Monday night's debate was much delayed by Mr. Burns's motion
for the adjournment to discuss the action of the Hull Board of Guardians in relation to the local strike, which wasted a good deal of time. The adjourned debate was resumed by Mr. Goschen, who made a very powerful and carefully moderate speech in answer to Mr. Asquith. He assumed that the Irish Home-rulers are "converts from the gospel of plunder, peni- tent apostates from the creed of disintegration." But he asked how we are to be assured that those who have elected them have passed through the same conversion. The Home Secretary had assumed that the violent sentences quoted from the speeches of the leaders had been dropped on platforms in a moment of passion. It was not so. Most deliberate action had been taken on the principles enunciated in those violent sentences. Towns had been ruined and country-sides depopulated by that action. Delegates had been sent to Australia to get subscriptions in support of that policy, and large sums had been received from America to push it on. What is there to prevent the Irish Par- liament from resolving, at the end of three years, that, in conse- quence of the appreciation of gold, rents ought to be reduced by 30 per cent. ;—or at once even,—that a universal amnesty should be given to all crime which could by any stretch of in- terpretation be treated as political; and what remedy should we have except a suspension of the Constitution? Mr. Goschen also dealt with extraordinary force with the financial clauses.
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