in 1893 the hereditary House of Lords, and not the newly elected House of Commons, truly represented the will of the nation.  This is a fact never to be forgotten.  It is of special import at the present moment.  Another equally undoubted fact deserves attention.  Home Rulers themselves despair of carrying a Home Rule Bill until they shall have turned the Parliament Bill into the Parliament Act, 1911, and my readers ought never to forget that the passing of the Parliament Bill into law destroys, and is meant to destroy, every security against the passing of any Home Rule Bill whatever which the present majority of the House of Commons choose to support.  This gives an ominous significance to the obstinate refusal of the Government to alter or amend any of the material enactments contained in this ill-starred measure. A Leap in the Dark, combined with a knowledge of the Parliament Bill and the legislative dictatorship with which it invests the existing Coalition, suggests at least four conclusions which must at all costs be forced at this moment upon the attention of the nation.  They may be thus summed up: 

First.—­If the Parliament Bill passes into law the existing majority of the House of Commons will be able to force, and will assuredly in fact force, through Parliament any Home Rule Bill whatever (even were it the Home Rule Bill of 1893), which meets with the approval of Mr. Redmond, and obtains the acquiescence of the rest of the Coalition.

The Coalition need not fear any veto of the House of Lords.  There will be no necessity for an appeal to the electors, or in other words to the nation.  The truth of this statement is indisputable.  The legal right of the majority of the House of Commons to pass any bill whatever into law, even though the House of Lords refuse its assent, is absolutely secured by the very terms of the Parliament Bill.  That the leaders of the Coalition, such as Mr. Asquith, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. John Redmond, will press their legal right to its extreme limits is proved to any man who knows how to read the teaching of history, by the experience of 1893.  Mr. Gladstone used every power he possessed, and used it unscrupulously, to drive a Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons.  He was a man trained in the historical traditions of Parliament.  He assuredly did not relish the use of the closure and the guillotine.  He was supported in the Commons by a very narrow majority, never I think exceeding forty-eight, and often falling below that number.  The power of the party system, or as Americans say, the “Machine,” was admittedly much less in 1893 than it has become in 1911.  Yet Mr. Gladstone used such power as he possessed to the utmost.  He hurried through the House of Commons a Bill which had not in fact received the assent of the nation.  He made the freest use of every device for curtailing freedom of debate.  A large and most important portion of the Home Rule Bill was not discussed