[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR. "] SIE,—The General Election
and Christmas holidays are over and Parliament will shortly be meeting. What of the future of the British Constitution P Although a Conservative, I cannot help feeling some sympathy with the position in which our Premier is now placed. He will have a pistol placed at his head by both the Irish Party and the Labour Party. Will he rise to the occasion or not P The making of a new Constitution for any country (most of all an old country like the British Empire) is one which should be approached with a desire that all interests should be able to feel that they are being treated with justice. A settlement by violence will be no settlement. The violent men on both sides (and there are violent men on both sides) should be dis- regarded if a settlement must have any enduring character.
Will Mr. Asquith try to exhaust every effort for a settle- ment by consent, or will he allow himself to be forced to force matters, leaving a rankling feeling of injustice and insecurity ? Time will show us ; but if the preamble of the Parliament Bill be honestly meant and the word " preamble " has any meaning whatever, surely the preamble should be discussed and acted upon first. If the preamble be thus disposed of, it will probably be recognised that the rest of the Bill may be dispensed with, and we might thus obtain a settlement by consent which would enable our Prime Minister's name to be handed down to history rather as that of a statesman who (like Alexander Hamilton) framed a new Constitution than that of a, mere party leader who was sub- servient to the extremists of what will after all prove to be but
a temporary majority.—I am, Sir, &c., E. L. OLIVER. The Waterhouse, Bollington, Macclesfield.
[The pistol has already been placed at Mr. Asquith's bead by Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., who in an article in the Christian Commonwealth calls upon the Government to drop the preamble to the Parliament Bill, which was inserted "as a concession to the Whig opinion in the Cabinet," and "is likely to give the Government a good deal of trouble." "There is no reason whatever," he continues, "for retaining it and if the Government press the preamble it is not at all improbable that it may involve their defeat." In an article in this week's Reynolds's Newspaper Mr. G. Barnes, M.P., writes in similar terms.—En. Spectator.]
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