The Marquess of Lansdowne described the Bill as a "freak Bill," fit for a museum, and wholly inadequate to avert a calamity. Exclusion, on its merits, had probably no friends at all; and the form of it in the Bill was futile and vicious. It had been accepted by the Nationalists only because they thought Ulster would refuse it; so that the original proposal was insincere. The plan of voting by counties was most unfortunate, for in some of the counties Roman Catholics and Protestants were almost equal, and the voting would set up a saturnalia of intimidation and corruption. The time limit was vexatious and superfluous. After criticising in detail the system of government for the excluded areas, he said that the Opposition would not resist the second reading, but would move amendments in regard to the area excluded, the duration of the exclusion, and the conditions of government in the excluded area. But any revision of the Government of Ireland Bill was hopeless, and they would not deal with minute points of the Amending Bill, but leave the Government to make it "watertight." They would be misrepresented and misunderstood, but failure of this last effort might mean an irremediable misfortune to the country. When Æneas descended to Hades, the final and most dread of all the spectres he met was War. But they would support the second reading as that of a makeshift emergency measure meant solely to gain time. The meshes of the Parliament Act left them no other way, but, were a better way offered, they would be ready to explore it. They fully recognised that there was a great Irish problem, requiring to be handled with courage and sympathy, and that they could not adopt a policy of mere negation or destructive criticism. Viscount Bryce, as an ex-Chief Secretary for Ireland, pointed out that the Lord-Lieutenant would have to act on the advice of the British, not the Irish Minister, and thought future Irish parties would be formed on different lines. Personally he would have preferred to give certain northern areas local autonomy, with an appeal to England against any measure which they thought objectionable. He defended the provisions as to exclusion, while admitting the great difficulty as to areas. The Archbishop of York said that a general election would now give no chance of a settlement; and he suggested a Statutory Commission in two sections, to consider devolution from the point of view respectively of Ireland and of the United Kingdom. They had suffered all along from shortness of view; let Parliament stand aside and allow the Irish people to come to an agreement. The chances, however, were not propitious.