Putnam patriot., 1911-03-24
he Irish Issue Plainly Stated.
PREMIER AsQU1rH's SPEECH, PART II

"I am really reduced, in answering the argument in favor of the amend ment 10 ione or two very simple and easy propositions. The amendment alleges that our deliberations in regard to the relations between the two Hous. es oi Parliament are seriously hamper ed ny the obscure and conflicting de- claralion of Ministers on the subject of Home Rule. Are they obscure? Are they conflicting? Let us bring it to the test of fact.
 l am sorry 10 have to quote myself, but l will venture 10 say there is noth- ing obscure or ambiguous in the deca- rations 1 made on this subject from the very beginning. l will go back to what l said in this House about eighteen years ago, when l was speak ing in support of the second reading of Gladstone'S Home Rule bill. After long argument in support of that bill 1 used these words: I have to add for myself, l have never regarded the granting of Home Rule to Ireland as an exceptional and desperate remedy for an exceptional aud desperate dis ease" After saying, as l now say, the case of Ireland was one of paramount and undeniable urgency, I went on to say: In my judgment, this is a neceS- sary step in her normal constitutions development Lord Cecil has asked me to go into the confessional. He has charged me with an interlude of heterodoXy or lukewarmness; at any rate, at the time of what he calls the Liberal League, and the mover of the amendment quoted a, sentence from a speech in the very height of the con- l said it then, and l say il now: This problem of Irish government is as se rlous and as intractable as it ever was. Indeed in some way the problem grows more complicated and more perpleN- ing as Il k more clearly bound up with the efficiency of our Parliamentary machinery and the relations of the diff. ferent of the Empire to the center and to one another, l believe, as strong ly as ever did, that the two governing principles which l have preached among you ever since l represented you are the necessity of maintaining the universal, absolute and unimport- ant supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- ment, and, subject to that condition the policy CT giving as much and as liberal an amount of devotion of local powers and local responsibility as stateSmanShip can, from time 10 time, devise.
 "l say the same today. Every one knows that from circumstances which 1t is not necessary to go into now that the Parliament of 1906, which was mainly elected on a fiscal issue, was disabled from entering on this question except to the extent of proposing the Irish Councils bill. 1 hoped myself that that was a measure which would have been received with general assent, but it did not commend itself to the general opinion in Ireland, and still to the opinion of the Unionist party here. Therefore, from 8 practical poli- ucal point of view il had to fall to the ground.
 Now We come 10 what, for this pur- pose, is lhe erucical moment. That Parliament was dissolved in eonse- quence of the action of the House of Lords in rejecting the budget. Speak ing in the name of my colleagues at the Albert Hall, in December, 1908, said, speaking on behalf of the government, l described Ireland as one undeniable