"Ireland's capacity for self-government will be judged at home
and abroad by the conduct of this Assembly. Ireland's good
name is at stake, and therefore every man who takes part
in this Assembly should weigh his words and recognise his
responsibility."

The meeting ended in a free fight.

At the end of 1909 Mr. Asquith did a very clever thing. A general
election was pending, and he wished to avoid the mistake which
Gladstone had made in 1885. He therefore, at a great meeting at
the Albert Hall unfolded an elaborate programme of the long list of
measures which the Government would introduce and carry, and in the
course of his remarks said that Home Rule was the only solution of
the Irish problem, and that in the new House of Commons the hands of
a Liberal Government and of a Liberal majority would in this matter be
entirely free. He and his followers carefully abstained from referring
to the subject in their election addresses; and Mr. Asquith was thus
free, if he should obtain a majority independent of the Irish vote,
to say that he had never promised to make Home Rule part of his
programme; but if he found he could not retain office without that
vote, he might buy it by promising to introduce the Bill and refer to
his words at the Albert Hall as justification for doing so. The latter
happened; hence the "Coalition Ministry." The Irish party consented to
please the Radicals by voting for the Budget, and the Nonconformists
by voting for Welsh Disestablishment, on condition that they should
in return vote for Home Rule. As Mr. Hobhouse (a Cabinet Minister)
expressed it in 1911:--

"Next year we must pay our debt to the Nationalist Members,
who were good enough to vote for a Budget which they detested
and knew would be an injury to their country."

But the people of England still had to be hood-winked. It was hardly
likely that they would consent to their representatives voting for
the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; so the Nationalists and
their Radical allies went about England declaring that they had
no wish for such a thing; that all they desired was a subordinate
Parliament leaving the Imperial Parliament supreme. Thus Mr. Redmond
suggested at one meeting that Ireland should be conceded the right
of managing her own purely local affairs for herself in a subordinate
Parliament, subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament; and
at another meeting said:

"We are