The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1913. HOME RULE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 207, 21 January 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1913. HOME RULE.

The Home Rule Bill luis passed its final stage in the House of Commons, and has already been read a first time in the House of Lords. This, of course, is only a preliminary canter, and means nothing more than that it has been introduced in the Upper Chamber. The Unionists offered a last protest on the motion for the rejection of the Bill, but. ar. was confidently anticipated, tliey were well "sent for" on a division, and. the formality was only interesting from the fact that Mr. Balfour, instead of Mr. Bonar Law, was selected to cross swords with Mr. Asquith. Mr. Balfour was deposed from the leadership because his methods wore not sufficiently militant to please the impetuous section of the Unionists, but his services are still demanded when a difficult problem iias to be solved or an awkward corner turned, and his party has just been saved from disruption by the readoption of the tariff reform policy. His feelings, and those of Mr. Bonar Law, must have been strangely mixed when he faced the House last week as the spokesman of the Party. The fate of his motion of rejection was. of course, a foregone conelusion, and the action of the Peers, too, i

can be predicted with soma. degree of certainty. The Bill will ultimately be rejected l>y the hereditary Chamber by a very large majority, after the Party leaders have made formal speeches on the second reading. Then the House of Commons will be asked to pass the measure again in a session to be held later in the year; and the Peer?, if they have the courage of their expressed convictions, will throw it out a second time. After that the provisions of tlie Parliament Act will operate, and the representative Chamber will be able to place the Bill on the Statute Book without the consent of the House of Lordsj providing that an interval of two years has elapsed since it was first passed. The Conservative leaders and newspapers at Home profess to believe that the position of the Liberal Government is insecure and that.an election must occur before the end of this period. But the wish appears to be father to the thought. Mr. Asquith's Cabinet can command a comfortable majority of over 100 votes when occasion demands an effort, and the Liberal losses at byelections have been no more serious than the experience of successive Governments would have led an unbiassed observer to expect. There seems to be no reason at all why the dissolution should take place be'fore its normal date in 1915, when the agitation against the Insurance Act will have disappeared and the attention of the electorates will be given to the new Liberal plans for educational and social reform. In the meantime there will be little or no interest in the fate of the Bill in the Upper House, for nothing was ever more foredoomed to failure.