TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BUDGET AND THE REFERENDITM.
"(TEST impossible de causer avec un monsieur comme la) ea," was the only comment of a wise diplomat on the self-satisfied and insulting tirade of an opponent. That is the best way to treat Mr. Lloyd George's Newcastle speech, and the speech of Mr. Winston Churchill at the National Liberal Club. Mr. Lloyd George's speech, so far as it was anything but the screech of an angry demagogue, was an attack upon the institution of private property, with a special denunciation of private property in land when held by people with titles. Of argument in defence of his fiscal proposals there was none. He made no attempt to show that those proposals were sound, or would effectively fill the Treasury with the minimum of injury to trade and commerce, and therefore to employment,—the argument for which the sane man always looks when he is asked to agree to a new system of imposts. We do not intend to waste our own time or the time of our readers by discussing Mr. Lloyd George's invective. Far more important is the announcement made by the Parliamentary Correspondent of the Times in Tuesday's issue. He tells us that the Government have been considering for some time past whether, in the event of the House of Lords refusing to pass the Finance Bill, they should not at once appeal to the people by a Referendum rather than through a General Election. Such action would, of course, require special legislation, but it is felt, he tells us, that there should be no difficulty in this respect. The Lords have always declared their desire that the Budget should be referred to the people, and it may therefore be assumed that they would not refuse assent to any properly drawn Bill for taking a poll of the people. We need hardly say that such a course would have our approval, and the approval of that large section of enlightened opinion which has gradually come to the conclusion that the balancing and corrective power provided by the Referendum is greatly needed in our Constitution. The power of veto should exist somewhere in every Constitution. But there are no hands in which that power can be better or more efficiently placed in a democratic State than in the hands of the people them- selves. Legislation, not by the will of the majority, but by a series of log-rolling intrigues, is the chief danger of a representative democracy. This danger is met by a poll of the people. The people, and the people alone, can prevent the wishes of an active and persistent minority from being enforced in the name of the majority. So important, nay, so necessary, is this reform that, although the Finance Bill is probably the most unsuitable Bill which could be chosen for a first experiment of the Referendum—there are many reasons why annual and semi-administrative Acts like Finance Acts should not be liable to the Referendum—the opportunity for introducing the principle of the Referendum with general consent should not be lost. In such a case the advocates of the Referendum must not stand on a punctilio.
It is, we fear, quite possible that, even though, as the Times tells us, the question of applying the Referendum has been debated, nothing will come of it. The Referendum has many enemies,--a specially in the more advanced wing of the Liberal Party. They do not really want the will of the people to prevail so much as to use democratic institutions for carrying out a particular policy. But though we cannot assume that there is any great prospect of the Referendum being tried, we are con- vinced that it ought to be, and that there are no practical difficulties in the way of such a trial. In order to show that this is so, we will set forth in detail how the Referen- dum might be applied, granted that it were agreed that the present Budget should be referred to the people. We must first consider the system of voting to be employed. We see that the writer in the Times talks of the possibility of taking a Referendum through the post, and of voting-papers being delivered to the electors for them to fill up at home. In our opinion, such fancy methods would not be suitable, especially at a time when party feeling is running very high, and when unscrupulous persons on both sides might be tempted to get possession of the polling-papers 9.nd fill them up under conditions which make the detection of fraud or bribery very difficult. Again, forgery on a considerable scale would be by no means impossible. We have got already established a thoroughly sound system of voting by ballot which leaves little room for malpractice, and it is obvious that this well-tried system should be adhered to. As we have several times explained in these columns, the taking of a Referendum by means of the existing electoral machinery would be quite easy. All that would be necessary would be to pass an Act empowering the Crown to issue to the returning officer in each Parliamentary constituency writs similar to the Parlia- mentary writs requiring him to hold on a day named a poll as to whether a Bill entitled a Bill for such-and-such a purpose should or should not become law, the ballot to be held under the Ballot and Corrupt Practices Acts, and other Acts governing Parliamentary elections so far as they are applicable to such a poll of the people. At the said poll all persons on the Parliamentary register, and no others, would be entitled to vote. The returning officer would be required to endorse the result of the poll in his constituency on the writ said to return the same on the day named. Provision might easily be made for the Revising Barristers to appoint two persons in each con- stituency to act as scrutineers of the counting, and for these two to name sub-scrutineers to act in. each polling- booth. The Revising Barristers would act judicially, and would name one person to represent those known to be in favour of the Bill coining into operation and the other to represent those known to be opposed to it coming into operation. The cost of the Roil would of course be borne by the Treasury. The voting would all take place on the same day, and the returns from the con- stituencies would be counted by the Crown Office in London under proper conditions.—The Lord Chief Justice might appropriately preside at such counting —The conditions for the final count in London would be the only new conditions which would have to be prescribed. The voting in the constituencies would be exactly like the voting at a General Election, except that the words " Yes " and " No " would stand in place of the names of the candidates, Mr. A and Mr. B.
