rge Cave, K.C., M.P. (afterwards Home
Secretary, and ultimately Lord of Appeal), suggested that the King might
"exercise his undoubted right" to dissolve Parliament before the
beginning of the next session, in order to inform himself as to whether
the policy of his Ministers was endorsed by the people.

But a much greater sensation was created a few days later by a letter
which appeared in _The Times_ on the 11th of the same month over the
signature of Lord Loreburn. Lord Loreburn had been Lord Chancellor at
the time the Home Rule Bill was first introduced, but had retired from
the Government in June 1912, being replaced on the Woolsack by Lord
Haldane. When the first draft of the Home Rule Bill was under discussion
in the Cabinet in preparation for its introduction in the House of
Commons, two of the younger Ministers, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston
Churchill, proposed that an attempt should be made to avert the stern
opposition to be expected from Ulster, by treating the northern
Province, or a portion of it, separately from the rest of Ireland. This
proposal was not acceptable to the Cabinet as a whole, and its authors
were roundly rated by Lord Loreburn for so unprincipled a lapse from
orthodox Gladstonian doctrine. What, therefore, must have been the
astonishment of the heretics when they found their mentor, less than two
years later, publicly reproving the Government which he had left for
having got into such a sad mess over the Ulster difficulty! They might
be forgiven some indignation at finding themselves reproved by Lord
Loreburn for faulty statesmanship of which Lord Loreburn was the
principal author.

Those, however, who had not the same ground for exasperation as Mr.
Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill thought Lord Loreburn's letter very sound
sense. He pointed out that if the Bill were to become law in 1914, as it
stood in September 1913, there would be, if not civil war, at any rate
very serious rioting in the North of Ireland, and when the riots had
been quelled by the Government the spirit that prompted them would
remain. Everybody concerned would suffer from fighting it out to a
finish. The Ex-Chancellor felt bound to assume that "up to the last,
Ministers, who assuredly have not taken leave of their senses, would be
willing to consider proposals for accommodation," and he therefore
suggested that a Conference should be held behind closed doors with a
view to a settlement by consent. If Lord Loreburn had