Balfour says idea of Home Rule for Ireland is ‘preposterous’
The former British Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, addressed a gathering of 3,000 people in Aberdeen last night and said the Home Rule Bill was destined to be a hopeless failure. Balfour, who was replacing Edward Carson as speaker after Carson had been called to Belfast for a meeting with businessmen, was accompanied on the platform by seventeen unionist MPs.
In the course of a powerful speech he claimed that the Home Rule Bill was an experiment in federalism of the most impossible, unexampled and preposterous character.
