TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A SUGGESTION FOR COMPROMISE.
THE debate on the first reading of the Parliament Bill has been beneficial. It has shown us the real point at issue and what are the reasons which appear to make agreement between the two parties impossible. Even if it is a great gulf that separates them, its length, breadth, and depth have been measured, and these are facts which it is abso- lutely necessary to know in detail before we consider the possibility of building a bridge. To abandon our metaphor, the practical difficulty is the period of inter- regnuna—the period between the destruction of the legis- lative powers of the present Second Chamber and the creation of that new Second Chamber, based on a democratic foundation, which has been specifically promised by the Government, not only in the speeches of Ministers but in the preamble of the Bill. The Government, by refusing to take the natural course of letting reconstruction follow immediately after the Veto Bill, or even of superseding that Bill by reconstruction, have made it certain that there must be an interregnum, and probably one of several years, since it is common knowledge that they have promised that a Home Rule Bill, a Welsh Disestablishment Bill, a Payment of Members and Election Expenses Bill, an Industrial Insurance Bill, and a Plural Voting Bill shall have pre- cedence of House of Lords' reform.
The knowledge that there is to be this interregnum and that it is to be made use of in the manner we have indicated renders it impossible for the Opposition to consent to the passage of the Veto Bill. They believe that if the interregnum is thus created and thus used, the legislative union between the two islands will be dis- solved, and dissolved contrary to the real wish of the nation. Therefore they would be guilty of a breach of public trust in assenting to its passage, and must make any and every sacrifice and run any and every risk rather than fail in their duty in this point. It is not a question of pride or party tactics or clinging to privilege, as their opponents allege, or, again, of refusing to sacrifice a part in order to save the whole, but rather the knowledge that here is an issue upon which every honest man and every brave man must feel it is better to fight and lose than not to fight at all. Nothing can happen to a cause worse than its total defeat. Therefore the Unionists feel that in existing cir- cumstances they have no option but to fight to the death. The threat " You had better yield lest worse things over- take -jou," a threat which must always be weighed by sensible men, has no terrors for them. In their view there can be no worse thing than the interregnum, during which the House of Commons, uncontrolled, or rather wholly controlled by the minority led by Mr. Redmond, will bi, able to pass a measure like Home Rule upon which the opinion of the country has never been taken.
Here is the situation. Is there no way out ? We believe there is, in spite of the apparent hopelessness of the outlook. The compromise which we would urge upon Mr. Asquith and his colleagues, and upon Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, is this : Why should not Mr. Asquith promise on behalf of the Government that the Home Rule Bill, before it comes into operation, shall be submitted to a poll of the people ? In consideration of that promise, the Veto Bill should be passed into law as it stands, or, at any rate, without alteration in the House of Lords. The result of such an agreement would be, in effect, a promise by Mr. Asquith not to take advantage of the interregnum to pass measures of vast consequence to the nation without making sure that they are assented to by a majority of the voters. It may be said that Mr. Asquith is too much committed to opposi- tion to the Referendum to make it possible for him to give any such promise. We cannot agree. In his speech on Tuesday night Mr. Asquith was most careful to point out that he was not irrevocably opposed to the notion of a poll of the people on any and every possible occasion. " I am not going to rule out the Referendum as, under conceivable conditions, a possible and practical expedient of dealing with some exceptional case." His objection, he went on to say, was to the introduction of the Referendum as " normal part of our regular Constitutional machinery." But, clearly, the use of the Referendum for a great Constitutional change during a period of transition would be just one of those exceptional cases which Mr. Asquith has so signifi- cantly refused to rule out as possible occasions for the Referendum.
