TOPICS OF THE DAL
THE STOCK OBJECTIONS TO A POLL OF THE PEOPLE.
THE Referendum has come to stay. The country is beginning to recognise that it is no good to talk about trusting the people and letting the people decide unless machinery is provided by which such a decision can be made good. No doubt more time is required to get the electorate to understand the exact nature of the proposal for taking a Poll of the People, but we have little fear of the opponents of the Referendum being able to induce the country to reject the measure in question. Before we deal with their objections, let us express our entire sympathy with Mr. Balfour's wish to call the Referendum by the much better and more English title of " The Poll of the People." Readers of the Spectator will remember that for many years we used that title, and it was only for fear of confusion that of late we have given preference to the Swiss phrase. The word " Referendum ' was used in the Lords' debates and at first by Mr. Balfour, and we feared that if we followed our inclination to speak merely of a " Poll of the People," we might perhaps be imagined to be talking of some- thing different. If Unionists generally can be got to agree to use the words " The Poll of the People," the advantage will .be very great. As a secondary title "A Reference," or " A Popular Reference," would be quite as correct as, and much less ugly than, the word " Referendum." Everybody understands referring a matter in dispute to the opinion of the master, and that is what the Referendum means. Much, however, as we prefer the phrase " The Poll of the People " or " The Reference," we need not trouble very greatly about the matter. We remember very well how to begin with the Closure used to be called the " Cloture," but how very soon the word " Closure " took its place. A similar development will be sure to take place in the present case.
Professor Dicey, who may be called the father of the Referendum in this country, since it was he who some twenty or twenty-five years ago first seriously undertook the work of commending it to his countrymen, in the admirable series of letters which he is addressing to the Times has dealt exhaustively with five of the general objections to the Referendum. We will deal with the criticisms that have been specifically made by Government speakers. Let us take, to begin with, the objections raised by Sir Edward Grey in his speech at Louth on Tuesday :- (1) Sir Edward Grey began by .declaring that the Referendum would only act when the Liberals were in power, for there was no deadlock between the two Houses when the Conservatives were in office. That is an entire misapprehension, and if it were not Sir Edward Grey who was speaking, we should be inclined to say that it was a wilful misapprehension. As it is, we must presume that in the heat of the political controversy Sir Edward Grey has omitted to listen to his opponents' case. Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords was dealing with the machinery required for getting over disputes between the two Houses, and therefore could not be expected to go into detail about the general use of a Poll of the People. He, however, expressed his willingness to meet the objection that the Referendum would only be called into being when the Liberal. Party was in power. It was quite clear from the context that what he meant was a plan such as that which has so repeatedly been set forth in -these columns. We have pointed out again and again that the objection of one-sidedness can perfectly well be met in one of the two following ways. It might be a rule of the Constitution that if a certain number of electors petition the Crown that an Act of Parliament passed by both Houses shall not come into operation till it had been referred to a Poll of the People, such Reference shall take place. A less cumbrous plan' would be to allow Members of Parliament numbering not less than; say, one-third of the House of Commons— or, if this be thought to involve too many Polls of the People, say two hundred and thirty-five Members—to petition the Crown for a Reference. This would mean that except where Bills were approved by a majority of the House of Commons of two hundred and over, a Referendum could always be obtained by the minority in the House. It is astonishing that Sir Edward Grey should not be aware that specific proposals of this kind have been made by the advocates of the Referendum, and that Lord Lansdowne indicated his willingness to agree to some such proposals.
