had brought forward proposals for dealing with the veto, and had given the Lords an opportunity to make proposals of their own; a defeat of the Liberals in the coming elections would bring in “Protection disguised as Tariff Reform”; but he (Mr. Asquith) preferred to concentrate his criticism on Lord Lansdowne’s “crude and complex scheme” for Second Chamber reform; he made a passing mention of “self-government for Ireland” as a policy that would have the sympathy of the Dominions, but added that “the immediate task was to secure fair play for Liberal legislation and popular government.”  And in his election address Mr. Asquith declared that “the appeal to the country was almost narrowed to a single issue, and on its determination hung the whole future of democratic Government.”

This zeal for “popular,” or “democratic” government was, however, not inconsistent apparently with a determination to avoid at all hazards consulting the will of the people, before doing what the people had hitherto always refused to sanction.  The suggestion had been made earlier in the autumn that a Referendum, or “Poll of the People” might be taken on the question of Home Rule.  The very idea filled the Liberals with dismay.  Speaking at Edinburgh on the 2nd of December, Mr. Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made the curiously naive admission, for a “democratic” politician, that the Referendum would amount to “a prohibitive tariff against Liberalism.”  A few days earlier at Reading (November 29th) his Chief sought to turn the edge of this disconcerting proposal by asking whether the Unionists, if returned to power, would allow Tariff Reform to be settled by the same mode of appeal to the country; and when Mr. Balfour promptly accepted the challenge by promising that he would do so Mr. Asquith retreated under cover of the excuse that no bargain had been intended.

While the Liberal leaders were thus doing all they could to hold down the lid of the Home Rule Jack-in-the-box, the Unionists were warning the country that as soon as Mr. Asquith secured a majority his thumb would release the spring.  Speakers from Ulster carried the warning into many constituencies, but it was noticed that they were constantly met with the same retort as in January—­that Home Rule was a “bogey,” or a “red herring” dragged across the trail of Tariff Reform and the Peers’ veto; and it is a significant indication of the straits to which the Government afterwards felt themselves driven to find justification for dealing with so fundamental a question as the repeal of the Union without the explicit approval of the electorate, that they devised the strange doctrine that speeches by their opponents provided them with a mandate for a policy about which they had themselves kept silence, even although those speeches had been disbelieved and derided on the very ground that it would be impossible for Ministers to bring forward a policy they had not laid before the country during the election.