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Show HOME RULE. Mr. John Redmond's Views. Mr. John Redmond, on the 11th Feb-uary, Feb-uary, 1895, in the House of Commons, moving an amendment to the address demanding the dissolution of Parliament Parlia-ment and the submission of the question ques-tion of home rule to the electors, said, in part: In the year 1886, the home rule question, ques-tion, which up to that time had been denounced, derided and repudiated by every political party in this House, suddenly became the foremost in the empire. A great English political party par-ty accepted the policy of home rule; a great English government staked its existence on 'the policy of home rule, and, although that English party, as a result, was divided in its own ranks and defeated, and although the government govern-ment was, as the immediate result of adopting the policy of home rule, wrecked, the home rule question remained re-mained the foremost political question of the day. I think no one will question the position posi-tion I take up when I say that the policy laid down by the right honorable gentlemen, and accepted by the entire Liberal party in 1885, was, that Ireland blocked the way, and ' that-this Irish question was so vast, and so urgent, and so pressing, that it should be settled set-tled before any attempt could fairly be made to deal with domestic reforms or English legislation. I will tell the House the one thing that this Parliament has done for Ireland. Ire-land. Last session it increased the taxation tax-ation of Ireland by making Ireland pay towards the deficit in the budget of last year a sum which represents more than double the proportion which ministers themselves admitted was her fair proportion pro-portion towards the imperial taxation. We are told that the next election is not to be held on the question of home rule, but that there is to be interposed between the electors and the consideration considera-tion of the vaster and greater question from the English point of view even than home rule the question which has been described by the prime minister as the greatest constitutional question which the people of Great Britain have had to consider for over 200 years. The last stage in this downward course is the most serious of all, and it is to be found in the Bradford speech of the prime minister (Lord Roseberry) in which he declared that the next election elec-tion was not to be held on the subject of home rule at all. No. He declared that between the electors and the consideration con-sideration of this great question there was to be interposed another question from the English point of view a far greater and more wide-reaching question, ques-tion, and one which he himself described, de-scribed, as I have pointed out, as the greatest question for the last 200 years. In my view the starting of this House of Lords agitation means, if it is persisted per-sisted in, the indefinite postponement of home rule. I do not take the view that it is impossible to pass home rule through the House of Lords as it is at present constituted. I know from the history of the House of Lords that it is the weakest second chamber perhaps ir the world. For my part I think the whole history of the House of Lords shows that it has no power permanently permanent-ly to withstand the declared will pf the people in favor of any great reform. It has never done so. One thing to my mind is absolutely certain, and that is that if home rule is to be postponed until the agitation against the House of Lords which was started in the Bradford speech be galvanised gal-vanised into life and succeeds, few, indeed, in-deed, of us who are assembled in this Parliament can hope to see a Parliament Parlia-ment established in Dublin. |