When Parliament reassembled for the autumn session in October the Prime
Minister immediately moved a "guillotine" resolution for allotting time
for the remaining stages of the Home Rule Bill, and, in resisting this
motion, Mr. Bonar Law made one of the most convincing of his many
convincing speeches against the whole policy of the Bill. It stands for
all time as the complete demonstration of a proposition which he argued
over and over again--that Home Rule had never been submitted to the
British electorate, and that that fact alone was full justification for
Ulster's resolve to resist it. It was impossible for any democratic
Minister to refute the contention that even if the principle of the
Government's policy had been as frankly submitted to the electorate as
it had in fact been carefully withheld, it would still remain true that
the intensity of the Ulster opposition was itself a new factor in the
situation upon Which the people were entitled to be consulted. There was
a limit, said Mr. Bonar Law, to the obligation to submit to legally
constituted authority, and that limit was reached "in a free country
when a body of men, whether they call themselves a Cabinet or not,
propose to make a great change like this for which they have never
received the sanction of the people.
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