(2) Sir Edward Grey asks, in connexion with Mr. Balfour's promise to submit Tariff Reform to a Refer- endum Did that mean simply sending out a number of postcards asking whether people were in favour of some general unexplained proposition of Tariff Reform, or did it mean submission of a Tariff Budget with all the taxes in it ? Until the Leader of the Opposi- tion answered that question the Liberals could not tell what the offer meant, or whether it was - worth anything at all." Mr. Balfour has very properly not committed himself absolutely to the exact form of refer- ence, but we are quite certain that he has never intended, as is suggested by Sir Edward Grey, to submit an abstract question or questions to the electorate in regard to Tariff Reform. Mr. Balfour's whole treatment of the subject shows this. We are quite confident that when the matter comes to be thrashed out in detail, it will be found that the only practical plan here, as in the case. of other References, will be to put a definite specific proposal before the country, and to ask whether it shall come into operation or not. The only difficulty in the Fiscal question is the difficulty that taxes are, by their nature, partly executive acts, and that there might be administrative difficulties in submitting the whole of a. Budget. A very little thought, however, will show how this objection can be got over. The reasonable plan would be to refer only new taxes. Let us assume a. Tariff Reform Government in power. They would, of course, have to continue the Income-tax and the Death- duties and the existing taxes on commodities. In addition they would propose a series of new taxes on commodities. These new taxes, in the form of a schedule to the Finance Act, could perfectly well be submitted to the people without any administrative difficulties. The people would be asked, as were the Swiss people not many years ago, whether they were in favour of the new taxes on com- modities set forth in the schedule to the Finance Act of 19— coming into operation. That is a question to which the electors could quite easily give a " Yes " or " No " answer.
(3) Sir Edward Grey went on to declare that the Referendum was not suitable for things like Home-rule, Welsh Disestablishment, Scotch Land Bills, and so forth,— "things which interested part of the country only, and were not suitable to the whole country." That is an entire delusion. To pretend that the subject of Home-rule for Ireland interests only the Irish electors, and does not concern, and ought not to be decided by the votes of, the whole community, is to beg the question. If they were to admit that the dissolution of the Union is a local question affecting only Ireland, Unionists would clearly have nothing more to say. The Unionists claim, however, that the Act of Union created " an incorporating Union," and that we ara being asked to break up the United Kingdom in a manner which will bring national disaster. Therefore unquestionably the electors of Great Britain. as well as those of Ireland have a right to a hearing in the matter. If what Sir Edward Grey says of the Referendum were true, it must be equally true that Members of Parliament for England and Scotland have no right to vote upon a Home-rule Bill. But assuredly Sir Edward Grey would not say that. Just as every Member of Parliament has a right to express his opinion about the affairs of every portion of the United Kingdom, so, if we adopt the principle of the Poll of the People, every voter will have a right to vote upon every Bill referred to the people.. Possibly in practice it might in certain cases be agreed that a local Bill should be referred to a local Referendum, but this would merely be by grace and favour and the delegation of Parliament, and would not derogate from the essential principle that matters of great gravity, upon which the two Houses of Parliament cannot agree, or on which a large minority of Parliament demand a poll, shall be submitted to the veto of the voters as a whole. Of course what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The votes of Irish, Scotch, and Welsh voters must affect, as they do now through their representatives, Bills dealing only with England. No one has ever suggested that the votes of Irish and Scotch Members of Parliament should be disallowed on the question, say, of disestablishing the Church in certain English dioceses. In the same way, English voters must be allowed to vote on the question of Irish Home-rule. All we have said, and all that has ever been said by any sane person, is that it is not right that Ireland should have forty Members more and England forty Members less in the House of Commons than they would have under the principle of equal representation. Sir Edward Grey's objection is a mere bogy. If his principle were insisted upon, the United Kingdom would already be dismembered, because Parlia- ment as a whole would have no right to legislate for England, Scotland, or Wales. To such strange results does the pursuit of the fissiparous policy of Home-rule lead us.
(4) Though it was not raised by Sir Edward Grey, another objection often made to the Poll of the People is that if it went against a Government Bill, the Government would have to resign. We have often met this parrot-cry before, but we suppose we must meet it again. In order to enforce party discipline, Govern- ments are very apt to say that unless they can get this or that measure through Parliament or through the House of Commons, they will not be responsible for carrying on the administration. Yet, as a matter of fact, we all know that Governments are constantly defeated, directly or indirectly, and do not resign. Bills introduced by the Government are either not proceeded with, or altered beyond recognition, because they find that the House of Commons will not pass them, which is in principle equivalent to rejection. Yet they do not on that ground resign, but often " carry on " for two or three years. In truth, Governments only resign when they find that they have lost their majority in the House of Commons for general business, and can no longer command victory on the question of general confidence. The Government is not merely a machine for manufacturing laws, but is appointed to carry on the executive work of the nation. As a rule when a Government Bill was rejected by a Poll of the People, the Government would not resign, for the very good reason that they still commanded a majority in the House of Commons, which majority did not wish for a Dissolution. No doubt there might be cases in which a Government would feel that a measure put before the people was essen- tial to their executive work, and that if they could not pass it they must leave office. For example, we can imagine a case in which a Government might ask for some strengthen- ing of the law for dealing with outbreaks of crime or disorder. If such a Bill were referred and rejected, the Government would verylikely say:—" We have told you that we cannot keep order without these further powers. As you will not give them to us, we will no longer be responsible for the administration." Such cases, however, would be quite exceptional. A Government beaten at a Reference would generally say :—" We have appealed to the master on a particular point and he has decided against us, but that is no reason why we should not go on conducting the business of the country."
