ses of Mr. Asquith's chief
lieutenant, whose power and popularity were now at their height. Mr.
Lloyd George in the course of the session had introduced his Insurance
Bill, and it was welcomed with astonishing effusion from both sides of
the House. As discussion proceeded, however, the complexity and
difficulty of its proposals, and the number of oppositions which they
provoked, became so apparent that it was not in human nature for
politicians at such a crisis to forgo the opportunity. Most of the
Liberal party would have preferred to drop the Bill temporarily and
refer it to a Committee of Enquiry. Mr. Lloyd George was convinced that
this would be fatal to his measure, concerning which he was possessed by
a missionary zeal. Probably when his career comes under the study of
impartial history it will be perceived that never at any moment was he
so passionately and so honestly in earnest as upon this quest. But it is
certain that by pursuit of it he created enormous difficulties in the
way of those reforms which the democratic alliance at large most desired
to achieve. He carried his point; an autumn session followed, in which
the mind of the electorate was diverted from the Irish question and all
other questions except that of Insurance, and Parliament itself was
jaded to the brink of exhaustion.

The matter was difficult for us in Ireland because, owing to the
different system of Public Health Administration, many of the most
important provisions could not apply, and because the Bill as a whole
was framed to meet the needs of a highly industrialized and crowded
community. Broadly speaking, it was less desired in Ireland than in
Great Britain; and even for Great Britain Mr. Lloyd George was
legislating in advance of public opinion rather than in response to it.
Mr. O'Brien and his following vehemently opposed the application of the
Bill to Ireland; and the Irish Catholic Bishops, by a special
resolution, expressed their view to the same effect. The Bill, however,
had a powerful advocate in Mr. Devlin, and the Irish party decided to
support its extension to Ireland, subject to certain modifications which
they obtained.

Apart from the new unsettlement of public opinion which it created both
in Great Britain and in Ireland, the Insurance Act added to our
difficulties on the Home Rule question. It was clear already that the
question of finance lay like a rock ahead. Up to 1908 the proceeds of
Irish revenue had always giv