HOME RULE CRISIS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 2 October 1913, Page 5

HOME RULE CRISIS.

CABLE_ NEWS. (United Press Association — By Electric Telegraph—Copyright).)

VIEWS OF LORD ST. ALDWYN. HE URGES AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY. (Received Last Night, 9.35 o'clock ) LONDON, October 1. Lord St.. Aldwyn (formerly Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, and one tin;e Secretary for Ireland), in a letter to the press, states that he has a personal bias towards a settlement of the Home Rule question by consent. He instances the Irish Church Act of 1869, and the Reform Act of 1885. In these cases, however, both the parties were agreed on the principle, but no such accepted basis existed in reference to the conference on Home Rule. He asks: How com!i-the Government depart firom the principle of *r autonomous Ireland, or the Unionists accept a principle which they li'ave opposed for twenty-seven years? Even if the Nationalists agreed t» the exclusion of Ulster, he felt sure that 'flhe Ulster Protestants wouid never yield their weak and scattered co-religioniste to a t'.enomination which they dreaded for themselves. Therefore, he did not anticipate any useful result from a conference. There was room to find en escape from the mischief that was going on in Ulster. Both p«'.,rties ought to discuss the possibility of eliciting the country's judgment, with a guarantee that if that judgment was favourable the Lords wouW not impose an obstacle to its passing into law in 1914. This would obviate the Bill passing under the Parliament Act, which was odious to Unionists and largely the cause of the present trouble. The Disestablishment Bill could be similarly treated. No responsible Minister would contend that Home Rule should become law if the majority of the people were opposed to it.