TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION.
THOITGH the elections are not completed as we write, there is little doubt. that the political complexion of the new Parliament will be identical with that of the old. Mr. Asquith will be able to count on almost exactly the same amount of support in the House of Commons as he had when he advised the Dissolution. His hopes of obtain- ing a larger, or, what was infinitely more important to him, a more homogeneous, majority have thus been signally disappointed. At the same time, the Unionists have been as greatly disappointed as regards their hope of an Election which might definitely mark a want of confidence on the part of the country in the present Government. The political situation thus remains as it was, except for the one important particular that another and immediate Dis- solution is not possible,—unless, of course, some new political fact, now unseen, were to arise during the next month or two. In any impartial stocktaking of the political situation this must be admitted to be a cir- cumstance which for the moment tells strongly against the Unionist Party. They have not the "sea-room" which they had before an appeal was made to the country. On the other hand, an impartial appraiser of the situation cannot but note that Mr. Asquith, or, to put it more exactly, the Liberal Party, is not master in its own house,—that is, in the present House of Commons. Mr. Asquith has not a majority without the active support of the Irish and the Labour Parties. Unless Mr. Redmond is heartily with him, his position is bound to be precarious, and Mr. Redmond is a hard taskmaster, partly because he and his followers are in many cases genuinely opposed to the views of the ordinary Liberal—as, for example, on such matters as education, the Land-taxes, and licensing—and partly because he is bound to show his independence of, nay, his power over, the Liberal Party, lest he should lose the support of his Irish and American stalwarts. The amount of manceuvring and finesse which was necessary on the part of the Govern- ment in order to secure their position last spring may be forgotten for the moment, but all the old difficulties will reappear as soon as Parliament meets. The election returns on paper may show a majority of 122 for the Veto Bill, but this is by no means the same thing as showing a working majority of 122 for the Government.
In these circumstances we can hardly wonder that capable and experienced, and at the same time thoroughly loyal, Liberals should declare, as Lord Brassey declared in a speech last Saturday, that the proper way out of the present imbroglio is a settlement of the Lords question by agreement. Very likely such an agreement might not be popular with a considerable number of the Liberals, and would also be greatly disliked by the Nationalists. At the same time, it is by no means impossible that the majority of the Cabinet, who know far more of the exact situa- tion than the ordinary Member of Parliament, and who are bound to look ahead and to think of the general conduct of Government rather than merely of votes on one or two great measures, would find many urgent reasons for agreeing with Lord Brassey, and for wishing to arrive at what Mr. Asquith now calls a curtailment of the veto of the Lords through an agreement with the Opposition rather than under the uplifted and menacing whip of the Nationalists.
Whether the Government will dare to take the steps required for reaching such an agreement we cannot of course say, but we do say without fear of contradiction that if some arrangement of the kind were to prove possible, it would receive the support of a very large portion of the Liberal Party. When we say this it must not be supposed that we are to be reckoned among those who imagine that if Mr. Asquith and his colleagues are determined to place themselves and the Liberal Party at the disposal of the extremists and to sanction the policy of "Thorough," they will not be able to accomplish that policy. If they insist on taking their full pound of flesh, they cannot be prevented from doing so. No doubt there are certain consequences which in the end always result from pushing a political triumph to extremes and from insisting upon the full pound of flesh,—consequences ruinous to the political party which adopts such an attitude. Nevertheless, if for the moment no thought is given to these consequences, the thing can be done.
Let us consider what will happen if the Cabinet insist on the pound-of-flesh policy. In that case, the moment Parliament meets and the Address has been disposed of they will pass the Veto Bill, through the Commons by the aid a the "guillotine," and refuse to accept any amendment thereto. They will then send the Bill to the Lords. The Lords will no doubt attempt to amend the Bill by providing for a reform of the composition of the Second Chamber, and by the suggestion of joint sittings in the case of ordinary dis- agreements, and of a reference to the people in the case of matters of gravity. We will assume that the Cabinet will reject these proposals root and branch as destroying the character of their Bill, and will insist upon the Bill,, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.
We shall then have reached a deadlock for which there can only be two solutions, either the creation of Peers or' a new Dissolution. We may feel certain that the present Government will not dissolve. They will, in the circum- stances we are imagining, advise the King to create sufficient Peers to pass the Bill,—that is, about five hundred ; foi if the thing is done, it will have to be done thoroughly, and with no risk of a fiasco. The King, as we have ventured to say on several previous occasions in these columns, will act automatically,—not in accordance with any imagined preferences of his own, but in the way in which the sovereign trustee of the nation should act. He will not, we may be sure, put this tremendous strain upon the Constitution if he can find any other Constitutional way out of the deadlock. Translated into plain language, this means that the King will inform his advisers that he cannot do what they want if there is any other body of men who are willing to tell him that they can and will carry on the national Government without recourse to an act so admittedly revolutionary as the creation of five hundred Peers. In these circumstances the King will, we must presume, ask Mr. Balfour whether he is prepared to under- take the task of government. But Mr. Balfour can only give one answer, and that a negative. And for this reason. It would be useless for him to take office with a. majority of 122 against him in the House of Commons. Therefore he could not take office without an instant Dissolution. But no wise statesman without, as we have said above, the apparition of some new political fact would care to dissolve Parliament immediately after an Election like the present. The Unionists could not hope to gain another seventy seats, and less would not do the business. The risk would be too great. But if Mr. Balfour refuses to take office, what we have called the automatic working of the Consti- tution must oblige the assent of the Sovereign to the only other method of ending the deadlock. Then one of two things must happen. Either the Lords, on the threat of the creation of Peers, will give way and let single-Chamber government be established by passing the Parliament Bill, or else they will insist that the virtual abolition of the House of Lords shall be brought home clearly to the country by the sensational act of the creation of five hundred Peers.
