The Home Rule agitation, meanwhile, had not been stilled by the Royal Speech and the Prime Minister's promise. But compromise was in the air. The _Westminster Gazette_ (Feb. 16) suggested the appointment of a Statutory Commission of both parties to devise a permanent reconstruction of the government of the British Isles, following on a provisional settlement in Ulster, and a fresh form of compromise was suggested by the publication (Feb. 18) of an open letter to Mr. Asquith from Mr. Frederic Harrison, the veteran constitutional lawyer and Comtist, urging the adoption of a scheme which he had suggested privately to the Prime Minister in 1913, and which might be established, subject to reconsideration after a general election. Under it Ulster would have a separate Committee elected by its constituencies, with complete financial, legislative and administrative powers, and subject only to the Imperial Parliament and the King in Council. As a general election would not afford a clear issue, Mr. Harrison advised that the Home Rule Bill should be submitted to a referendum at once. On the other hand, an influential meeting of City men (Feb. 18) passed a resolution, moved by Lord Rothschild and seconded by Lord Goschen, declaring the Bill impossible to carry into effect. Mr. Balfour and Sir Edward Carson addressed it, the former saying that since 1905 Ireland's old wounds had been "torn open" in the name of good government, and saying that nothing but "a clean cut" would avoid civil war; the latter mentioning that the position was detrimental to the relation of Ulster firms with the great English discount houses, "but we are bearing it cheerfully, and would bear a great deal more." He and his friends, he added, had just authorised an expenditure of 60,000_l._ to 80,000_l._; and he called on the City to stand by them.