After some polite allusions to the "conversations," after shedding a
tear—no doubt to please Sir Edward Grey—over the practical impossibility of devising a system of "Home
Rule within Home Rule," and after rejecting also Sir Horace Plunkett's plan, Mr. Asquith came to his via media :— ',Any county in the province of Ulster is to be excluded for a certain period if upon a poll being taken of the Parliamentary electors of the county before the Bill comes into operation a bare majority votes in favour of exclusion. The poll would be taken in a county if a requisition were presented signed by, say, one-tenth of the electors, and presented within three months of the date of the passing of the Bill. The poll will be taken by the county as a whole without regard to its Parliamentary divisions. The persons to vote will be those entitled to vote at Parliamentary elections. The questions to be put will be these—the phraseology
might be varied, but in substance they would be Are you in favour of the exclusion of the county from the Government of Ireland Act, 1914, for a period of years, or are you against such exclusion ?
The period, Mr. Asquith added, was to be six years from the first meeting of the Irish Legislature in Dublin—that is, about seven and a half or eight years from the present moment.
After that period the excluded counties would pass automati- cally under the Dublin Parliament, "unless the Imperial
Parliament otherwise determines."