THE HOME RULE BILL

New Zealand Tablet, 23 May 1912, Page 15

THE HOME RULE BILL

SECOND READING CARRIED The following cable messages, regarding the Home Rule Bill, appeared in the daily papers during the past week : May 8. The Nonconformist Liberal members of the House >f Commons have approved of the religious safeguards ,n regard to the Home .Rule Bill, and have thanked he; Government for the disendowment of Wales. In the House of Commons Mr. Austen Chamberain denied that the Home Rule Bill was the remedy ! dr congestion in the House of Commons. He said ihey would have to continually thresh out questions vhich had been settled in Dublin, with the added comilication that this action would mean the reversal of he decision of a semi-independent Parliament. The nilitary danger was profound, and the financial danger vas great. Replying to Sir Rufus Isaacs, he said he yas not prepared to advise others to rim into danger. Mr. Samuel declared that he was glad that Mr. Chamberlain had repudiated the frenzied appeals to esort to violence. . May 10. In the House of Commons the Home Rule Bill was ead a second time, by 372 to 271, after the application f the closure.

Sir Clifford Cory (Liberal member for St. Ives) voted against the Bill, and Sir George Kemp (Liberal member for North-West Manchester) abstained from voting. Mr. W. F. Cotton (Nationalist) left the hospital, and was carried into the ayes lobby. Two hundred members of the Irish League, with the Irish Nationalists and other members of the House of Commons, accorded Mr. Asquith an ovation when he appeared in Palace Yard. In the course of the debate Mr. J. E. Redmond stated that underlying all the arguments against the Bill there was the assumption that all parties to the new treaty would be animated by ,a feeling of malice, instead of by a desire to make the best of things. It would be to Ireland’s highest interest to safeguard her new Constitution and to work it with moderation. -o': Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald alluded to his visits to the colonies, where he had seen the healing effects of. self-government. j:' Mr. Bonar Law said no proof of Ulster’s unalterable opposition would satisfy the Government until there had been bloodshed. The Government had arrogated to itself the exclusive right to judge the opinion of that electorate. , It was not a constitutional but a dictatory Government, V Mr. Asquith replied that federation was necessary fop the whole of the United Kingdom, but the claim of Ireland to self-government was paramount. In the House of Commons Mr. Rothschild, the Conservative member for Aylesbury, gave notice of an amendment exempting Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Londonderry from the operation of the Home Rule Bill. There are several other amendments, including one making the Senate an elective body on the proportional representation principle. . ' A-: 1 1 At a conference of the Nonconformists’ Unionist Association held in London the Lord Mayor of Belfast said he did not believe that Home Rule would lead to war, but if it did there were 300,000 Ulster men who would be ready in three- days to fight as did their ancestors who defended Londonderrv. May 11. After the second : reading division Mr. Redmond was introduced, for the first time, to Lady Frederick Cavendish, widow of a victim of the Phoenix Park outrage, who warmly congratulated him on his triumph m a cause she had so long had at heart. Speaking at Liverpool, the President of the Board of Agriculture (Mr. Runciman) said that Great Britain had made up her mind concerning Irish Home - Rule. The feeling was against mild, half-sleep measures, and the second reading division on the Bill showed a clear British majority of 31 in its favour. That; he believed was an underestimate of the country’s, feeling, xr Notice of . 100-amendments has been given on the Home Rule Bill. These include its postponement until after a general election, the adoption of the referendum the exclusion of Ulster, and no payment of members. t