"Ireland's capacity for self-government will be judged at home and abroad by the conduct of this Assembly. Ireland's good name is at stake, and therefore every man who takes part in this Assembly should weigh his words and recognise his responsibility."
The meeting ended in a free fight.
At the end of 1909 Mr. Asquith did a very clever thing. A general election was pending, and he wished to avoid the mistake which Gladstone had made in 1885. He therefore, at a great meeting at the Albert Hall unfolded an elaborate programme of the long list of measures which the Government would introduce and carry, and in the course of his remarks said that Home Rule was the only solution of the Irish problem, and that in the new House of Commons the hands of a Liberal Government and of a Liberal majority would in this matter be entirely free. He and his followers carefully abstained from referring to the subject in their election addresses; and Mr. Asquith was thus free, if he should obtain a majority independent of the Irish vote, to say that he had never promised to make Home Rule part of his programme; but if he found he could not retain office without that vote, he might buy it by promising to introduce the Bill and refer to his words at the Albert Hall as justification for doing so. The latter happened; hence the "Coalition Ministry." The Irish party consented to please the Radicals by voting for the Budget, and the Nonconformists by voting for Welsh Disestablishment, on condition that they should in return vote for Home Rule. As Mr. Hobhouse (a Cabinet Minister) expressed it in 1911:-
"Next year we must pay our debt to the Nationalist Members, who were good enough to vote for a Budget which they detested and knew would be an injury to their country."
But the people of England still had to be hood-winked. It was hardly likely that they would consent to their representatives voting for the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; so the Nationalists and their Radical allies went about England declaring that they had no wish for such a thing; that all they desired was a subordinate Parliament leaving the Imperial Parliament supreme. Thus Mr. Redmond suggested at one meeting that Ireland should be conceded the right of managing her own purely local affairs for herself in a subordinate Parliament, subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament; and at another meeting said:
"We are not asking for a Repeal of the Union. We are not asking for the restoration of a co-ordinate Parliament such as Ireland had before the Union. We are only asking that there should be given to Ireland a subordinate Parliament. We therefore admit the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. That means that after this subordinate Parliament is created in Ireland, if the Parliament is foolish enough, rash enough, as it never will be, but if it were foolish enough and criminal enough to use the powers given to it for injustice or oppression of any class or creed, the Imperial Parliament would have the power to stretch forth the arm of its authority and to say 'you shall not do that.'"
Of course it may be argued that they had changed their minds; that in former times they worked for separation, but now realised that a subordinate Parliament was all that Ireland required. But unfortunately for this theory, they have themselves repudiated it; when Mr. Redmond was accused of speaking with two voices, one in America and one in Great Britain, he passionately replied:-
"I indignantly deny that accusation. I have never in my life said one word on a platform in America one whit stronger than I had said in my place on the floor of the House of Commons. I have never in America or anywhere else, advocated the separation of Ireland from Great Britain."
How far this is true, the quotations from his speeches which have already been given, will have shown. But the Government have kept up the farce; Mr. Winston Churchill said during the debate on the Bill of 1912:-
"The Home Rule movement has never been a separatist movement. In the whole course of its career it has been a moderating, modifying movement, designed to secure the recognition of Irish claims within the circuit of the British Empire."