TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PEERS AND THE GOVERNMENT.
THE more moderate of the Tory Peers are said to shrink from the idea of rejecting the Army Bill, and we do not wonder at their hesitation ; for they must perceive what the public has scarcely yet appreciated, the immediate politi- cal consequence of so rash a step. The Government will either be compelled to resign, or to set a constitutional pre- cedent fatal to the prestige of the House of Lords. The Army Bill, it must not be forgotten, is not in anything but form a legislative measure. It is an administrative reform embodied in an Act for the convenience of those whom it affects. The Crown is already entrusted with the duty as well as the right of punishing all officers who have broken the law as to extra-regulation payments, and can confer com- missions in future by examination, and without demanding the payment of any money, Her Majesty's Ministers propose to do these things in future ; but in order to protect persons who have broken the law with the tacit consent of officials, they have embodied their proposals in a regular Bill. No- body doubts that had there been no Bill, a vote of either House censuring the Ministry for abandoning Purchase might have compelled them to resign, and we do not see how their application to Parliament to grant compensation to officers can protect the Cabinet from the operation of the constitutional principle. Either they must resign, or they must by remaining announce that they regard a vote of cen- sure passed by the Peers upon a great Executive act as of no importance ; that the Lords in their judgment have ceased to be a " serious " part of the Legislature ; that the Upper House has become, to steal a phrase from President Johnson, a mere body " hanging upon the skirts of the government of the country." We can hardly doubt that they would accept the former alternative, and refuse to remain a Government while the Upper House had proclaimed its want of confidence in their manage- ment of the most important department of the State, the only department in which they act by virtue of prerogative rather than of statutory power. Supposing them to do their duty— and Mr. Gladstone, whatever his faults, is certain not to be over meek—in what position is the country left ? Mr. Dis- raeli must come in, and must either propose to abolish Pur- chase without compensation for extra-regulation prices, or await a direct address from the Commons to the Throne, declaring that they have no confidence in his management of the Army. We all know what kind of a compromise he would try to make, what sort of suggestions he would accept from the Liberal Left ; and we leave it to the Peers to decide whether that is what they desire. He might, it is true, dissolve ; but if he did, the Liberal chiefs would be absolutely driven for self-preservation to the course they have, in deference to Con- servative feeling, so steadily avoided ; they must "stump " the country to the cry of Army Reform, must promise a sweeping change in military organization, must pledge themselves to the dismissal of the Duke of Cambridge, and the final reduction
of the Army into an administrative department under the House of Commons, They could do nothing less than this on such a dissolution, and the Peers will not like the response. They think the country does not care, and that may be very true ; but the country could in a week be made to care as it has cared for few things yet. There would be a few weeks of utter confusion, a suspension of all business, and then a Glad- stone Ministry would again emerge in a House pledged to radical military reform as deeply as it ever was to abolish the Irish Church.
We are not writing this in order to threaten the Peers, but
merely to describe the situation. No Peer, however pre- judiced against the Army Bill, can doubt that its rejection will enable Mr. Gladstone to resign if he pleases, or that most Ministers so censured would avail themselves of the oppor- tunity. He cannot dissolve, for the House of Commons, however mutinous or however ill-tempered, has supported him throughout. lie cannot abandon his Bill, for he has declared it indispensable as a preliminary to a reorganization without which the country is not safe, a measure required to emanci- pate the Government from the control of its own military offi- cers, who now can and do put their veto on the most essential reforms in the most important department of the State. We confess we see no alternative, no method of avoiding a resig- nation, which of itself would be injurious to everybody,—to the Government, because it would create an interregnum ; to the Commons, because it would fill their House with men elected for a special purpose ; and to the Peers, because the hostility of the electors would be directed against them. No Government in our day could afford to be birched for propos- ing an executive measure, and least of all, a Government which, partly from circumstances, and partly from the inca- pacity of some of its members, has lost its power of passing measures, without losing its majority. There is, so far as we see, nothing to be done but resign,—and a resignation cannot, be what the Tory Peers desire.
The debate, as far as it has yet gone, makes the situation only more strained. The Duke of Richmond as leader of the Opposition avowedly bases his resistance to the Army 'Bill on his want of confidence in the executive capacity of Her Majesty's Government. He does not object to the Bill in itself, but insists upon seeing the plan which is to supersede Purchase. That is to say, he affirms in anticipation that he does not believe the Ministry competent to devise a good working plan for promotion in the Army, that he has no con- fidence in them, that to him they are incompetent persons, unworthy to be trusted even with the control of executive details. If that view is accepted by his followers, it is surely a vote of want of confidence of the most direct and stringent kind, a vote such as cannot be passed over except on the theory that the Cabinet is really not responsible to a group of gentlemen who represent only themselves, and the alterna- tives of resignation or a grave snub to the Peers present them- selves once more. We say nothing of the unreasonableness of affirming, after Lord Northbrook's speech, that the Government has no plan. We say nothing as to the absence on the Conserva- tive side of any suggestion of a plan of which they would ap- prove. Our point to-day is the single one that a Government like our own, the creature of Parliament, cannot go on while one of the Parliamentary bodies censures, derides, and rejects its most important executive plan. It might as well try to go on in the face of a refusal to pass the Mutiny Act, or the Appro- priation Act, or any other of the few measures indispensable to the constitutional working of the machine. The Government say an army is necessary, and they cannot have one without the power of selecting the officers to command it. They may be wrong, but if they are wrong it is on a point so vital that their continuance in office ought to be an impossibility, that the rejec- tion of their proposal is constitutionally a sentence of dismissal. The Peers may think so too, and mean dismissal, but then they must say so, and leave it to the country to decide whether they have interpreted its resolve. They may think, many of them, that the country is with them, but they should remem- ber one little bit of homely philosophy. A man may be very discontented with his servants, and nevertheless very angry with his agent for dismissing them, before he has given the word. Over zealous servants may bore one very much indeed, but they are much more tolerable than a household all at sixes. and sevens.
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