TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PARLIAMENTARY CRISIS.
ASINGLE Chamber is in any case a danger to liberty, good government, and sound democracy. When, however, that Single Chamber is not even bound by its own rules of procedure, but insists that it can decide and undecide at a moment's notice, like a street-corner meeting, the danger becomes infinitely greater. Rules of procedure and standing orders are not a very great check, but at any rate they are some check on a deliberative assembly and prevent it from being altogether carried away by passion, by the whim of the moment, by party exigencies, or by the opportunism of a facile Minister. What we are saying is no guesswork nor any piece of mere abstract reasoning. The refusal to be bound by its own rules is always one of the stages in the downward course of a democratic legislature. After the Long Parlia- ment had abolished the Monarchy and the House of Lords, it rapidly tended in the direction of irresponsibility. A similar but more headlong tendency was to be seen in the French Convention. It indeed set up the " horridest" and most arbitrary tyranny to which a civilized community was ever exposed. Its wild, inconsistent, and chaotic votes succeeded each other like electric shocks. In our opinion, then the Opposition showed a true instinct for liberty and a true appreciation of the greatness of the issue before them when they determined to run all risks and to sink all so-called considerations of public decency and of good manners to prevent the creation of an intolerable precedent—a precedent which must have discredited the House of Commons and have made it take the first step in its ruin as a free Parliament. The course pursued by the Opposition did not damage the House of Commons. Rather, it preserved it from degrada- tion. We congratulate Mr. Bonar Law and his supporters on having shown both courage and strength of purpose and on not having been frightened by the thought that their action might be misunderstood. To take the decision which Mr. Bonar Law took required character in no small degree, and we are convinced that when the nation fully understands the state of things from which it has been saved, it will feel towards him the liveliest sense of gratitude.
We are aware that so careful a political thinker and so learned a constitutional lawyer as Professor Dicey thinks otherwise, and that he has declared it to be his duty to express his firm conviction that the cause of Unionism may be ruined, and quite possibly rapidly ruined, by the action of the Opposition. (See his letter to Friday's Times.) We cannot help thinking, however, that when Professor Dicey has had time to reconsider his view and to understand what was really at stake, he will come to a different con- clusion. At any rate, we are sure that the mass of moderate Englishmen will not follow him, and that there- fee the injury to the Unionist cause which he regards, and rightly regards, as the supreme evil, will not ensue. On the contrary, we believe that the attempt made by the Government not merely to muzzle Parliament and stifle debate, but actually to inaugurate a system under which the mood of the House of Commons of the moment was to be supreme, and its actions, in fact though not of course in name, were to be bound by none of the rules which protect minorities and secure time and careful consideration, will be regarded with detestation. Mr. Asquith's proposal will prove a revelation to the country, and will show them how near the precipice we have been brought by the determination of the Cabinet to force Home Rule upon the country at all costs and at high speed. When they see that in order that Home Rule shall pass they are called on not only to endure Single-Chamber government but also the degradation and demoralization of the House of Commons, they will ask themselves whether the pride is not too high.
We are not exaggerating when we say that the effect of the precedent that the Government desired to make in regard to the decisions of the Commons must have ruined that House. Ministers are always under the temptation to let things slide in the Commons, and are further inclined to treat the House as a body in which a mechanical majority S to register their decisions—decisions that they have come to very often not from conviction but on some point of log- rolling convenience. The fact that they must keep a con- stant hold on the House and not allow themselves to be beaten is a great check on Ministers and a great safe- guard to the dignity and independence of the House. It gives weight and importance to the protests of a minority which they could not otherwise obtain. If, however, a Government under the system which would have been set up by Mr. Asquith's resolution knew that they need not trouble about adverse votes in the House of Commons, because these votes could always when inconvenient be instantly rescinded by another vote, they would have come to despise the House of Commons even more than they often despise it already. Under such a system the House must have danced to the fiddling of the Government and to no other tune. Independence would have been lost, and the power not only of the Opposition, but of the individual member largely destroyed. "Let them play any monkey tricks they like," would have been the feeling of the Ministry. "We can always whistle up our majority when necessary and put things right."
We are not, of course, so foolish as to argue that the House of Commons can never go back upon a decision. That would be sheer lunacy. They must have the power of rescinding. But this power only ought to be exercised after due formalities have been observed and after the consideration which such observation of formalities secures. Formalities are, we admit, nothing in them- selves, but they are of immense importance in steadying action and in ensuring that a vote of the House of Commons shall not be regarded as an unimportant, trivial thing, arrived at to-day and blown away to-morrow by the breath of a Minister.
It will be said, perhaps, that even if all this is true, the Opposition adopted the wrong methods to secure ani preserve the dignity, power, and influence of the House of Commons. We cannot agree. It was their only way of protesting successfully against the Parliamentary revolu- tion designed by Mr. Asquith. He was light-heartedly going to sacrifice the House of Commons to the exigencies of his Ministerial position. He was willing to produce that revolution not merely to keep himself in office or to prevent a dissolution, but in order to save a few days. That is what his action really comes to. This amazing betrayal of the dignity and independence of the House of Commons could only be prevented by the Opposition having recourse to the physical obstruction, which happily they were determined to maintain. If they had not refused to allow the debate to continue, and thus caused the Speaker's intervention, the closure would have descended upon them after two nights, and the ruin planned by Mr. Asquith and the Cabinet would have been complete. There was, we repeat, no other way to save the House of Commons, and therefore we say again that the thanks of the country and of all men who care— and we care very much—for the power and independence of the House are due to Mr. Bonar Law and the Opposition.
We have no desire as a rule to make success the test or the justification for action. In a case of this kind, how- ever, it is one of the elements by which matters are to be judged, and unquestionably success has crowned the efforts of the Opposition, and has, we venture to say, shown the immorality of the Government proposals. If the Government had really believed in the soundness of their own designs and had thought that the Opposition were striking a blow at the House of Commons, is it conceivable that they would have accepted the Speaker's proposals for finding a way out ? Of course they would not. To have done so would have been a base and perfidious act. If they really knew themselves to be in the right and the
Opposition not merely in the wrong in the abstract, but
guilty of a gross outrage on the House of Commons, anll further if they believed that the general sense of the House of Commons supported them they would not have dreamt of agreeing to abandon their proposals. On the contrary they would have insisted on carrying their point. To
propose a desperate and revolutionary course and then to give way on it was a sign that the Government were ashamed of what they were doing, or, at any rate, had come to see the consequences of their anarchical sug- gestion.
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