THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, MARCH S, 1920. THE HOME RULE BILL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17874, 3 March 1920, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, MARCH S, 1920. THE HOME RULE BILL.

There is no apparent ground upon which the hope may be based that the latest Bill providing for a measure rf self-government in Ireland will prove acceptable to Ireland herself. It may bo that, as has been claimed for it, tho scheme embodied in the Bill is less open to objection than any Home Rule scheme that has ever been presented. It represents a well-meant effort to reconcile the conflicting elements in Ireland. But, as far as can be judged, these elements are as irreconcilable as they were at any time in the past. None of them wants the Bill. The Sinn Feiners have not abated their wild demand for separation from Great Britain. The Irish Nationalists, who do not at the present time possess a great deal of influence in their own country, have, through Mr Devlin, expressed a desire for " complete self-government," presumably on the plan, favoured by the Labour party, in accordance with which the dominions exercise the right of selfgovernment. Between this policy and that of the Sinn Fein party there is a gap so wide as to be unbridgeable. The Protestants of Ulster wish to be left alone. They do not desire Home Rule at all. But if there is to be Home Rule, they argue that they should havo their own Parliament w>>m the people of the rest of Ireland have theirs. The Government accepts this plea as valid. Its jISiII proposes the establishment of two Irish j Parliaments, one in the north and tho other in the south. It was to be gathered from the speech in which Mr Lloyd George outlined the Government's programme in the House of Commons 011 December 22 that the original design was that the Northern Parliament should havo for its sphere all that part of North-East Ireland which is homogeneous and the. Southern Parliament should have for its sphere all the rest of Ireland, every opportunity and encouragement being offered to these tivo Parliaments to link up through the medium of a Council of Ireland of forty members, composed of twenty from each Parliament. The proposal for partition was one that, however commendable in principle, was plainly open to serious criticism in its application. Tho comment upon it by ihe Dublin correspondent of The Times emphasises the great weakness in it: A new Ulster ia about to bo created, more homogeneous and less likely to tec Scro&erQ Ireland than the whole

historic province would liavo been. Fierce passions will bo roused with tho task of demarcation. There is a Roman Catholic district in Antrim, lying away beside the sea, which cannot be joined up with its congeners. Similar outlying Prolesfan t bolts doubtless occur, but Derry is the storm centre. Situated on tho Donegal bank of tho Foyle, virtually in a Roman Catholio county, its population has a Roman Catholic majority of some thousands. Can historic tradition or Iho distribution of wealth weigh against tho count of heads? Yet is an Ulster province conceivable with Derry left out?

For these considerations it was forcibly argued that it" would bo more prudent as well as more statesmanlike to maße the old Ulster tho unit. This argument seems to have impressed Mr Lloyu George, for it has now been indicated from, several sources that tho Government will propose to make " a clean cut " of the six Protestant counties of Ulster. But tho adoption of this proposal will be vehemently opposed by Nationalists as well as by Sinn Feiners, and while it is not desired by the Ulster Protestants, who would rather be more closely incorporated than they are with Great Britain, it affords cold comfort to the Southern Unionists. The Government's action in submitting a fresh scheme of self-government for Ireland at the present time impresses by its boldness rather than by anything else, for, as the Daily Telegraph observed when Mr Lloyd George expounded the proposals, this measure of Home Rule'fs put forward at a time when not merely disorder and contempt of law, but robbery and assassination are the order cf the day, and the country is honeycombed with secret societies fropi which no man's life is safe. That a plan of self-government should be proposed insuch circumstances by the Government of the day is something entirely new in the development of the Irish question, and is the most striking proof imaginable of the change which has taken place in British opinion on this subject.