hitherto always refused to sanction. The suggestion had been made
earlier in the autumn that a Referendum, or "Poll of the People" might
be taken on the question of Home Rule. The very idea filled the Liberals
with dismay. Speaking at Edinburgh on the 2nd of December, Mr. Lloyd
George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made the curiously naive
admission, for a "democratic" politician, that the Referendum would
amount to "a prohibitive tariff against Liberalism." A few days earlier
at Reading (November 29th) his Chief sought to turn the edge of this
disconcerting proposal by asking whether the Unionists, if returned to
power, would allow Tariff Reform to be settled by the same mode of
appeal to the country; and when Mr. Balfour promptly accepted the
challenge by promising that he would do so Mr. Asquith retreated under
cover of the excuse that no bargain had been intended.

While the Liberal leaders were thus doing all they could to hold down
the lid of the Home Rule Jack-in-the-box, the Unionists were warning the
country that as soon as Mr. Asquith secured a majority his thumb would
release the spring. Speakers from Ulster carried the warning into many
constituencies, but it was noticed that they were constantly met with
the same retort as in January--that Home Rule was a "bogey," or a "red
herring" dragged across the trail of Tariff Reform and the Peers' veto;
and it is a significant indication of the straits to which the
Government afterwards felt themselves driven to find justification for
dealing with so fundamental a question as the repeal of the Union
without the explicit approval of the electorate, that they devised the
strange doctrine that speeches by their opponents provided them with a
mandate for a policy about which they had themselves kept silence, even
although those speeches had been disbelieved and derided on the very
ground that it would be impossible for Ministers to bring forward a
policy they had not laid before the country during the election.