Government of Ireland Bill 1893

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 1886 Home Rule Bill had caused him to lose power after members of his party left to form the Liberal Unionist Party, once re-appointed prime minister in August 1892 Gladstone committed himself to introducing a new Home Rule Bill for Ireland.

The Irish Parliamentary Party had divided in 1891 on the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell (who died later in 1891), with a majority leaving the Irish National League to form the Irish National Federation, remaining divided until 1900.

As with the first bill, the second bill was controversially drafted in secret by Gladstone, who excluded both Irish MPs 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 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". On 21 April, the Bill's second reading was approved by a majority of 347 to 304.

By the third reading on 1 September, 26 of the Bill's 37 clauses had still not been debated. A fist-fight developed on the opposition benches between Home Rule and Conservative MPs. The Bill, though passed by the Commons with a slimmer majority of 30, had lost much of its credibility. At that time all legislation could be negated by the Conservative Party–dominated House of Lords, and here it failed on a vote of 41 in favour and 419 against.[1]

The bill proposed:

The Bill's second reading was passed by the House of Commons on 21 April 1893 by 347 votes to 304;[5] the final (third) reading was passed on 1 September 1893 by 301 to 267.[6] However, in the House of Lords the second reading was defeated on 8 September 1893 by 419 votes to 41.[7] 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.[8]

• Government of Ireland 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)
• History of Ireland (1801–1923)

• Government of Ireland Bill 1893 from EPPI online (Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland), DIPPAM.
• "Government of Ireland Bill" matches from Hansard; matches 1893–1909 relate to the 1893 bill.