THE HOME RULE BILL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 36, 5 October 1912, Page 4

THE HOME RULE BILL.

The reports 'of the celebration of Ulster Day in Ireland, as cabled, indicate that the hostility of a great section of Irishmen against the granting of Home Rule continues unabated. It was in April, 1886, that the first Home Rule Bill was introduced, in the House of Commons by Mr Gladstone, and it caused great dissension and a split in the Liberal ranks. After a very stormy debate the measure was thrown out by 313 votes to 313. In 1903 the second Home Rule Bill came before Parliament, and the opposition to it was powerful! and energetic. Petitions of protest against the Bill were sent to the Government from all the Parliamentary divisions of Ulster. The visit of Mr Balfour to Belfast in April, 1893, gave a great impetus to the Unionist movement, and hi® reception at Belfast was unparalleled for excitement and enthusiasm. The fight over the Bill continued until September, when it was thrown out by the Lords, only 41 peers voting for it while 419 were against it. With the Unionists in office the question remained in abeyance, but when the Liberals came back to power in 1906, the question of Home Rule again came to the fore, though it did not receive the immediate attention of the Government, The struggle over the veto of the House of Lords, which followed Mr Lloyd George’s famous budget, was a strenuous one, and having curtailed the power of the Lords it was not astonishing to find that the Government were determined to make another effort to pass a measure to g : ve Home Rule to Ireland. The Bill against which Ulstermen are now demonstrating was introduced by Mr Asquith in April of thi® year in fulfillment of a bargain made with the Nationalists, whose support of the Lords’ Veto Bill was, it is stated, secured on the promise of a Home Rule B 11. This Bill has met with as determined resistance as the earlier measures, much bitterness being shown and many threats of strife to follow being made.