His gaze was steadily fixed on the House of Peers, which he saw before him as a huntsman views a fox with bedraggled brush, reduced to a trot a field or two ahead of the hounds.

That House was, as he described it, "the last obstacle to Home Rule," and he was determined to do all he could to remove the obstacle.
Lord Rosebery said at Glasgow in September 1909 that he believed Ministers wanted the House of Lords to reject the Budget.

Whether they did or not, there can be no doubt that Mr.Redmond did, for he knew that, in that event, the whole strength of the Liberal Party would be directed to the task of beating down the "last obstacle," and that then it would be possible to carry Home Rule without the British constituencies being consulted.

It was with this end in view that he took his party into the lobby in support of a Budget that was detested in Ireland, and threw the whole weight of his influence in British constituencies on to the Liberal side in the elections of January 1910.
But, notwithstanding the torrent of class prejudice and democratic passion that was stirred up by six weeks of Liberal oratory, the result of the elections was a serious loss of strength to the Government.

The commanding Liberal majority of 1906 over all parties in the House of Commons disappeared, and Mr.Asquith and his Cabinet were once more dependent on a coalition of Labour Members and Nationalists.