HOME RULE DEBATE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12748, 27 April 1912, Page 5

HOME RULE DEBATE.

LODON, April 20. Amid deafening, cheers from the Ministerial* benches m the House-of Commons on Tuesday the first reading of the Home Rule Bill was c&-ried.by]36Gijto 266. In the course of a savage attack that he msde on both the Bill. arid thp Government, Mr Boiiar Law, leader of the Opposition, declared t„hat ihe^people of Ulster were ready to lay ddwn their lives m their determination' to" resist Home Rule, "You cannot, .carry the bill," continued the Opposition leader, "without submitting it .to', fjlie people, ' and if you try, you will succ.ed m only breaking the Governriierit! machine.' This bill has been introduced .(because the Government is dependent upon Irish ■votes. The 'Trime • Minister gave a , solemn pledge that he; would reform the ' House of Lords, but -'that debt of honor must wait un,til he has paid the debt of shame to Mr Redmond." !Mr T. P. O'Connor said he had never heard of the danger of religious persecution m the south and west of Ireland, where 'Protestants were m a minority. If Catholics were disposed to persecute the Protestants would ; i^ot tlie persecution be resorted to m those parts where Urotestants were m a minority? "What is> a fact," declared _tlr O'Connor, "is that all these charges of religious persecution are one of the emptiest, meanest, and most lying calumnies ever- heard."