We here reach the real crux of the problem for the Govern- ment, the crux which, we venture to say, in spite of party rhetoric, they are intensely anxious to avoid. We are not, remember, now considering whether it would be wise for the leaders of the House of Lords to advise that body that their best plan would be to insist on the creation of the five hundred Peers. We are dealing with the possibilities and likelihoods. We are bound to point out that merely from a party point of view, the point of view of embarrassing the Government, the Peers have a very great power in their hands,—the power often wielded by doomed men. Look for a moment at the consequences which must ensue from the creation of the five hundred Peers if the Lords insist on that course being taken. No doubt the thing can be done, as we have before pointed out in these columns, without actual scandal—that is, without the appointment of ridicu- lously unfit persons—but it is certain to prove a most un- popular exercise of the prerogative, and will produce a strong reaction after it has been accomplished. But that is not the only consequence which will be disagreeable to the Govern- ment. Another consequence which must follow is the need for immediately dealing with the problem of the composi- tion of the Second Chamber. The reasons why this must be faced are obvious. In the first place, the new House of Lords, which would consist of over a thousand Members, would be excessively unwieldy. When it had to sit for the purpose of registering the decrees of the House of Commons, it would be difficult to find any place except Westminster Hall big enough to hold it. In addition to this question of size, there would be the strange anomaly that the House of Lords would be, as regards the Liberal Party, in a position similar to that which the Liberals, have always told us is so monstrous and disgraceful,— namely, that one party should have a permanent pre- dominance in that House. The House of Lords, after the creation of the five hundred Peers, would be, at any rate during the next ten years, a persistently Liberal House. For this, then, as well as for physical reasons, some plan must at once be produced for filtering the House of Lords and reducing it to a body of, say, three or four hundred Members at most. In other words, the creation of the Peers would mean that the Government must at once tackle the problem of House of Lords reform. They must put this thorny and exhausting question before the introduction even of the Home-rule Bill. No doubt the Irish would object to this; but in a case of this kind even Mr. Redmond's commands would, we venture to say, have to be disobeyed. The scandal of leaving the House of Lords with a thousand Members would be unendurable. It will thus be seen that the Government, even though they have the power, have many very strong reasons for not wishing to dare the House of Lords to force them to create five hundred Peers, and thus precipitate the question of the com- position of the Second Chamber. The Government would clearly prefer a compromise under which they could get the assent of the Lords to their Bill without recourse to the wholesale manufacture of coronets.
The political situation may therefore be summed up as follows. Both parties are disappointed at the results of the elections. Each party has an important card in its hand. The Liberals, owing to the impossibility of another General Election, can on one side squeeze their opponents. Their opponents, however, can squeeze them by forcing the Liberals to create the five hundred Peers, and thereby not only to incur unpopularity and odium, but also materially to alter the course of their political programme. In these circum- stances, it seems to us that settlement by agreement of the parties is not only the best plan for the country, but also the line of least resistance from the purely party point of view. But though we desire agreement on the Parliament Bill, we in no way desire another Conference. That is quite a different matter. We venture to say that neither side desires it. If there is to be an agreement of the parties, it should. be by means of really private talks, and not of formal Conferences where the dumb-show is watched by the Press, and where the participants in the debates have the uneasy feeling that they are sitting in a glasshouse which, though it does not carry sound, is uncomfortably conspicuous. We have spoken very plainly, and we fear in a way that may not seem agreeable, to some zealous Unionists. We can assure such ardent souls, however, that though we desire to face the facts, we by no means take a despair- ing or pessimistic view of the situation. If the Unionist Party only play their cards properly, and obey the maxim that it is the duty of the Constitutional Party to act constitutionally, and not to set the bad example of violence and hot-headedness, their triumph will come. Mr. Balfour spoke, and spoke wisely, of the necessity of repealing the Veto Act even if it should. be passed. We agree entirely with the spirit of his remarks, but when the Unionists have a majority in the House of Commons there will happily be no need for actual repeal pro- vided that they add. the machinery of "The Poll of the People" to our Constitution. To do that will auto- matically repeal the Veto Bill, or, rather, render it void and of no effect. If in the case of a dispute between the two Houses on a matter of grave moment the Lords have a right to insist on a reference to the people being immediately taken, they will clearly exercise that right over a Bill which they think injurious rather than merely postpone it for two years. The Referendum method of settling deadlocks, if it is enacted, will at once oust the monstrous plan of the Government for settling deadlocks in all cases by the triumph of one side,—that is, of the House of Commons. When we say this we do not mean that the evils of the Parliament Bill are to be minimised. We are fully aware of the terrible nature of those evils. Owing to the fact of an interval between its passage and the intro- duction of the Referendum, which we regard now as ultimately certain, the Constitution may be ruined by the break-up of the United Kingdom. In spite, however, of the risks before them, it will be well for Unionists to bear in mind that if, or rather when, they carry the Referendum, they will carry with it the virtual repeal of the Veto Bill, and so of single-Chamber government.
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