Act involved nearly two years' delay, it was futile to attempt to examine every detail 

 in a scheme which was approved in principle, but which still had a long fight before 

 it. On the other hand it was incontestable that, for a measure of such profound impor- 

 tance, supposing it to be one that might come into operation as it left the House of 

 Commons, the discussion of the various difficult and obscure aspects of the new financial 

 relations proposed between Ireland and Great Britain was entirely inadequate. The 

 Insurance Act had been an unfortunate example of the results of insufficiently considered 

 legislation, but here too clause after clause was carried, undiscussed, under the closure, 

 full of complicated provisions, the working of which very few of the rank-and-file in 

 Parliament even pretended to understand. The present scheme was totally different 

 from anything proposed in Mr. Gladstone's Bills of 1886 and 1893; yet the one thing 

 certain in 1912 was that if those Bills had become law their financial arrangements 

 would have hopelessly broken down. And now the new proposals, fraught with 

 revolutionary consequences alike to the finance of Ireland and of Great Britain, were 

 being forced through with even less consideration. It was only natural that the 

 Opposition should remain restive under conditions which made serious criticism im- 

 possible, if only because there was no time for ministers to reply in more than a per- 

 functory way. Mr. Herbert Samuel, Sir Rufus Isaacs, and Sir John Simon, for the 

 Government, defended the finance of the Bill with marked ability, so far as time served; 

 but the fact remained that on a single evening (Nov. 26th), after the guillotine had cut 

 short a discussion on clause 15 which left it quite uncertain to what extent it enabled 

 a protectionist system to be set up in Ireland, clauses 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 were then 

 passed, with various amendments introduced by the Government itself, altogether 

 undiscussed, most of the time available being consumed simply by taking division after 

 division. Sir Edward Carson hotly denounced the whole proceedings as the gravest 

 public scandal in the whole history of Parliament. On behalf of the Government 

 it was contended that it was absurd to suppose that any Irish administration would 

 be so foolish as to adopt the means which Mr. Amery and other Unionist speakers 

 suggested that the Bill opened to them for introducing a protectionist policy. One 

 variation only from the original draft of the Bill was proposed by the Government, in 

 deference to remonstrances from their own supporters; under clause 15 the power to 

 reduce an Imperial tax was omitted. But the Opposition amendments, proposing to 

 reserve all power over Customs and Excise to the Imperial Government, and to pro- 

 hibit the giving of direct or indirect bounties, were stoutly resisted. Mr. Bonar Law 

 summed up the Opposition view by declaring that the Bill undoubtedly enabled the 

 Irish administration to set up the worst form of Protection, namely bounties, and that 

 the Government were really giving in to the demands of their Nationalist allies while 

 professing to be the champions of Free Trade principles. Mr. Samuel, on his side, 

 taunted the Opposition with being advocates of Protection yet dwelling on the objection 

 to a protectionist system in Ireland. Thus each party retorted on the other. But the 

 clauses passed under the closure, with only the slightest consideration by Parliament 

 of the effects of its own legislation. For any judicial examination in debate, reflecting 

 the careful conclusions of the House of Commons, was substituted the opinion of the 

 ministers in charge of the Bill, alike as to the powers it gave and the way those powers 

 were likely to be used. Just as the Insurance Act had left all sorts of obscure questions 

 to be settled by the Commissioners, so the Home Rule Bill left some of the thprniesi 

 problems of the financial relations with Ireland to be solved by the proposed Join! 

 Exchequer Board, an entirely new official body, whose real status was highly question - 

 able; and clause 22 providing for this, with the remaining financial clauses, 23, 24 and 25, 

 were duly guillotined on November 27th. During 18 allotted days since the beginning 

 of the Committee stage, 78 lines of the 25 clauses passed had been discussed and 534 lines 

 undiscussed, while 48 amendments had been discussed and 771 ignored; on the financial 

 clauses alone ( 14 to 25) , 30! lines had been discussed, and 260^ lines passed without discus- 

 sion, the amendments discussed numbering 12 and undiscussed 210. Eventually, under 

 the guillotine, the Bill passed its third reading on January 17, 1913. 



