TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A BED-ROCK FOUNDATION FOR THE CONSTITUTION. NVIIE NE VE R , as at the present moment, the question of great Constitutional changes is being debated, a. certain note of uneasiness pervades the discussion,— uneasiness in regard to the light-hearted, and even light- headed, way in which the most fundamental parts of our system of government can be altered, if such is the will of a chance majority in the House of Commons. Hitherto the House of Lords has provided a weak and precarious barrier to " quick-change " alterations in the Constitu- tion. Just now, however, we are face to face with the danger which we have mentioned in its acutest form, for the particular Constitutional revolution advocated is the abolition of even this weak bulwark against sudden and ill-considered changes in fundamentals. It is true that side by side with the uneasy feeling that the Constitution ought not to be changed by the mere vote of the House of Commons is the instinctive dislike felt by the nation to anything in the shape of a rigid Constitution. People at one and the same time want to have some feeling of certainty about the Constitution, and yet not to find themselves altogether controlled by a document which will have to be interpreted by lawyers according to the strict rules of jurisprudence, and not, as they would say, by common-sense. Whether it will be possible to find the magic formula which will reconcile these two.conflicting ideas remains to be seen, but it is at any rate worth noticing that the British people at moments of Constitu- tional crisis have always felt the danger of their laws and liberties lying at the mercy of chance votes of the House of Commons, and have always desired that in the last resort it shall be their own will that shall prevail and not merely the will of their representatives in the House of Commons,—that is, of those " elected persons " of whose insolence Walt Whitman complained.
The intense desire to reach a bed-rock foundation in the matter of the Constitution, and also to limit the powers of the House of Commons by invoking the will of the people through some type of Referendum, is strongly brought out in the remarkable agitation for " An Agreement of the People " with which the Long Parliament found itself faced as soon as it had destroyed the power of the King. The Army of the Commonwealth, which was far more democratic in spirit than the House of Commons, was intensely alarmed at the notion of being entirely at the mercy of the representatives of the people. It felt what Cromwell put with such force and vigour in the words which were quoted by Lord Lansdowne last autumn,— that an omnipotent House of Commons is " the horridest arbitrariness that ever existed in the world." The " Agreement of the People "—in fact, the draft of a skeleton Constitution—" proposed by the agents of the five regiments of Horse, and since by the general approba- tion of the Army, offered to the joynt concurrence of all the free Commons of England," begins by asserting how needful it is to provide against any return " into a slavish condition." Accordingly, after declaring in favour of a Redistribution Bill and other reforms, they make the following affirmation :— " That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this Nation, is inferior only to theirs who chuse them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons, to the enacting, altering, and repealing of Lewes ; to the erecting and abolishing of Offices and Courts ; to the appointing, removing, and calling to account Magistrates, and Officers of all degrees ; to the making War and Peace, to the treating with forraigne States ; And • generally to whatsoever is not expressly, or iniplyedly reserved by the represented themselves."
The document then goes on to enumerate various matters which Parliament ought not to touch. Some people will think the list a good one, and some a bad one ; but the underlying principle is clear,—namely, that the power of the representatives of the people ought to be defined and limited. When the "Agreement of the People" was presented to the House of Commons, it was at once declared seditious and destructive to the authority of Parliament, and Cromwell, who still believed in working through Parliament, took strong measures with the agitators. He had one of them shot at the head of his regiment. The agitation for a fixed Constitution did not die ( ut, however, and soon another and enlarged version of the "Agreement of the People " was presented to Parliament. This docu- ment is specially remarkable because it contains what is in fact, though not in name, a proposal for using a Refer- endum as a safeguard of the Constitution. The men who drew up the "Agreement " saw, and clearly pointed out, that when the country is at the mercy of a single House the people are compelled to say, " We have no bottom,"—that is, no fundamental principles, no firm ground on which to rest. Accordingly they asked for a Constitution accepted by the people, and made unalterable except by the will of the people, as a bed-rock foundation for their Government. The essential clause of this remarkable document is that which shadows forth the method under which the "Agree- ment" of the People or fundamentals of the Constitution are to be referred to the people:—
"That, according to the method propounded therein, it may be tendered to the people in all parts, to be subscribed by those that are willing, as petitions and other things of a voluntary nature are, and that, in the meanwhile, the ascertaining of these circum- stances, which are referred to commissioners in the several counties, may be proceeded upon in a way preparatory to the practice of it; and if upon the account of Subscriptions (to be returned by those Commissioners in April next) there appears a general or common reception of it amongst the people, or by the Well-affected of them, and such as are not obnoxious for Delinquency, it may then take place and effect, according to the tenour and substance of it."
The wording is no doubt clumsy, as is also the proposed machinery, but what the buff-coated Cromwellian troopers, householders and citizens even before they were soldiers, are feeling after is clear enough. Popular assent for the instrument of government or Constitution is what they desire.
