TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CRISIS. rE political situation is perhaps the strangest that has ever arisen in the House of Commons. Though it changes from day to day, and therefore though it is possible that by the time these pages are in our readers' hands new developments may have taken place which will make our criticisms seem out of date, it is worth while, we think, to point out what are the underlying causes of the crisis. The main fact is that the Government policy, the policy by which the Cabinet stands or falls, is a double policy, that of passing the Budget and dealing with the veto of the Lords. For the second portion of this policy—namely, that which concerns the veto—they have a majority which, even if not altogether homogeneous, is sufficient. As regards the Budget part of their policy .they are in a minority. For a Ministry content, as Ministries are often obliged to be, to live from hand to mouth this would not very much matter if it were possible to take the policy upon which they have a real majority first. Circumstances, however, which cannot be controlled make this physically impossible. The first duty of a Government, and the duty which, though it may not be obvious to their followers, is always most obvious to a Cabinet, is to carry on the actual work of administration. But this cannot be done unless certain financial measures are passed, and passed within a definite period. Not only must the Budget of 1909-10 be voted before the close of the financial year, but also a certain number of financial and other annual measures must be passed before the end of March.
Admitting that this is so, the plain man will ask why those who wish to take up the Lords question cannot agree to get the Budget and the other essential administrative measures and votes out of the way, and then with a fair field tackle the problem of the Upper House. Those of the supporters of the Government on the Lords policy who dislike the Budget must, he will argue, make up their minds one way or the other. If they prefer the rejection of the Budget to dealing with the veto, they will naturally vote against the Budget, and there is an end of the matter. If, however, they think the Lords question more important, they must choose the lesser evil and swallow the Budget in order to prevent that which they dislike even more than the passing of the Budget,— namely, the veto of the Lords remaining undealt with. That sounds well enough in the abstract, and would no doubt decide the matter if the Government's majority were homogeneous, and if the Nationalist Members were, apart from the Lords question, anxious to keep the Government in office. Unfortunately for the Government, this is not the case. The Nationalists frankly declare that they have no use for the present Government except in so far as they have power to sweep away the veto of the Lords, and. therewith the essential obstacle to Home- rule. The Nationalists are men of one political idea. Their minds are fixed upon Home-rule. In order to obtain it they want to destroy the Lords, but apart from that the Lords question does not interest them. So anxious, indeed, are they to destroy the only remaining obstacle to Home-rule that they will even vote for a Budget which they have denounced, and continue to denounce, as a piece of gross injustice to Ireland. But the Irish go on to argue :—" Although we are willing to pay this huge price in order to destroy the Lords, we are not willing to pay it unless we are certain that the goods bought will be delivered. We are not going to be so mad as to deal Ireland the crushing blow which our votes for the Budget must deal her, and then be told some six months later that the Liberals are very sorry, but they find circumstances make it impossible for them to fulfil their part of the bargain and abolish the veto." Accordingly, and not unreasonably from their point of view, the Irish declare that they want definite guarantees from the Liberals that the veto of the Lords can be and will be abolished, and at once. To this the Liberal Government reply :—"Certainly. We will give you the required guarantees by promising that the Budget shall not be passed into law till you have seen our veto scheme and know exactly what it is, until, indeed, the first steps have been taken for passing it into law." To this the Irish say, in effect, that the offer to let them ace the Bill leaves them entirely cold. The Bill may be the best Bill in the world, and yet of no use unless the Liberals can promise to carry it into law. Nothing else is worth anything to them. They do not collect Bills as people collect postage-stamps. They want acts. The next move i in the game of dialectic s for the Government to point out that the Irish are crying for the moon, and that by the very nature of things they cannot do more than promise to force on the veto measure in front of everything else and with all the power at their command. As Mr. Asquith explained, the Parliamentary situation does not make it possible for the Cabinet to advise, or promise to advise, the King to create four hundred Peers in order to pass the veto measure through the House of Lords without a new appeal to the people. Upon this the plain man of our thought would answer :—" Surely the Nationalists must realise the situa- tion, and, though annoyed, ultimately agree that the Liberals can give them no other answer. That being so, what is the use of sulking ? There is just a chance that the Liberals may be able to get their Bill through the Lords, though it is a very small chance ; but anyway it cannot be worse than not sending up a Bill at all to the Lords, and that must happen if the Irish put the Government in a minority. No doubt the Irish have a grievance, because, whether intention- ally or not, Mr. .Asquith's words did in effect deceive them. They thought they were giving him the Irish vote in the constituencies in exchange for a promise that sufficient Peers should be made to destroy the veto, whereas it now turns out that in