AMENDING THE HOME RULE BILL.
[To ran EDITOR OF 7/11.
Srn,—I believe the Opposition to be sincerely anxious that the Home Rule Bill should be so modified that, should the Bill become law, civil war, at any rate, would be averted. At the same time, as Unionists, they cannot accept responsibility for any Home Rule Bill. The difficulty of arriving at a solution seems partly due to the widespread belief among Unionists that modifications necessary to avert civil war cannot become law as part of the Home Rule Bill this Session without the Unionist majority in the House of Lords appearing to accept the whole Bill. Possibly Mr. Asquith, in his desire for a "settlement by consent" of the whole question, has tacitly encouraged this belief. But I venture to maintain that any necessary modifications can be made in the Home Rule Bill,
and become law this Session under the Parliament Act, without the House of Lords being called upon to appear in any way to assent to the principles of the Bill or to the Bill as a whole. The necessary modifications can be sent to the House of Lords by the House of Commons as " ang- gelded amendments "—the Unionist Party in the House of Commons supporting such "suggested amendments" as im- provements to the Bill, while voting against the Bill as a whole. Under the proviso to Subsection (4) of Section 2 of the Parliament Act, those "suggested amendments" "shall be treated as amendments made by the House of Lords and agreed to by the House of Commons." Immediately before the proviso referred to, it is deliberately laid down—obviously, in the event of final "rejection" of a Bill by the House of Lords, otherwise the provision would be altogether otiose—that "any amendments which are certified by the Speaker to have been made by the House of Lords in the third Session and agreed to by the House of Commons shall be inserted in the Bill as pre- sented for Royal Assent in pursuance of this section."
The House of Lords has complete control over its own procedure, and has always maintained a considerable elasticity in it. It could "agree to" the "suggested amendments" received from the House of Commons either before or after the first reading, and reject the Bill on the second or third reading. Yet those "suggested amendments" would "be inserted in the Bill as presented for Royal Assent" under the Parliament Act. Personally, I am a convinced opponent of Home Rule, regarding the position of Ulster as a side-issue. It is, however, a side-issue of the greatest gravity. Every effort must be made to avert civil war in connexion with that issue. And surely it can be avoided by the incorporation in the Home Rule Bill of some such scheme as that outlined by Mr. Asquith—with one modification. That modification is that it shall not be provided in the Bill that the counties of Ulster shall be included at a subsequent date whether they desire it or not. Such a modification of Mr. Asquith's scheme was, in the first instance, favourably entertained by at least one influential Liberal paper, and I believe that the mass of the people of this country desire to see the danger of civil war averted on these lines. It is because such a solution appears to be prejudiced by an ignorance of the actual provisions of the Parliament Act that I venture to request you to give publicity to this letter.—I am, Sir, he., N. E. T. D.
Previous page