Yet another expression of the opinions that were then agitating men's minds is to be found in the "Appeal to the English Nation " which serves as an introduction to the scheme of the sixteen regiments,—one of the many forms of the agitation connected with the "Agreement of the People " :— " If any shall inquire why we should desire to joyne in an agreement with the people, to declare these to be our native Rights, and not rather to petitionto the Parliament for them ; the reason is evident: No Act of Parliament is or can be unalter- able and so cannot be sufficient security to save you or us harmlesse' from what another Parliament may determine, if it should be corrupted ; and besides Parliaments are to receive the extent of their power and trust from those that betrust them ; and therefore the People are to declare what their power and trust is, which is the intent of this Agreement."
Could the uneasy feeling that it is not safe to entrust the welfare of the nation to the vote of a chance majority in Parliament, a majority which, as Mill points out, may really represent, not a majority even of the House, but only a majority of the majority, be better set forth ? As our readers know, the best way, in our opinion, to prevent the clanger of a too powerful House of Commons is to establish and maintain a strong Second Chamber, and to get rid of the difficulty of irremediable conflict between the two Houses by a Referendum or direct appeal to the people. At present, however, our object is not to deal with these large questions, but to point out that those who just now have grave misgivings about the situation are by no means raising novel or unreal points, but are only doing the very thing which their Puritan forefathers did two hundred and fifty years ago.
We wish we had space to set forth some of the discus- sions on the House of Lords which were held in the Council of the Army, discussions in which Ireton played a leading part. Ireton, in spite of the strong line he took against the King, was in all essentials a hard-headed, conservative country gentleman. He was in favour of the House of Lords being maintained, though he was willing to modify its powers of what is now so inaptly called veto by certain restrictions. Ireton's language as conveyed to us by the military shorthand-writer is exceedingly confused, but, as far as one can make out, he desired to do what he called " give a negative voice to the people. No lawes can be made without their consent." Cromwell's interventions in the Constitutional debates of the Army are very significant and characteristic. What he seemed to have dreaded particularly was anything in the nature of the disintegra- tion of the United Kingdom, for he was the first and greatest of Unionists. Mild as he usually was in debate; he burst into flame whenever there was anything like Particularism in the air :— " I had rather bee overrun with a Civalerish interest than a Scotch interest ; I had rather bee overrun with a. Scotch interest than an Irish interest ; and lt4inke of all this is most. dangerous.. If they shall bee able to carry on theirlw-orke thCy will Make this,
"the most miserable people in the eaith." • . •
Cromwell hated the notion of throwing the Constitution into the melting-pot as much as he hated Partidularism. If people entered _carelessly and lightly into the work of Constitution-making, new Constitutions, all equally plausible, would follow each other in quick succession :- " And if so what do you think the consequence of that would be ? Would it not be confusion ? Would it not be utter con- fusion P Would it not make England like Switzerland, one county against another as one canton of the Swiss is against another ? And if so what would that produce but an absolute desolation—an absolute desolation to the nation ?"
But though Cromwell set his mind so strongly against anything in the shape of Constitution-mongering, he too desired. intensely to get at the real will of the people, not only because he wanted to " reach bottom " and obtain a lasting foundation, but because at heart he desired that the will of the people should prevail
"If I could see a visible presence of the people, either by subscriptions, or number, I should be satisfied with it; for in the Government of Nations that which is to bee look't after is the affections of the people, and that I finds which satisfies my conscience in the present things."
The speech from which we quote affords also a curious example of Cromwell's innate conservatism. In spite of the fact that he had adventured life and livelihood to preserve liberty, he saw what danger thele was in men too lightly and too easily insisting upon having resort to arms in a Constitutional quarrel. He speaks of men who say : " If we cannot have this freedom we will venture life and livelihood for it," and then he adds : " When every man shall come to this condition, I think the State will come to desolation."
In truth, the English people alter very little. They are now at heart as intensely conservative as ever they wore. But they are conservative not because they make a fetish of old. things, but because they dread instinctively the confusion, or, as Cromwell would. have said, the " desola- tion," that comes if men once get carried. away by the heady wine of change. They would. always rather patch up an old. building than tear it to the ground. and raise a brand-new one. They always want to be able to put up the sign : " Business carried on as usual during altera- tions. ' Even when circumstances oblige them to make some great change they cling almost desperately to a pretext for saying that continuity of action has been preserved. They may talk of the need of making a clean sweep and an absolutely new start, but when it comes to action it is very seldom that such rhetoric has any effect. No doubt there is a weakness as there is a strength in this fact, but fact it is. We therefore cannot help believing that the final outcome of the present Con- stitutional crisis will be a good. deal smaller than at the moment the public is inclined. to expect. We Confess that from many points of view we regret this fact, for we want to see a much stronger Second. Chamber established than that which we now possess, and we know that that cannot be obtained without drastic and funda- mental changes. But though reason may argue thus, instinct tells us that it is best for a nation to obey the law of its being, and undoubtedly that law in the case of the English people is to talk loud but to go slow in all matters of Constitutional change. Burke's " I must bear with inconveniences till they fester into crimes " is a fit motto for the race.
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