As to the other General
Elections, might not our foreigner reflect that if an electorate were
really to discover that its vote for the approval of a measure was
treated--as in 1892--with indifference, it might naturally weary of
well-doing?
Might he not even, if he were a shrewd man, suspect that that was the
very object and aim which his informants had in view?
But perhaps his surprise would reach its highest point when he
discovered that this Home Rule proposal, so far from appearing now for
the first time in a definite form, had actually twice before taken the
definite and statutory form of Home Rule Bills, both the specific and
considered proposals of Liberal Governments, both fully drafted and
laid before Parliament, and both still to be purchased at any
Government printers. The first of these Bills, the Bill of 1886, was,
indeed, rejected by the House of Commons on the second reading, and
never ran the gauntlet of full Parliamentary debate. But the second,
the Bill of 1893, occupied fully five months of Parliamentary time, and
was carried successfully by Mr. Gladstone through all its stages in the
House of Commons. It was amended on many points without the
interference of Government authority.
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