Definition of "home rule" []

• The principle or practice of self-government in the internal affairs of a dependent country or other political unit. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "No, they could not hope for home rule in the old country, nor, if Catholic in Scotland or Wales, for much sympathy from the Protestant indigenes."
• "They and their middle-class fellow countrymen grew to political importance when they reverted to the idea of moral force only, advanced by Isaac Butt in his home rule scheme of 1870 — an idea broadly, but less pacifically, followed by Parnell."