FROM THE ARCHIVES:As a minister in the Liberal Party government in 1912, Winston Churchill found himself proposing the second reading of the Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons with a carefully attuned political speech and an early version of one of his most-quoted quotes.
THE HOME Rule movement has never been a separatist movement. In the whole course of its career it has been a moderating, modifying movement, designed to secure the recognition of Irish claims within the circuit of the British Empire. (Ministerial cheers.) The present Irish demand is not a demand for the divorce of two kingdoms or for separation from the United Kingdom, or from the British Empire. It is not even a demand for the termination of Parliamentary Union, or for Colonial autonomy. It is the acceptance of a measure which amplifies and carries out the union of the two countries under forms which for the first time will receive the assent of the Irish people. [ . . .]
All the diminution of the violence and extravagance of demand in Ireland has not been accompanied with any diminution of the volume of opinion in Ireland for the restoration of her Parliament. (Nationalist cheers.)
Never before has so little been asked for, and never before have so many people asked for it. (Loud Ministerial and Nationalist cheers.) The character of the Bill is displeasing to the Opposition, but why it is displeasing they do not at present give us a clear indication.
Is it displeasing because it is so moderate, or is it displeasing because it is so extreme? Hon. members opposite have used both arguments against the bill. (Ministerial and Nationalists cheers and laughter.) I have been told that there is no finality in the settlement proposed by the bill. If you mean by finality that we are to regard this measure as the final adjustment of the administrative and financial arrangements between the two islands, then I agree there is no finality in it. [ . . .]
I say quite frankly I regard this bill as standing in the same relation to the establishment of a complete system of self-government for the different portions of the United Kingdom as the Transvaal Constitution stood in relation to the Union of South Africa.
That Constitution was the direct and necessary forerunner of the subsequent Union. (Nationalist and Ministerial cheers.) We mean that this should be the end of the quarrels and dissensions which have disturbed us, that it should lead eventually to rest, and that we should come to terms with the Irish people. (Ministerial and Nationalist cheers.) It has been a great and difficult problem, but it is not now so important as it was 100 years ago, from the British point of view. [ . . .]
Everyone knows – even the representatives of Ulster – that events may happen on the frontiers of India, or on the North Sea, or on our railways, in our colliery districts, or in our markets or exchanges, incomparably more important to the welfare of this country and to the superstructure of our society and the general welfare of the realm, than anything that could happen in Ireland. (Hear, hear.)