erve "popular government "! There had been two Home Rule
Bills in the past, differing one from the other in not a few important
respects; discussion had shown that many even of those who supported the
principle of Home Rule objected strongly to this or that proposal for
embodying it in legislation Language had been used by Mr. Asquith
himself, as well as by some of his principal colleagues, which implied
that any future Home Rule Bill would be part of a general scheme of
"devolution," or federation, or "Home Rule All Round"--a solution of the
question favoured by many who hotly opposed separate treatment for
Ireland Yet here was the responsible Minister, in the middle of a
General Election, complaining that the issue was being "confused" by
presumptuous persons who wanted to know what sort of Home Rule, if any,
he had in contemplation in the event of obtaining a majority sufficient
to keep him in power.

Under such circumstances it would have been a straining of
constitutional principles, and a flagrant violation of the canons of
that "democratic government" of which Mr Asquith had constituted himself
the champion, to pass a Home Rule Bill by means of a majority so
obtained, even if the majority had been one that pointed to a sweeping
turnover of public opinion to the side of the Government The elections
of December 1910, in point of fact, gave no such indication. The
Government gained nothing whatever by the appeal to the country.
Liberals and Unionists came back in almost precisely the same strength
as in the previous Parliament. They balanced each other within a couple
of votes in the new House of Commons, and the Ministry could not have
remained twenty-four hours in office except in coalition with Labour and
the Irish Nationalists.

The Parliament so elected and so constituted was destined not merely to
destroy the effective power of the House of Lords, and to place on the
Statute-book a measure setting up an Irish Parliament in Dublin, but to
be an assembly longer in duration and more memorable in achievement than
any in English history since the Long Parliament. During the eight years
of its reign the Great War was fought and won; the "rebel party" in
Ireland once more, as in the Napoleonic Wars, broke into armed
insurrection in league with the enemies of England; and before it was
dissolved the political parties in Great Britain, heartily supported by
the Loyalists of Ulster, composed the party differences which