The Home Secretary delivered a very carefully studied defence of
the Government's Home-rule Bill in his first speech to his East Fife constituents, yesterday week at Leven. We have dealt in another column with what we regard as the main deficiencies of that elaborate speech, which disappointed us greatly by not even attempting, as Mr. Asquith usually does, to state vigorously and appreciate can- didly the case of his opponents. Here we will refer only, by way of illustrating this point, to Mr. Asquith's strange mode of dealing with the assertion that the Imperial Parliament and Government have no means under the Home-rule Bill, of enforcing their theoretical supremacy over Ire- land, in case the Irish Government and Legislature simply ignore it, short of war. So far as we can judge, that is precisely Mr. Asquith's own view, though he veils it in a paraphrase. "Oh, but then, it is said, granted all that, who is to give effect,—how are you going to give practical effect,—to the judgment of your Courts? You will have handed over to the Irish their police. They will be masters in their own house. How are you going to give effect to the decisions of the Imperial Parliament? Why, gentlemen, in the last resort, we shall give effect to that in Ireland just as we give effect to it in England or in Scot- land,—just as we give effect to it wherever the authority of the Queen is reeognised,—by virtue of the ea:Tarior force which resides with us, and which, if occasion should arise, will be as available and as effective to put down lawless- ness in Ireland as in any other part of the widespread dominions of the Queen." In other words, we suppose the military power is to be used in Ireland as it is in England, if the law is defied, and as it is not used in the self-governing Colonies under the same circumstances ; but that is just the Unionist case. We are preparing a scheme of government in which we can only make the supremacy effective by civil war, and that in a country from which we can neither afford to separate ourselves as we should from a refractory Colony, nor use the military power without having all the obstacles placed in our way within its borders that a united Adminis- tration could manage to put there.