(5) Yet a further objection which has been made to the Referendum is that it would injure the character of Parliament. We believe that it would do just the opposite. In many cases it would set the electors free to vote for the better of two candidates, and thus make it far more necessary than it is now for the party caucuses to select men of good standing. At present the ordinary elector is often faced by an odious dilemma. Candidate A is a man thoroughly worthy to represent the constituency on personal grounds ; but the voter who is considering his claims detests two or three of the chief measures to which the party of Candidate A is pledged. Candidate B, on the other hand, is sound on the matter of these legislative proposals ; but he has gained his selection at the hands of the party caucus by unworthy means, or at any rate is not a candidate for whom a self-respecting elector will care to vote. At present the elector, if he belongs to the party of Candidate B, or is of his political way of thinking, is obliged to vote for B because it is his only chance of stopping the injurious legislative proposals to which A has committed himself. In a State, however, where the right of veto over legisla- tion is placed in the hands of the people the voter in a case such as we have named may, as a lesson to his party not to choose candidates of doubtful character, vote for A. He knows that through the Poll of the People he will have a further and a better opportunity of stopping the injurious proposals to which A is pledged. No doubt such cases would not occur very often, and no doubt also the party ties are so strong that they would not very often operate in the way we have described. At the same time, we cannot but think that the rigour of party would be relaxed in such circumstances. At present the party caucuses know very well that people of certain political views must vote for the man they select, who- ever he is, and this tends to make them careless, or even sometimes corrupt, in their selections. If they could not feel that they had the electors who favoured their views in a cleft stick, a great deal of the malignant power of the caucus would be got rid of.
(6) We will deal last with the objection as to the cost of a Poll of the People,—an objection about which an immense deal of nonsense has been talked. The only essential expense of a Referendum to the community is that involved in printing the voting-papers and proclama- tions, and in paying the officials and polling-clerks who preside in the polling-stations and the persons who count the votes. Beyond the money payments required for these, there are no expenses which will fall on the community. The huge sums paraded by Mr. Lloyd George and others are of course reached by adding up all the money flung away at election times by individual candidates in close competition with each other. There is not the least fear, however, that these sums would be spent at a Poll of the People. Men spend much more freely when they are trying to gratify personal ambition to get into Parliament than when they are dealing with a specific legislative proposal. No doubt the two parties would spend something on holding meetings, and so forth, but it would be on a very much reduced scale. In any case, such expenditure would not be obligatory, but at the option of the subscribers to party funds. It is clearly absurd to include these sums in the cost of a Referendum. The cost of a Referendum is what it would cost the Govern- ment to set up the voting machinery ; nothing more. If people are determined to spend money on meetings and political literature, they cannot of course be stopped ; but, as we have said, we very much doubt, if the element of personal competition were withdrawn, whether the present foolish expenditure on posters and unnecessary meetings and circulars and literature—we hesitate to use the word in such a context—would go on.
We are confident that the more the question of the Poll of the People is studied, the more clearly will it be seen how weak are the objections to it, and how strong the arguments for it. That it deals no blow at the best part of the representative system we are certain. What it does do, as we have said again and again, is to provide a corrective to some serious evils of that system. Repre- sentative government, like many -other political institu- tions, is showing a tendency to destroy itself by means of its own waste products, waste products immensely increased by the fierceness of the party fever. By placing the veto in the hands of the people themselves by means of a popular Reference, we are able to get rid of the poisonous effects of these waste products.
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