SETTLEMENT BY CONSENT.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14843, 8 December 1913, Page 7

SETTLEMENT BY CONSENT.

MB ASQUITH ON THE SITUATION

PROSPECTS MORE HOPEFUL

SIR EDWARD CARSON" MAKES AN

OPENING

(By Cable.—Presc Asscciation.—Copyright.) (Received December 7th, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, December 6.

3Mr Asquith, speaking at Manchester, said there was a much more hopeful view of tho prospects of a settlement commanding the consent and goodwill of all parties on the basis of his Ladybank and Leeds speeches and Sir Edward Carson's latest lines, which suggested an avoidable humiliation of minority rulo, a remark which he was sure Sir Edward Carson' would agree also applied to majority rule. He agreed with Sir Edward Carson that there was a necessity of avoiding any possible separatist or any federal tendency. Hβ endorsed the younger Pitt's declaration that "the quality most needed in a Premier is not eloquence, knowledge, or industry, bufc patience." He deprecated short, if attractive, cute, and hurried and precipitate committals. Ho was not going to be hustled. Ho denied that in his Leeds speech he had withdrawn anything ho had said at Ladybank. Hβ had been vainly looking for weeks for some corresponding, not irreconcilable., statement on tho Opposition side, and had unexpectedly found it in Sir Edward Carson's latest speech at Manchester, in which he declared that no settlement must humiliate or degrade Ulster, that Ireland must not bo treated differently to any part of the United Kingdom, and musb have tho same protection tho Imperial Parliament affords, and that thero should be no Bill establishing tho foundation of ultimate separation.

i( I do not find anything in these general conditions with which in principle I am disposed to quarrel," said Mr Asquith. "Ireland's case is urgent, and must come first, but the Imperial Parliament's euprome and unquestionable authority,must be retained."

Liberals had supported Home Rule for a generation, because they believed that it was not a stepping-stone to, but a preventive of, Reparation. The Government was prepared to consider, with a view to meeting every reasonable objection, any stipulation in the Bill snch ns that relating to the Post Office, which Unionists considered had a separatist or anti-federal tendency.

"I regard Sir Edward Carson's declarations as a significant and hopeful feature of the situation," oontinued Mr Asquith, "and I cannot but express my belief, nay, my expectations, that a free and frank discussion on the lines indicated in my Ladybank speech, and in Six Edward Carson's Manchester speech, may lead, as -heaven grant it will, to what all desire, far more than a prolongation of this embittered controversy, namely, a settlement commanding the consent of all parties. Whether the minority's apprehensions are well or ill founded, they exist. They are genuinely and deeply felt, and constitute, until abated or removed, the one formidable obstacle to self government."