Mr. Asquith's speech was made at a great meeting held
in the Albert Hall yesterday week. The last time, he declared, the Liberals reckoned without their host. They were not going to make that mistake again. Their supreme task was to vindicate and establish upon an unshakable foundation the principle of representative government. Mr. Asquith stated that there was no change in the attitude of the Government towards education or licensing, and assured his hearers that his declaration as to a suffragist amendment to the promised Reform Bill would hold good in the next Parliament. Ireland had been more fortunate than Wales or Scotland in the present Parliament, but the root causes of her discontent could never be removed save "by a policy which, while explicitly safeguarding the supreme and indefeasible authority of the Imperial Parliament, will set up in Ireland a system of full self-government in regard to purely Irish affairs. There is not," added Mr. Asquith, "and there cannot be, any question of separation. There is not, and there cannot he, any question of rival or competing supremacies. But subject to those conditions, that is the Liberal policy." In the present Parliament they had been disabled in advance from proposing such a solution. In the new House of Commons their hand would be "entirely free."
