VII. Cecil Rhodes and the Second Home Rule Bill

Abstract

The main way in which the second Home Rule Bill differed from the first was in its provision for the retention of Irish M.P.s at Westminster. Cecil Rhodes played an important part in bringing about this change, both in the way in which he obtained Parnell's support for continued Irish representation in die Imperial Parliament, and in the assistance he gave to the Liberal Party to regain power in 1892. But while most of the facts about Rhodes' only major incursion into British politics have long been well-known, his actions have been obscured; either through misunderstanding, or because they have been considered as peripheral to the more important aspects of their subjects by biographers of Parnell and Rhodes himself and by writers on the home rule crises, and so have been underestimated.