HOME RULE BILL

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 1 February 1913, Page 5

HOME RULE BILL

CABLE NEWS

(United Iress Association—Bii \Electric Telegraph—Copyright.)

DEBATE IN THE LORDS. THE CLOSING SCENES. (Received Last Night, 11.45 o'clock.) LONDON, January 31. . The galleries Avere crowded when the debate on the Home Rule Bill was continued in the Houee of Lords. Lord Curzon said the question of finance, which was involved in the Bill, would create endless friction For every rig|ht that the Bill effected it perpetrated a score of wrongs. The Government had chosen, coercion in respect to Ulster, instead of concilia--1 tion. j Lord Halsbury said he felt !humill iatcd in discussing the measure, when everybody knew that the whole thing was a farce. Lord Lansdowne isaid the whole scheme was a misfit. What, ihe asked, was th's ilrishi opinion upon which the Government laid such •Stress ? Who were . the Irish . Party ? Lawyers of no particular eminence, journalists of mo distinction, farmers w,ho were no authority on agriculture. f The Irish peasant would sooner have I a reduction in rent than a share in self-government.- Tlie colonial analogy was absolutely worthless and inapplicable. Britain could not allow Ireland to break away while she had a battalion a battery, or a gunboat left. No .> amendment could convert the Bill into a measure worthv of the 'Statute Book. " Viscount Morlev closed the debate. Hp. tended the idea., of a plebiscite on +li« Home Rtile Bill as impracticable. Nothing, he said, could be worse than the irresponsible power permeating ndTnini«frp J ". , '" r ' i of the system of government. He believed that i the Bill, if worked in good faith, S would strengthen the sense of., restionI sibility which was the salt of freedom.