FROM THE ARCHIVES:The Home Rule Bill passed its major hurdle in the House of Commons, its second reading, by a comfortable majority of 100 votes, as The Irish Times London correspondent reported. –
JOE JOYCE
THIS WAS the fateful day of the Home Rule controversy, for the second reading of a Bill furnishes the date from which the two years run after which a Bill can receive the Royal Assent in spite of the House of Lords.
It was known that several Parliamentary “stars” would figure in the debate. But neither in the House of Commons nor in the galleries was there a specially large audience. Mr. [John] Redmond had a fair audience when he rose at 3.53. I mention the minute particularly for a reason which will appear later.
Mr. Redmond has made dozens of good speeches in the House of Commons, which he longs to desert. At the outset of his speech he promised to be brief, and he kept his word. At 4.23 he sat down, having spoken for half an hour. The consequence was that he had no time for the repetitions and redundant perorations that sometimes spoil the effect of what he says. It was a good illustration of the improvement that might be wrought in Parliamentary debate by the enforcement of a time limit.
Ireland, he considered, had no cause to be dissatisfied with the debate. Her right to manage her own affairs had been generally conceded in principle. All the criticisms had been directed to the details of the Bill, and they had been mostly based upon the assumption that, after the Irish people had obtained “this great charter of liberty,” they would set to work to wreck it – in other words, that they were “a nation of fools.”
He maintained, on the contrary, that the moment Home Rule was passed the old controversies would be ended. The Home Rule party, having done its work, would disappear, and new parties would develop. In one sense, the Bill was not final, for it was admittedly the first step to a federal system. Meanwhile, the Nationalists accepted the Bill “in absolute good faith.”
England would be well advised to accept it also, for in doing so she would, in all parts of the civilised world, turn enemies into friends. Mr. T. W. Russell followed. As was to be expected, he was a good deal interrupted by his former colleagues in the Unionist party, but gave as good as he got. Nothing was heard now, he said, of the isolated Protestants in the South and West.
They might not be enthusiastic about Home Rule, but they were prepared “to acquiesce in it.” Ulster Unionists declared that if Home Rule passed they would “hold their four counties against the Crown,” but he did not believe it. They talked of resisting the taxation. Were they, then, going to stop drinking whiskey? He would be delighted if they would [Russell was also a temperance campaigner]. These threats did not move him, because he remembered just the same sort of language being used about Irish Disestablishment [of the Church of Ireland], yet nothing came of it.