Mr. Balfour delivered a powerful fighting speech to an audience
of ten thousand at Newcastle on Thursday night. The people, he declared, had to choose between two solutions of the Constitutional problem offered to them by the two political parties. It was the Unionists who were approaching the problem as if it were a national problem, above the interests of party. The critical question now was Home Rule. The Governmentwere destroying the only Constitutional machinery by which the people can be asked what they think of Home Rule. The Cabinet were guilty of the mean contrivance of so framing their changes that there was to be a period in which all Constitutional safeguards were to be swept away. Mr. Balfour ended by declaring that it was not yet too late to remove from the Parliament Bill its chief blot—that is, the provisions which remove the greatest issue which can ever be presented to the people from the judgment of the constitu- encies. He appealed to his audience to say that Home Rule is not to be carried unless there is either an efficient Second Chamber or a Referendum. "Give us either an effective Second Chamber or give us Referendum, or give us both. If they will not have the House of Lords, let them have the people. If they will not have a Second Chamber, let them have the Referendum."
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