The circumstances are not merely exceptional because of the nature of the Home Rule Bill—i.e., the repeal or partial repeal of an Act declared by the Legislature to be fundamental and permanent—but also exceptional in the fact that Mr. Asquith has told us in so many words that he considers two Houses necessary to the welfare of the Constitution. " We hold," he told the House of Commons, " as the preamble of this Bill asserts, that there ought to be a Second Chamber, and that it should be a body which, unlike the House of Lords, rests not on a hereditary but on a popular basis." Though he is not ready at the moment to evolve a new Second Chamber " possessing in its size and composition the qualities -which are needed for the impartial and efficient discharge of the functions appropriate to such a body," he clearly recognises the need in the Constitution for a powerful House of this kind. That certainly makes the interregnum, during which the House of Commons will be able to legislate after a certain delay without the concurrence of a Second Chamber, an altogether exceptional episode. For Mr. Asquith then to promise that a Home Rule Bill if passed through Parliament under the operation of the Veto Bill—that is, without the assent of the Second Chamber—shall not come into operation till it has received the assent of the electors would be no contradiction of anything to which he is pledged, nor would it in any true sense stultify his policy. Let us turn next to the question whether Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, as trustees for the causes to which the Unionist Party is pledged and for which it exists, could give their assent to our proposal. We admit that to ask them to do this is to ask a very great deal, and that by doing so they will subject themselves to a good deal of Unionist criticism. Considering, however, the intense anxiety to reach a settlement in a year like the present, to use Mr. Balfour's phrase, we hold that they might consent. Under the course proposed the causes for which the Unionists care will, we fully realise, be exposed to great risks, but at the same time that embittered Constitutional conflict which all wise men desire to avoid would be avoided, and, at any rate, the Unionists would preserve the principle which we admit is vital, and which they can never sacrifice—the principle that the people as a whole must be secured in their right to prevent the passing of fundamental legislation to which, whether for good or ill, they object. Under the compromise we have proposed, Home Rule might, no doubt, be passed, but if it were so passed it would be by the will of the people, and not merely by means of a log-rolling agreement in the House of Commons.
We shall probably be told by Unionist critics that we have made our suggestion for compromise too narrow, and that if our proposal in regard to interregnum legislation is sound in the matter of Home Rule, it ought to be applied also to other important matters which are likely to be dealt with during the interregnum. In theory, we agree. We feel, however, that the need for a peaceful settlement is so great that, as we have said, we are willing to run very great risks in order to secure it. In a matter of compromise the important thing is to consider your opponent's case from his point of view, and to try to select what is his line of least resistance, even though it may prove to some extent your own line of sacrifice. We should be asking the Government to make an exception to their principle of resistance to the Referendum. Therefore we must ask it on a point which may most clearly be regarded as exceptional. If there is any legislative case which is exceptional, it is an alteration in one of the Acts of Union, which must be looked on, since they rest upon national treaties, as essentially different from ordinary Acts of Parliament. Mr. Asquith, assuming his atti- tude towards the Referendum to be a sound one, would have far better grounds for applying exceptional treatment to a Bill establishing a separate Parliament in Dublin with a separate Executive than he would in the case of legislation which did not effect so fundamental a change. In other words, in attempting to reach a compromise we must ask for the very least change that can be asked, and for the thing which our opponents would fuid it least hard in the matter of principle to yield.
No doubt we shall be told that in asking some- thing which affects Ireland we are in reality asking the Liberals to make not the minimum but the maximum of sacrifice. We refuse to discuss the matter from this point of view. If we once begin to look at the question from the standpoint of party tactics and the exigencies of the Whips' Room, clearly all possibility of an agreement must vanish. We must look at the matter from the point of view of a national settlement. After all Mr. Asquith, if we can imagine him taking the course which we have suggested, need not really suffer even in the Parliamentary sense. Most of his Liberal supporters would probably at heart feel a great sense of relief at knowing that the responsibility of finally deciding the problem of whether the Union is to be broken up or not • had been transferred from them to the electors as a whole. Mr. Redmond and his party would of course be annoyed by the compromise, but in the end they would have to acquiesce. Their chance of getting Home Rule would be reduced, but, after all, unless they were to adopt the policy of cuttinap off their noses to spite their faces, it would be absurd to turn Mr. Asquith out of office because lie had yielded. At any rate, by keeping him in office they would get their Bill put before the House, whereas if they dismissed him in the sulks they would not even get that.
We must never forget that whenever the two Front Benches agree the Irish are powerless, for by the very nature of the agreement they cannot use the threat of going to the other side and doing a deal with them. If a compromise were agreed to over the Veto Bill, there would be no danger of Mr. Balfour coalescing with the Irish in order to drive a Home Rule Minister from power. The Government might not be separatist enough for Mr. Redmond, but at any rate they would be a great deal less anti-separatist than Mr. Balfour. The Nationalists know very well that there is no market for their wares on the Opposition side of the House. In a word, by securing the Parliament Bill on condition that if Home Rule is passed during the interregnum it shall be submitted to a poll of the people before it comes into operation, Mr. Asquith would not be endangering the position of his Ministry nor breaking any pledge that he has made, either to the country or to the Nationalists.
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