Irish Government Bill 1893

infobox home rule
Bill=Second Home Rule Bill

_act=Irish_Government_Bill,_1893
country=Ireland
year=1893
govt=Gladstone (Liberal)
HoC=Yes
HoL=No
RA=Not Applicable
house=House of Lords
stage=1st stage
vote=Content: 41; Not content 419
date=September 1893
unibi=bicameral
subd=none
name="upper": Legislative Council;
"lower": Legislative Assembly
size=Council: 48 elected by high franchise
Assembly: 103 members
westminster=80 MPs
executive=Lord Lieutenant
body=Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland
PM=none
to=no
imple=not applicable
succeeded=Government of Ireland Act 1914|

The "Irish Government Bill, 1893" (known generally as the "Second Home Rule Bill") was the second attempt made by William E. Gladstone, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to enact a system of home rule for Ireland. Unlike the first attempt, which was defeated in the House of Commons, the second Bill was passed by the Commons only to be vetoed by the House of Lords.

Background

Gladstone had become personally committed to the granting of Irish home rule in 1885, a fact revealed (possibly accidentally) in what became known as the Hawarden Kite. Though his first attempt had caused him to lose power, once re-appointed prime minister in August 1892 Gladstone committed himself to introducing a new Home Rule Bill for Ireland.

As with the first bill, the second bill was controversially drafted in secret by Gladstone, who excluded both Irish MPs, the leadership of the (split) Irish Parliamentary Party and his own ministry from participating in the drafting. The decision led to a serious factual error in the Bill, a mistake over the calculation of how much Ireland should contribute to the British Imperial Exchequer. The error in the calculation was £360,000, a vast sum for the time. The error was discovered during the Committee Stage of the Bill's passage through the Commons and forced a major revision of the financial proposals. The Bill received a severe battering at Committee due to the mistake. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir William Harcourt, was himself alienated from the Bill having been excluded by Gladstone from its preparation, while the Chief Secretary for Ireland was engaged on other matters, and Gladstone, in the words of a historian, "increasingly disengaged". As a result the Bill, though passed by the Commons, had lost much of its credibility and was easily vetoed by the Conservative Party-dominated House of Lords. [Alvin Jackson, "Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000" p.97.]

Contents

The bill proposed:

Legislature

* A bicameral Irish parliament to control domestic affairs, made up of a legislative council with 48 councillors elected for eight years and a legislative assembly with 103 members.

Executive

* An executive under the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland would form the Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland.

* The new executive would not be answerable to the Irish parliament and would contain no prime minister. [This did not in practice mean that the executive would not be answerable to the assembly, nor did it mean that there would be no prime minister. Contemporary British enactments for the dominions contained exactly the same provisions. However in reality governments became answerable almost immediately, and, as in the case of Canada, a prime ministerial office evolved early on, even if not mentioned anywhere in law.]

Irish MPs in Westminster

This bill was different from the first bill that Gladstone introduced in 1886 because it allowed for the eighty Irish MPs to vote in Westminster but only on bills that affected Ireland.

Passed by the Commons, defeated in the Lords

The Bill was passed by the House of Commons on 1 September 1893, by 301 votes to 267. However when it was presented to the House of Lords it was defeated by 419 votes to 41. This was a major stumbling block for the Irish MPs because the House of Lords was controlled by the Conservative Party and there would be little chance of it getting passed by them.

Gladstone retired soon afterwards. Some historians now suggest that Gladstone was the author of his own defeats on home rule, with his secretive drafting alienating supporters, and enabling serious flaws to appear in the text of his bills. [Jackson, "op.cit" p.98.]

Footnotes

See also

* Irish Government Bill 1886 (First Irish Home Rule Bill)
* Government of Ireland Act 1914 (Third Irish Home Rule Bill)
* Government of Ireland Act 1920 (Fourth Irish Home Rule Bill)

* Charles Stewart Parnell
* History of Ireland (1801–1922)

References

* Robert Kee, "The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism" (2000 edition, first published 1972), ISBN 0-14-029165-2.
* Alvin Jackson, "Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000", (2003),
ISBN 0-7538-1767-5.
*Loughlin, James "Gladstone, Home Rule and the Ulster Question, 1882-1893", Dublin: 1986.
* Thomas Hennessey, "Dividing Ireland", World War 1 and Partition, 1998,
ISBN 0-415-17420-1.
* Irish Government Bill 1893, available from the [http://www.parliamentaryyearbook.co.uk/other/House-of-Lords-Library.html House of Lords Library - Record Office]