A CONSTITUTIONAL POINT.
ITO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.") Sta.—Will you allow me to draw attention to the importance of the House of Commons' division on the cattle embargo question as a constitutional issue? In my letter published in your issue of July 22nd I suggested that it might be a dangerous precedent to allow that a single Minister could bind the nation and Parliament to carry through legislation in fulfilment of his individual promise. In the recent debate the question of the pledge was the main issue. As I write the division lists have not yet been published, but Mr. Asquith, with his long experience of constitutional issues, was emphatic, and no one has stated the issue clearer than Mr. Thomas, the Member for Derby, who pointed out that if we did not honour this pledge Dominion statesmen attending future Imperial Con- ferences could only take rank as delegates, implying that at the conferences ill 1917 they were not only plenipotentiaries in the diplomatic sense, but had also the power of binding the legislatures of their respective Dominions. Our Ministers attending the conference had, of course, the same status as the Dominion Ministers, and were, therefore, also plenipoten- tiaries, hence the binding nature of the pledge. The Canadian Ministers went home, we are told by the Duke of Devonshire, believing that a definite pledge had been given; they, appa- rently, were plenipotentiaries, and naturally thought that our Ministers had equal powers. Personally, I do not in the least quarrel with the new doctrine; I rather welcome it; but perhaps I may at least plead that till the House of Commons decided the matter the novelty of the proposal, which involved both the scrapping of the now effete constitutional dogma of Cabinet responsibility as well as the freedom of Parliament to deal with legislation unfettered by any outside influence, led me to believe, not only that there was no pledge, but that there could be no pledge. The Press, with perhaps a single exception, have accepted the new doctrine, and I have no reason to go over the old ground and to dispute it, but as you were kind enough to publish my former letter, I hope you will also find room for my apologia.—I am, Sir, &c., ji. T. HINCRES. Mansel Court, Hereford.
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