We must next consider the form of the ballot-paper,- that is, the form in which the question should be put. In our opinion, much the fairest and safest way, though we admit it is not the only way, would be to put the question in the form in which a man puts the present problem to himself and to his neighbours. He asks himself whether he is for or against the Budget—i.e., the Finance Bill—and gives his opinion accordingly. No doubt there are plenty of people who like some things in the Budget and dislike others, but, except in the case of a very few very subtly minded people, men strike a balance on the considera- tions for or against, and come to a decision on the whole. This is the answer to the people who say " How can a man be asked to vote on a complicated measure of which he likes some parts and dislikes others ? Remember that the thing has to be done, and is done, every day in both Houses of Parliament. No one who votes for the third reading of the Budget in the House of Commons will like every clause, section, and subsection in the Bill. Again, no one who condemns the Bill as a. whole will condemn every clause. The Members will act on what they consider the balance of evil or good in the Bill. The talk about the impossibility of voting upon a compli- cated measure is, in truth, the merest moonshine. If one is to go into the question of complication, it is much harder to vote upon a complicated man than upon a complicated measure. Yet that is what we all do at elections. Nobody approves of all Mr. Asquith's or all Mr. Balfour's opinions, and yet we must vote at a General Election whether on the whole we wish the one or the other to be Prima Minister In fact, in the case of a General Election the complication is still greater, for mixed up with the question of the complicated man for Prime Minister there is the more immediate question of the complicated. Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown who is to represent the individual constituency. Electors have very often to decide to cast their votes on considerations of this kinda—" I should greatly prefer B to A as the representative for the Pedlington division of Loamshire ; but at the same time I much prefer Z to X as Premier. But if B is returned, he will unfortunately bring in X, whereas A would support the Premiership of Z. I have therefore got to consider whether on the whole I wish my predilection as regards the Premier or as regards my special representative to prevail." It is far easier to decide whether on the whole one is for or against a complicated Bill than it is to answer such a conundrum as that.
We are, then, strongly in favour of the Bill as a whole being referred to the electors. That being so, the ballot- paper should be as follows :— Reference under "Poll of the People Act,
1909."
BALLOT-PAPER.
Is it your wish that "The Finance Bill, 1909 " shall become law P ... ...- ...
If it is, place a cross under the word "Yes." .rf not, under the word "No" ... ... ...
Yss. No.
We must now ask at what stage in the progress of a Bill through the two Houses of Parliament it should be presented to the people. Some very interesting considera- tions in this respect are discussed in the Report of the Referendum Committee of the British Constitution Associa- tion, which Report is to be found in the August number of the Association's monthly organ, Constitution Papers (offices of the British Constitution Association, 23 Charing Cross, S.W., price Id.) The Report discusses this question in reference to chap. 8 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 63 and 64 Victoria. By Clause CXXVIII. of that Act alterations in the Constitution are to be referred to a poll of the people, and arrangements are made as to the stage in its progress at which the Bill is to be referred. But though these are questions of great general interest, the matter in the present instance is simplified by the fact that the Commons claim that the House of Lords cannot amend a Finance Bill, but only reject it as a whole. Though we ourselves hold that this claim is too wide, and should be limited by substituting " tax " for " Bill "—our contention is that the House of Lords may not amend the provisions of a tax, but may delete a particular tax from an omnibus Tax Bill like a Finance Bill—we admit that for present purposes what would have to be referred to the vote of the electors would be the Bill exactly as it leaves the House of Commons, and unaltered in any particular by the Lords. In these circumstances, it appears to us that the simplest plan would be for the House of Lords, when the Bill reached them, to add a Referendum clause to the following effect :—" This Bill shall not come into operation till a majority of those who vote at a poll of the people, taken according to the terms of the Poll of the People Act, 1909 [an Act which would by agreement have previously been passed], have voted in favour of the said Bill." If, however, the House of Commons should deem this suggestion an infringement of their privileges, why should not they send up the Finance Bill to the Lords with the Referendum clause we have just given attached thereto P The House of Lords would then pass the Bill exactly as sent up to them, knowing that it could not come into operation till a majority of electors on the Parliamentary register had given it their assent.
It may be pointed out that one great advantage of taking a Referendum in the form we have suggested would be that there would be little or no financial dislocation. The taxes would be collected as they are being collected now. If the vote went against the Bill, new financial provisions would, of course, have to be made, but the disturbance would be reduced to a minimum We do not expect that the proposal for the Referendum, even if it were to be made by the Government, would be immediately accepted. by all Unionists. It is possible to point out many objections to the application of the Referendum in the present case. It may be argued, for instance, that even if the Finance Bill were beaten at the polls the Government might refuse to resign, that they might introduce a new Finance Bill almost as objectionable as the old, and that the House of Lords might find great diffi- culty in insisting that the new Bill should also be referred. to the people. Our answer to such objections is that public opinion would soon settle any attempt of the Government to disregard the wishes of the people in this way. As a matter of fact, it is almost certain that the Government, if beaten at the polls on the Finance Bill, would dissolve Parliament. If, however, they did not, but bowed to the will of the country without resignation, which we fully admit they would have the right to do, then we may feel confident that their new Finance Bill would be of a very different and much less revolutionary description. Further objections may no doubt be raised both to the form we have suggested and also to the advisability of even referring financial measures to the people. As we have said at the beginning of this article, though we do not ignore these objections, we feel that the opportunity of getting the Referendum admitted into the Constitution is so important in the interests of a. wisely organised democracy that we hold. them to be overruled. The extreme Radical or Jacobin portion of the Liberal Party detest the Referendum because they are aware that the country as a whole is opposed to most of their so-called social reforms, and that those reforms can only be carried by an elaborate system of log-rolling. For that reason they are strongly against giving the people themselves the power of veto. But this important minority of the Liberal Party are probably powerful enough under normal con- ditions to prevent the Liberals from assenting to the Referendum. Therefore we say again with all the emphasis at our command that if an opportunity offers for introducing the Referendum, it should at once be accepted.
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