the Irish Church Act of 1369 and the Reform Act of 1885. In those cases, however, both parties were agreed on the principle at issue, but there was no such accepted basis for a conference on Home Rule. He asks how could the Government depart from the principle of an autonomous Ireland, or Unionists accept a principle to which they have been opposed for twentyseven years. Even if the Nationalists were agreed to the exclusion of Ulster, he felt sure that the Ulster Protestants would never yield their weak and scattered co-religionists to a denomination which they dreaded themselves. Therefore he did not anticipate any useful result from a conference. There wi's room to find an escape from the mischief going on in Ulster, and both parties ought to discuss the possibility of eliciting the country's judgment with a guarantee that if the judgment was favourable to Home Rule the House of Lords would not impose any obstacle to the passing of the law in 1914. This would obviate the passing of the Bill under the terms of the Parliament Act, which was odious to Unionists and was largely the cause of the present trouble. Welsh Disestablishment could similarly l>e treated. No responsible Minister could contend that Home Rule should- become law if the majority of the people were opposed to it.