MR. BALFOUR ON THE REFERENDUM. T HE REFERENDUM is rapidly entering
the region of practical politics. Indeed, after Mr. Balfour's speech last Saturday, it may almost be said to have already arrived there. It is true Mr. Balfour qualified his adhesion to the principle of referring important and disputed legislation to the nation as a whole ; but his qualifications were of a perfectly general kind, and amounted, in fact, to little more than the very sensible declaration that all innovations are bad unless there is a clear need for them. His words were these :—" Though I am far from saying that we should make this inno- vation, or any other innovation, upon the British Consti- tution, so far I am prepared to go, that -if, under the leadership of this or any other Government, the House of Commons is to be deprived of its deliberative functions, and the House of Lords is to be checked in the exercise of its constitutional duties, then a direct appeal to the people, and that alone, can save us from the greatest legislative disaster." But we can hardly doubt that what has happened in other popular Legislative Assemblies, will happen in the House of Commons. The tendency already visible will rapidly increase, and the deliberative functions of the House surely, though by no means slowly, will become maimed and inoperative. At the same time, it is very unlikely that the process by which the House of Lords has been losing the right to participate in legisla- tion will be checked. For the moment, no doubt, the House of Lords is strong and popular ; but this is only owing to the accident that a statesman supported by a scratch majority—due, in a great measure, to the over-representation of the Celtic portions of the United Kingdom—is trying to force an unpopular constitu- tional change upon the nation. The flicker in the Lords is due to Home-rule, not to any permanent change -of feeling in the country, and cannot last. The two con- -ditions, then, under which Mr. Balfour would accept the .Referendum, are not conditions which are likely to prove ephemeral, but rather conditions which will remain. Bills in the future will be passed by aid of the Closure, not seldomer, but rather of tener ; and the authority of the House of Lords, as a Chamber of Revision, will wane instead of growing or remaining where it is. Mr. Balfour's qualifications are, in fact, a statement of the practical arguments in favour of the Referendum, and so, we take it, he meant them to be considered. The growth .of interest in the principle of the Referendum, marked by a speech like that of Mr. Balfour, is a matter which we . have a right to regard with special satisfaction, for since the establishment of Democratic Government in the United Kingdom, we have again and again advocated in these columns some form of Referendum as the necessary check upon the representatives. We have always held that the true way to correct the blunders of "elected persons" is by a direct appeal to the people.
As Mr. Balfour's speech has stirred popular intere at in the Referendum, it may be worth while to meet here some of the objections which are occasionally raised against it. In doing so, we must ask—(l), What is the Referendum ?
(2), what constitutional machinery is needed to apply it ? (3), how is it to be put into operation ? The first of these questions is easily answered. The Referendum is a poll of the people taken in regard to the enactment of new laws. The electors of the country are asked, "Is it your will that such and such a Bill shall become law ?" and according as the majority answer " Yes " or " No " the fate of the Bill is determined. Sir William Harcourt objects to the Referendum as something foreign and un- English. Let him, then, call it "a poll of the people." He cannot get anything more English than that, just as he cannot get anything more democratic. We take a poll of a parish to determine whether or no there shall be a Free Library, or a poll of a town to decide upon a scheme for new waterworks. The Referendum is a poll of the whole people to decide whether this or that law shall pass. What constitutional machinery is needed to apply the Referendum ? This question has been answered in detail by Mr. St. Loe Strachey in an article in the National Review for February, entitled" An Appeal to the Lords," and to this we refer our readers. It will be sufficient to say here that writs would be issued to the returning- officers ia the various constituencies in the country direct- ing them to hold polls under the Ballot and Corrupt Prac- tices Acts, at which the electors would vote " Yes " or "No" to the question, "Is it your will that such and such a Bill should receive the Royal Assent ? "—to endorse the numbers of the Yeses and Noes on the writ, and to for- ward them to the Crown office, where they would be counted and the result duly announced and recorded. How is the Referendum to be put into operation ? Who, that is to say, is to decide what Bills are to be referred to the people ? Obviously every petty Bill passed by Parliament could not, before it was presented for the Royal Assent, be re- ferred to the people. The country would soon be sick of being polled. Who, then, is to say what Bills are to be referred ? In Switzerland, federal laws are submitted to a popular vote if this is demanded either by 30,000 citizens or by eight Cantons within ninety days from their publica- tion. In most of the Cantons a Cantonal Referendum is also applicable to cantonal laws. (It should be noted that it is the whole law just as it has been passed by the two Houses of the Federal Assembly, and not merely a principle of action that is submitted to the electors.) The question for us is,—Would the Swiss plan for applying the Referendum be applicable to the case of the United Kingdom ? Theo- retically,—Yes. Reference on petition would, in many ways, be an excellent institution. It might, under certain cir- cumstances, allow a body of patriotic non-politicians to defeat bad legislation. It would, however, be far more difficult to apply in a great country like England than in a small one like Switzerland. Since Switzerland has about 3,000,000 people, 30,000 means a proportion of one in every hundred, but in the United Kingdom this would necessitate a petition of 300,000 persons. But that is a very unwieldy number. There is some chance of checking and verifying 30,000 signatures, but 300,000 could not be properly authenticated without infinite trouble. Under these circumstances we should, on the whole, prefer