He was invariably met with an impatient retort that he was attempting to raise a bogey to divert attention from the iniquity of the Lords and the Tariff Reformers.

Home Rule, he was told, was dead and buried.
On the 19th of January, 1910, when the elections were over in the boroughs, Mr.Asquith claimed that "the great industrial centres had mainly declared for Free Trade," and the impartial chronicler of the _Annual Register_ stated that "the Liberals had fought on Free Trade and the constitutional issue." The twice-repeated decision of the country against Home Rule for Ireland was therefore in no sense reversed by the General Election of January 1910.
But from the very beginning of the agitation over the Budget and the action of the House of Lords in relation to it, in the summer of 1909, the gravity of the situation so created was fully appreciated by both political parties in Ireland itself.

Only the most languid interest was there taken in the questions which stirred the constituencies across the Channel.

Neither Nationalist nor Unionist cared anything whatever for Free Trade; neither of them shed a tear over the rejected Budget.
Indeed, Mr.Lloyd George's new taxes were so unpopular in Ireland that Mr.Redmond was violently attacked by Mr.William O'Brien and Mr.Healy for his neglect of obvious Irish interests in supporting the Government.
Mr.Redmond, for his part, made no pretence that his support was given because he approved of the proposals for which he and his followers gave their votes in every division.

The clauses of the Finance Bill were trifles in his eyes that did not matter.