If anything except the personal ascendancy of Gladstone contributed to his small coalition majority in 1892 it was no doubt the confidence of the electors that the House of Lords could be relied upon to prevent the passage of a Home Rule Bill.  It is worth noting that nearly twenty years later Lord Crewe acknowledged that the Home Rule Bill of 1893 could not have stood the test of a General Election or of a Referendum.[6]

During the ten years of Unionist Government from 1895 to 1905 the question of Home Rule slipped into the background.  Other issues, such as those raised by the South African War and Mr. Chamberlain’s tariff policy, engrossed the public mind.  English Home Rulers showed a disposition to hide away, if not to repudiate altogether, the legacy they had inherited from Gladstone.  Lord Rosebery acknowledged the necessity to convert “the predominant partner,” a mission which every passing year made appear a more hopeless undertaking.  At by-elections Home Rule was scarcely mentioned.  In the eyes of average Englishmen the question was dead and buried, and most people were heartily thankful to hear no more about it.  Mr. T.M.  Healy’s caustic wit remarked that “Home Rule was put into cold storage."[7]

Then came the great overthrow of the Unionists in 1906.  Home Rule, except by its absence from Liberal election addresses, contributed nothing at all to that resounding Liberal victory.  The battle of “terminological inexactitudes” rang with cries of Chinese “slavery,” Tariff Reform, Church Schools, Labour Dispute Bills, and so forth; but on Ireland silence reigned on the platforms of the victors.  The event was to give the successors of Mr. Gladstone a House of Commons in complete subjection to them.  For the first time since 1885 they had a majority independent of the Nationalists, a majority, if ever there was one, “large enough to coerce the House of Lords,” as they would have done in 1893, according to Lord Morley, if they had had the power.  But to do that would involve the danger of having again to appeal to the country, which even at this high tide of Liberal triumph they could not face with Home Rule as an election cry.  So, with the tame acquiescence of Mr. Redmond and his followers, they spent four years of unparalleled power without laying a finger on Irish Government, a course which was rendered easy for them by the fact that, on their own admission, they had found Ireland in a more peaceful, prosperous, and contented condition than it had enjoyed for several generations.  Occasionally, indeed, as was necessary to prevent a rupture with the Nationalists, some perfunctory mention of Home Rule as a desideratum of the future was made on Ministerial platforms—­by Mr. Churchill, for example, at Manchester in May 1909.  But by that date even the contest over Tariff Reform—­which had raged without intermission for six years, and by rending the Unionist Party had grievously damaged it as an effective instrument of opposition—­had become merged in the more immediately exciting battle of the Budget, provoked by Mr. Lloyd George’s financial proposals for the current year, and by the possibility that they might be rejected by the House of Lords.  This the House of Lords did, on the 30th of November, 1909, and the Prime Minister at once announced that he would appeal to the country without delay.