to entrust the duty of putting the Referendum in operation to either House of Parliament, —that is, practically, to the House of Lords, for since the House of Lords has virtually ceased to initiate legislation, the House of Commons could never want to refer a Bill passed by the Lords. What we would suggest is, that the Bill establishing the machinery of the Referendum should declare that whenever either House (i e., the House of Lords) should be unable to agree with the other House in regard to the details of a Bill, that House should pass the Bill in the shape desired by the other House, but should add thereto a clause referring the Bill to a poll of the people before receiving the Royal Assent. A provision of this kind would ensure the reference of all Bills of the first importance, and of none of a trivial kind. The House of Lords can be trusted to establish and maintain a constitutional etiquette. The able men who influence the Lords would soon make it a matter of constitutional etiquette, as binding as that in regard to Money Bills, that no Bill was to be referred which did not involve either some constitutional change or else some change which, though not technically in the Constitution, was equally important. This would be far better than declaring, as has been suggested, that the Referendum should only apply to changes in the Con- stitution. That means a definition of the Constitution. Nor is this all, for even if you got the best definition in the world, it would not be wide enough. Clever drafts- men would soon contrive ways of drawing revolutionary Bills of which it would be impossible to declare with accuracy that they involved a constitutional change. A body like the Lords could do what no definition could achieve,—secure that all really big measures dealing with contentious subjects should be referred to a poll of the people. Another advantage of making the Lords the body armed with the power of demanding a reference is the fact that in this way could be solved the difficulties surrounding conflicts between the two existing Houses and the proposals for a new Second House. The Re- ferendum would decide the disputes, and what is more, would prevent the sacrifice of power by the House of Commons, which would be necessary if a new and strong Upper House were invented. The Lords would give up their claim to an authoritative share in the work of legislation, and would accept the humbler role of setting the appeal to Caesar in motion. They would become, in fact, the sovereign people's remembrancer,—their duty being every now and then to attract the attention of their master, and to ask whether it was really his will and pleasure that his servants in Parliament should pass a law forbidding the use of fermented liquors to persons other than the members of elected Boards and Councils ? Of course, under such circumstances, the Peers must be allowed, if they like, to resign their seats, and to offer themselves for election in the Lower House. One advan- tage of our proposal is that it is in harmony with the general trend of the Constitution. It is at this moment almost, if not quite, an admitted constitutional custom that the Lords, though they have not the right to reject legislation absolutely, have a right to demand an ad hoc Dissolution. But an ad hoc Dissolution is simply an im- perfect form of the Referendum. To place the applica- tion of the Referendum in the hands of the Lords would then be merely recognising a constitutional tendency which is just hardening into a custom. At the same time, if it should be desired, we see no reason why it should not be further enacted that if, and when, not less than three hundred thousand electors (or, say, one thousand in each of half the constituencies) petitioned the Sovereign to withhold the Royal Assent from any Bill until a poll of the people had been taken, the Royal Assent should be withheld until such poll of the people had been taken. If the country were not afraid of being worried by the petition-mongers, there would be many advantages obtainable by adopting this scheme.
Before we leave the subject of the Referendum, we must say a word as to one of the objections raised, not by men like Sir William Harcourt, whose attitude is simply that of the partisan, but by able and moderate critics, who, wisely enough, do not want to take a leap in the dark, or to commit themselves rashly to an unknown change. How is it possible, they ask, to get the country to decide on a complicated measure full of details ? You can get people to say whether they want a Parish Council ; but how can you get the plain man to decide whether he wants the Parish Councils Bill ? We admit that in appearance the objection is a serious one. In practice, however, it is no harder to decide for or against a complicated measure than for or against a complicated man. The opinions of Mr. B., the candidate for Little Peddlington, are a mass of details, some of them good and some bad. Yet the Little Peddhngtonians find no difficulty in saying "Yes " or "No" to them. They form a general impression about them, one way or the other, and vote accordingly. This, we take it, is what people would do with a Bill. They would, either on good or bad grounds, consider that the balance of good and evil was for or against the Bill, and would vote accordingly. No doubt many men would vote "No" because their party thought the Bill bad, and on no clear personal opinion. But then they do this also in regard to their Members, and the Members, as often as not, do it also in regard to Bills before the House of Commons. Besides, this very thing is done in Switzerland, and without difficulty. There it is quaintly provided by the Constitution that a sufficient number of copies of the Bill shall be sent down to the Cantons, and the opinion of the people• is taken directly on the question,—The Bill, the whole Bill, or none of the Bill ? But what the men of Uri and Schwyz can do, can be done by the men of Somersetshire and Yorkshire. The sea can roar back its " Yes" or "No" as intelligibly as the mountains. The Referendum is coming,—of that we have not had the least doubt for the last half-dozen years. The truth is, every Constitution wants somewhere the power of veto. In a democracy, that power must rest ultimately in the people themselves, and the Referendum is its handiest form. In America, an elected President wields the veto as agent for the people, but since our President is hereditary, the Sovereign people must act here in its own name.
Previous page
