themselves whether Home Rule proceeded on federal lines or any other
lines; nor whether some apt analogy could or could not be found between
Ireland and the Dominions of the Crown thousands of miles oversea.
Having made up their minds that no Dublin Parliament should exercise
jurisdiction over themselves, they did not worry themselves much about
the powers with which such a Parliament might be endowed. It is
noteworthy, however, in view of the importance which the question
afterwards attained, that so early as January 1912 Sir Edward Carson,
speaking in Manchester, maintained that without fiscal autonomy Home
Rule was impossible,[25] and that some months later Mr. Bonar Law, in a
speech at Glasgow on the 21st of May, said that if the Unionist Party
were in a position where they had to concede Home Rule to Ireland they
would include fiscal autonomy in the grant.[26] These leaders, who,
unlike the Liberal Ministers, had some knowledge of the Irish
temperament, realised from the first the absurdity of Mr. Asquith's
attempt to satisfy the demands of "the rebel party" by offering
something very different from what that party demanded. The Ulster
leader and the leader of the Unionist Party knew as well as anybody that
fiscal autonomy meant "virtual separation between Ireland and Great
Britain," but they also knew that separation was the ultimate aim of
Nationalist policy, and that there could be no finality in the Liberal
compromise; and they no doubt agreed with the forcible language used by
Mr. Balfour in the previous autumn, when he said that "the rotten hybrid
system of a Parliament with municipal duties and a national feeling
seemed to be the dream of political idiots."

The ferment of speculation as to the Government's intentions continued
during the early weeks of the Parliamentary session, which opened on the
14th of February, but all inquiries by members of the House of Commons
were met by variations on the theme "Wait and See." Unionists, however,