With the rest of the debate we must deal very
shortly. Mr. Healy declared that he preferred no Bill at all to that pro- posed by the Government, since he believed it to spell Finis Hibernia& Mr. Healy's objection was to any form of Exclu- son. As for the "very slight concession" for which Sir Edward Carson asked, "would any sane man amongst them let loose the fires of civil war all for the foible of the hon. Member for Waterford P Why could he not give that up as he had given up everything else!' " The last speaker in the debate was Mr. Arnold Ward, who rose, as an ordinary back-bench Unionist, to say that he believed the proposals made by the Prime Minister represented a great advance and a great con- cession. No doubt the scribes of both parties in the Press who bad been for months past the greatest obstacle to a, peaceful settlement—unhappily, a perfectly just criticism— would impute sinister motives to both sides, but he appealed to back-bench members of both parties to help to avert a great calamity. There was one point in the proposals which many of them could welcome with positive enthusiasm—that which provided for a poll of the electors. He believed that even six years might prove acceptable to Unionist Members if what was provided at the end of the six years was not automatic Inclusion, but a further consultation with Ulster.
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