HOME RULE AND AFTER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 97, 28 August 1913, Page 4

HOME RULE AND AFTER.

In discussing Home Rule the other day the “Nation” remarks: —.It would be strange if, at this hour, any statesman of any party should set his seal to revolutionary courses. Grave issues of Government are at our gate. We can hardly proceed to create a Second Chamber before we have de-

cidod what matters we will submit tc it, and what is to he the future constitution of the House of Commons. How can the question of powers be settled while the problem of devolution opened by Irish Home Rule re-

mains in the air? . . . Grant of local autonomy to Ireland brings to I the front the claims of. Scotland, i Wales, and England, whose case will Ibe that Ireland possesses an undue | share of constitutional power. Ti those claims are set aside so far as the

I actual grant of local legislatures is i concerned, then a large change in flu | organisation of the House of Com- ! moms, so akS to give some real weight ito the principle and the needs of

j nationality, is indispensible. If they | are fully admitted, and a plan of dependent' assemblies is developed, beginning with Scottish Home Rule, the historic House of Commons, and -with jit the party system, and many of the I personalities who direct it, disappear,

I and a new scheme of politics, with an appeal to fresh instruments and I methods of national thought and Im- | penal will, must emerge from the

wreck. These are wide possibilities; (and if any of them are to follow Home j Rule, it us time to set to work on jthem. The .method of a non-party conference issuing from the Commons

lias already been commended by a| Liberal member; and, whatever form the Constitution is to assume, it seems essential that the free intelligence and will of Parliament should be exercised upon it, and that at no distant date.