The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1912. THE HOME RULE BILL.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1413, 13 April 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1912. THE HOME RULE BILL.

, At last, fifteen months after the ! general election that placed the British Government at Mit. Redmond's mercy, the Home Rule Bill is introduced. It is a more notable event in every way than the introduction of the Bill of 18S6 or that of 1893. Although we are amongst those who, sympathising to the full with the need for a better government of Ireland, yet cannot share the belief that Home Rule will be an unalloyed blessing to Ireland or the Empire, we must nevertheless recognise, and we do recognise, that the passioilate persistency of the Home Rule idea, nourishing through all tho events of over thirty intense and crowded years, has a significance that sets it apart from and above the mass of specific political questions. The summary of the Bill which is cablcd to us does not contain aiiy surprise: the general expectation of what the Bill would contain is pretty fully confirmed. The principles upon which tho measure is modelled are by no means clear: Ireland is to Gear to England neither the relation of Quebec to Canada nor of Now Zealand to Great Britain. The Federal principle is certainly there in a mangled shape. There is to bo an Irish representation at Westminster as well as an Irish House'and Senate, and a lino has been drawn between the Imperial matters reserved to the British Parliament and the local matters left to Irish control. Those matters which are retained as Imperial, beyond the control of the Irish Parliament, arc: Crown and Imperial affairs, the Navy and Army, the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act, old age pensions, national insurance, the constabulary, the Post Office Savings Bank, and the collection of Imperial taxes. Britain, that is to sa.y, is to perform, at the cost of the British taxpayer, the largest Irish services. Mr. Asquith also explained_ that the cost of collecting "tho Irish revenue" is to be borne by the British taxpayer, and that over And above all there is to be an initial subvention of £500,000 a year for Ireland.

Nobody can possibly complain that the financial treatment of Ireland proposed in the Bill is anything less than astoundingly generous. Its very generosity, indeed—the burden it places upon the British taxpayeris likely to prove the strongest card in the hand of the opponents. of Home _ Utile. The provision of an Imperial power of veto is, of course, only natural: they are only a small and fanatical group amongst the Nationalists who have ever imagined that Ireland could be granted unlimited power to loose or bind. Equally indispensable, too, was the secularisation of the new Irish Constitution: nothing short of a very rigid system of religious safeguards could have any hope of obtaining even a hearing. In Gladstone's Bill of 188G it was nroposod that the Irish Parliament should consist of two Orders sitting and voting togetherone Order to consist of 103 members, namely, the 28 representative Peers, and 75 members elected for ten years on a £25 franchise, and the other to consist of 204 members elected as at present, two from each constituency. Either Order could by a majority, if it wished, veto the action of ' the other—the veto to be terminated after three years or by a dissolution. The powers of this curious Parliament were to be much-the same as are proposed in Me. Asquith's Bill, and Ireland was to contribute abolit £2,000,000 a year to the Imperial Exchequer. Ireland was also to have no _ representation at Westminster. This Bill was rejected by the House of Commons, and it was not until 1893 that Mu. Gladstone tried again. The Bill of 1893 was in its broad lines like Mr. Asquith's Bill—there was to be an Irish Senate of 48 members and a House of 103 members. The existing taxes were, however, to remain under Imperial control for six years, and Customs and Excise were to be permanently beyond the purview of the Irish Legislature. Ireland's contribution to the Imperial Exchequer was so scaled as to amount to over two millions and a quarter a year. Moreover, 80 Irish members were to sit at Westminster, under an "in and out" arrangement which would prevent the Irish members from voting on purely English or Scotch questions. This Bill was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the House of Lords, the rejection being justified by a great Gladstonian defeat at the polls in ) 1895.

The outlook for Mn. Asquitu's Bill cannot be regarded as at all In-ight. It has to face at least two years of intense discussion, with the tide already running strongly against the Government. In order to carry the Bill even through the Commons, in the face of the opposition which it will encounter, Mr, Asquitii will have to make Home Rule the main, and almost the sole, policy of the Liberal party, and this just at the time when the dominant wing of Liberalism is impatient of any obstruction of what is callcct the "social reform" movement. Most of the advanced Liberals have accepted Home Rule as an appendix of Liberal policy, and they will he iudis-

posed to see the Government's onergins conccnl rated upon nil alien mpaBitro to t.ho disadvantage of the Radisal programme. There is in the Lib'

oral party also, on the other hand, ,i moderate section who, while not greatly concerning themselves with the bearings of Home Rule cm constitutional development, will not look kindly upon any arrangement that savours of penalising one part of the United Kingdom for the financial benefit of another part. >So fai as New Zealanders are concerned, (lie whole question is of actual interest only in so far as it is likely to influence the orbit of the Empir,e as a whole. There is a possibility, that is to say, that the controversy may at last involve British Liberal statesmanship in the theory that Ireland is an Imperial province, and that all the Imperial provinces should, for consistency's sake, he

linked to a common legislative centre. We believe, as we have often said, that Imperial Federation will carry with it the risk of Imperial ruin ; and we can see the danger that "Federal Home Rule" for the British Isles will swell and develop to an Empire-wide scope. This is a danger which will almost disappear if Irish representation at Westminster is excluded from the Home Rule scheme, Speculation at this stage, however, is unnecessary, for there are plainly ahead of us two years of fierce- fighting over the whole question,