The extent to which this ministerial reserve was carried was shown by a
question put to Mr. Asquith in his own constituency in East Fife on the
6th of December. Scottish "hecklers" are intelligent and well informed
on current politics, and no one who knows them can imagine one of them
asking the Prime Minister whether he intended to introduce a Home Rule
Bill if Home Rule had been proclaimed as one of the chief items in the
policy of the Government. Mr. Asquith gave an affirmative reply; but the
elections were by this time half over, and in the following week Mr.
Balfour laid stress on the fact that five hundred contests had been
decided before any Minister had mentioned Home Rule. Even after giving
this memorable answer in East Fife Mr. Asquith, speaking at Bury St.
Edmunds on the 12th of December, declared that "the sole issue at that
moment was the supremacy of the people," and he added, in deprecation of
all the talk about Ireland, that "it was sought to confuse this issue by
catechising Ministers on the details of the next Home Rule Bill."

Even if this had been, as it was not, a true description of the
attempts that had been made to extract a frank declaration from the
Government as to their intentions in regard to this vitally important
matter--far more important to hundreds of thousands of people than any
question of Tariff, or of limiting the functions of the Second Chamber
--it was surely a curious doctrine to be propounded by a statesman
zealous to preserve "popular government "! There had been two Home Rule
Bills in the past, differing one from the other in not a few important
respects; discussion had shown that many even of those who supported the
principle of Home Rule objected strongly to this or that proposal for
embodying it in legislation Language had been used by Mr. Asquith
himself, as well as by some of his principal colleagues, which implied
that any future Home Rule Bill would be part of a general scheme of