reality Mr. Asquith was making no such promise. But even if this is so, and if the Irish were deceived, what is the use of crying over spilt milk The Nationalists will not make their position any better by recriminations. They must face the facts like other people, and make their ehoice." The plain man who would argue thus would, however, only be showing that he did not understand the true bearings of the situa- tion. The way in which a Nationalist apologist would answer him would be somewhat as follows :—" You forget the situation in Ireland; you forget Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy and the Independent Nationalists ; you forget, finally, the intense hatred of the Budget which exists in every Irish constituency. If in voting for the Budget we could say to the Irish people : 'It is true we voted for the Budget, but see the price we get for it, the destruction of the veto,' the Budget loss would be swallowed up in the gain achieved by the removal of the last obstacle to Home-rule. But we should not be able to say that. If we voted for the Budget, we should imme- diately be denounced for our betrayal of Ireland's interests by the O'Brienites, and then a month or two afterwards, when the Lords have thrown out the Veto Bill, we should have to go to the constituencies with nothing in our hands, but with the brand of Cain upon our brows. That, from our point of view, spells ruin."—" But look at the alternative,' the plain man will go on. "If you do not vote for the Budget, and the Government are put out, you will all the same have to go to the country, and that immediately."—" No doubt,' our Nationalist interlocutor would reply ; "but in that case we shall go without the odium of having voted for the Budget. We dare face our constituencies in those circumstances. We dare not in the circumstances which the Government are preparing for us. We do not want a Dissolution, but a Dissolution when we can go unsmirched by the Budget will suit us infinitely better than a Dissolution in which we must face the electors smothered with Budget mud."
If we have described the situation accurately, as we think we have, then there seems to be no possible way out of the difficulty, unless the Nationalists are able to feel that abstaining from voting for the Budget will not in Ireland be regarded as the same thing as voting for it, or, rather, as action which enabled the Budget to pass. But the Irish people are too quick-witted to take up such an attitude as that. They will not regard the policy of abstention with favour. They will, as we have just hinted, consider that abstention, if it leads to the passage of the Budget, is in effect, though not in name, voting for the Budget. What the Irish people would say to the Nationalists in the supposed case would be :—" You have let the Budget through and you have brought us absolutely nothing in return. That is a betrayal of our cause, and we shall mark the fact by giving our trust in future, not to you, but to your rivals, the Independents." But though it appears to us impossible for the Nationalists to help the Government unless the Govern- ment promise to pay them a price which they are not in a position to pay—i.e., unless they promise to force the Veto Bill through the Lords—it is conceivable that in some way which we cannot foresee, or for some reasons which are for the moment obscure to us, the Nationalists will suddenly change their point of view and " plunge " for the Budget. Yet even if they do, and next week sees the surrender of Mr. Redmond, the difficulties of the Government will be by no means over. It is clear from the King's Speech that the Government have adopted a double policy in regard to the House of Lords. They are not going to be content with the abolition of the veto. They mean at the same time to reform, and therefore to strengthen, the House of Lords. We have repeatedly pointed out the absurdity of a policy of first repairing a house and then burning it down, and will not argue that point now. It is sufficient for our present purposes to note that a very large section of Radicals are determined that they will tolerate no reform of the House of Lords whatever. They quite frankly want the substance Of single-Chamber government, though they are willing to tolerate, nay indeed prefer, the forms of a bicameral system. Accordingly their faces are dead set against reform of the Lords. They argue, and from their point of view argue rightly, that even if they could accomplish the work both of reforming the House and abolishing the veto—i.e., abolishing its essential legislative functions—such abolition would not last. They cannot count upon the Unionists never being returned to power again ; in fact, they know that the moment the Unionists get tired of Tariff Reform they will go back to power with majorities as large and as stable as those which they obtained six or seven years ago. But the first work of a strong Unionist Government would be to restore its powers of legislation to a reformed Upper House. A Unionist Government would shrink from doing that in an unreformed House. To do it in a reformed House would be natural and easy. Recognising these facts, Sir Henry Dalziel, as representing the Radicals, will move the following Resolution on Monday when Mr. Asquith asks for the whole time of the House :—" That inasmuch as no mandate has been received from the electorate for any reform or reconstruction of the House of Lords, this House declines to grant facilities for the discussion of any Resolutions having that object in view." If the Govern- ment refuse assent to that Resolution, it is quite conceivable that, even if they have surmounted their difficulties with Mr. Redmond, they will still be beaten. If they yield to the Radical demand, the Cabinet will break up, for it is an open secret that several of its most important members are absolutely determined to insist on the reform of the Lords, and will never consent to leave things as they are, and thus accept the policy of the extremists.
Previous page
