THE HOME RULE BILL.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR..."
SIR,—I observe in the columns of your current issue a letter from Lord Heneage in which be attaches himself more or less directly to the car of Lord Loreburn's " ballon d'essai," and tersely reiterates views upon the present condition of the Irish Home Rule controversy with which many who take a deep interest in it are known to be in sympathy. It is to be regretted that in his concluding paragraph he trenches upon highly debatable ground with a claim that the fact of the situation being no worse is due to the Unionist Peers whose assistance enabled the Government to pass the Parliament Bill. That is a claim which should not be left unchallenged, and I believe Lord Heneage is the first of the actual partici- pants in the extinction of the House of Lords as a valid factor in the Constitution who, now that its consequences are fully developed, has had the assurance to claim credit for that unnatural proceeding. I for one cannot agree to the assump- tions which Lord Heneage invokes in its defence. I cannot agree that if the Parliament Bill had been thrown out the immediate effect would have been a creation of three hundred puppet Peers for the purpose of extinguishing the assembly to which they had been promoted, or that had so violent an exercise of the Royal prerogative been resorted to, the adoption of the Home Rule Bill now before the country, or anything like it, would have followed; but even if I am wrong in both those contentions, Ulster would have held the pass as Ulster holds it now. The most that the Unionist abettors of the Parliament Act can claim is that if all their apprehen- sions had been well founded their action had resulted in a brief postponement of civil war, a potential advantage which seems dearly purchased with the indelible stain upon our public life inflicted by the acquiescence of the House of Lords in its own degradation.—I am, Sir, &c., EBURY. .Moor Park, Ricktnansworth.
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