The Irish standard., 1912-06-29
Though Majority is Less Thu.
Usual Its Significance
is Discounted.
After a Long Debate the Proposal
to Exclude Ulster is Beaten
by a Vote of 69.
There is Growing Belief That the
Bill Will Reach the House of
Lords in November.

We passed this week through some
of the most critical moments of strug-
gle in the committee over the home
rule bill, says T. P. O'Connor, in a.
London special cable to the Chicago
Tribune of June %.
The Ulster difficulty Is recognized
as the most serious Of the whole bill.
The protestant and radical feeling in
England and Scotland is intense.
Hundreds Of clergymen and mis-
sionaries from Ulster have carried on
in the last two years private cam
paign throughout every town and viii
lage, making private visits, conduct
ing prayer meetings and pouring into
credulous ears blood curdling and en-
tirely imaginary stories of the perse-
cution of protestants by the Irish. To
these were added SO many threats Of
civil war that many people began seri-
ously to think Ulster would have to be
invaded and conquered by British
troops
Some cabinet ministers, notably Sir
Edward Grey, and Churchill, rather
helped this gigantic bluff by uttering
speeches Of portentious solemnity on
the Ulster difficulty: Everybody knew
Wales and H. England had shown =. but b,ut
three liberal malcontents, but Scot
land, with it's violent religious feeling
and counting some cranks among it's
representatives, was expected to show
some fissures in the ranks.
Tories Claim Gain.
The tories played an Inscriptions
game of supporting every proposal,
good or bad, whether they believed in
1t o. not, which might wreck the bill,
and after solemn denunciations for
years that exclusion of Ulster would
mean cowardly abandonment of the
protestant minorities in south Ireland,
supported the present proposal.
After three days debate the pro-
posal to exclude Ulster was rejected by
a majority of sixty nine. This ma
jority was not as high as several 9TH
ers, and some tory papers yelled that
this means the end of the bill. But
this was all nonsense, as the small
ness of the majority was entirely due
to the absence of some eighteen labor
members, partly through illness, from
exertion and anxiety in the recent
miners strike, partly because of the
bitter fight now proceeding in the
Yorkshire by-election between labor
and liberal candidates and partly be-
cause several labor leaders are engag-
ed in setting the scale of wages in the
mining districts. These would have
made the home rule majority eighty
nine the next day.
The second great peril of the bill
came on the proposal to establish a
senate in the Irish Parliament. An
English radical, who shares the gen.
eral dislike of the second chamber of
most of the radicals proposed the ex-
clusion of Irish senate tories, though
all but two of the chamber men un-
scrupulously supported this proposal,
in the hope that by delaying the bill
all liberal enemies of the two-chamber
system, and especially labor men, they
would produce a combination that
would bring down the home rule ma
jority to the vanishing point.
Two Attacks Repulsed.
The laborites behaved splendidly.
They refused to be caught in this very
trap, and stood by Redmond, who has
pleaded strongly for second cham
ber in the interest of the minority Of
the stable and safe government in Ire
land. Thus the second and most dan
gerous attack was beaten, and a di-
vision gave a majority of eighty mine
for the senate.
Thus two of the most formidable at
tacks on home rule were decisively re-
pulsed and the spirits of the home
rulers rose accordingly.
A pause of week. now comes in the
fight to enable the ministry to get rid
Of some pressing business. but the
Irish are quite agreeable, having def
mite knowledge that the bill will reach
the house Of lords, after all its stages
= the commons. by the end Of Novem