TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DUTY OF THE LORDS.
liATE regret Lord Rosebery's speech in the House of Lords on Wednesday for what he said, but we regret it infinitely more for what he left unsaid. If he thinks it was unwise of Lord Lansdowne to produce a Bill it was, perhaps, necessary for him to say so, though this ground he himself cut away when he told the House that he should have remained silent but for the pokings and proddings of Lord Newton. Again, feeling as he does, and as every wise man must, in our opinion, feel, as to the folly and iniquity of Single- Chamber government, it was no doubt incumbent on him to speak strongly against the actual proposals of the Parlia- ment Bill. But if it was necessary for him to speak it was not necessary to speak as passionately as he did. Still, our regret here is, as we have just said, as nothing when compared with our regret for what Lord Rose- bery did not say. His speech was in a high degree unsatisfactory and even dangerous because he omitted to face the real problems of the situation and to give the House of Lords and the Opposition advice which he was well competent to give, and which, in our opinion, it was his essential duty to give in view of his high position and un- rivalled experience in State affairs.
The need of the hour is cautious, prudent, deliberate, and, above all things, cool advice. We want guidance of the kind which a wise leader gives to himself and to others in a moment of peril, in a moment when a situation has become bad and dangerous, but when, nevertheless, it is possible through steadiness in action to make it a little better, or, at any rate, to prevent worse things happening. When one is climbing a dangerous peak and a thunderstorm comes on, and the light will soon give out, it is madness to bewail one's condition, to lecture the guides for their folly in leading one into such a situation, or for not having taken the precaution of starting earlier, or, again, to denounce, however deservedly, the wickedness of those who have made the condition of the climbers worse by refusing them help and assistance. All this may be absolutely true, but in such conditions as we have named the man whose advice is worth having is be who turns to face the facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts, of the situation, and concen- trates all his efforts on making the best of a bad job. Such a man, to vary our metaphor, is the pilot who weathers the storm. It is he to whom a nation or a party will give its gratitude in the end, even if at the moment it may be angry or sulky or difficult to lead.
Had Lord Rosebery addressed himself to the task of showing the Peers and the Opposition how they might make the best of a bad job, he would have done a great national service, though the immediate task would very likely have proved utterly ungrateful. Instead of such practical spade work, or, if you will, patriotic opportunism, he merely criticized a scheme necessarily exposed to criticism, and denounced the Government for doing what all wise men have already denounced them, and rightly denounced them for doing. Neither the criticism nor the denunciation, we venture to say, was of any practical value at this moment for both are truisms. Lord Rosebery, instead, should have faced the facts as they are and as he must know them to be.
Lord Rosebery knows that the Government can only maintain their majority, and can only therefore remain in office, if they pass the Parliament Bill without any real concessions. And he knows that they mean to hold office under these conditions. He knows, therefore, that if the House of Lords rejects the Parliament Bill the Govern- ment will advise the King to create a sufficient number of peers to ensure the passing of that Bill. He knows, next, that the King must, under our Constitution, accept that advice, unless he can find Ministers willing and able to carry on the government of the country without passing the Parliament Bill. But this means Ministers willing to take the tremendous responsibility of advising the King to dissolve Parliament, and to dissolve it at once. But Lord Rosebery knows that there exists no alternative set of Ministers able to carry on the government in the present House of Commons, or willing to run the risk of destroying their Party by an immediate disso- lution. Therefore the King must, if the Lords reject the 1 Bill, accept the advice of the Ministry in being and create' sufficient peers to pass the Bill. Therefore Lord Rosebery knows that if the facts are faced the situation is as follows. The Peers have to choose between the iniquities of the Parliament Bill plus the destruction of the House of Lords by the creation of 500 peers, and the iniquities of the Parliament Bill minus the iniquity of the creation of the peers. That is the choice which lies before them. That is the situation which it is the duty of the leaders and advisers of the Peers to get them to face, and to face in a spirit of coolness and temperance, and, as we have said, in the spirit of those who desire to make the best of a bad job. Can any reasonable man think that the Peers will make their choice more sanely or more wisely if they are inflamed by the kind of oratory, however great and moving—and great and moving it certainly was—to which Lord Rosebery treated them ? The Peers have suffered great wrong at the hands of those who have traduced them, and it is only natural that many of them should be in the mood to say to the electors : " If you want to get rid of us, get rid of us and make an end. We will perish like men, but we will not endure the tempests of contempt and vituperation to which we have been subjected. We will show the country that we would far rather cease to be altogether than occupy the humiliating position pre- pared for us by the Parliament Bill, the position of pre- tending to be a. Second Chamber, but in reality being merely a gilded machine for registering with certain delays the will of the House of Commons." That is a mood which one can understand Members of the House of Lords assuming, but it is not a wise one, and it is not in reality a patriotic one. Therefore it is not a mood which a statesman and patriot like Lord Rosebery should do any- thing to encourage.
A leader such as he, and also a man who by his past experience and his position between the two great Parties is peculiarly well able to give good, even if unpalatable advice, should have used very different language. He might have admitted the provocation suffered by the Peers, but he should have shown them how much better they can serve their country by enduring for a time the treatment which is meted out to them under the Parliament Bill. What Lord Rosebery should have told them might have been on lines like these : " If the Parliament Bill were to be a permanent settlement of the question, and if there were no hope of its revision, then no doubt you would be right to say, ' Let our House perish at once and let us refuse to endure the degradation prepared for us.' But the Parliament Bill need not be, and will not be, a permanent settlement. It is obviously, it is admittedly, a temporary and partisan device for trying to pass Home Rule by a coup de main—a desperate attempt, but one which must be made if the Government are to remain in office. The British people do not realize that as yet ; but when they do realize it a reaction will come which will sweep the present Ministry away and restore the Unionists to power. This itself might not be enough, but the Unionist Party have made their essential policy the adoption of an institution which is the corrective of the great defect of representative government—log-rolling arrangements which usurp the authority of the people. The Unionists are pledged to the introduction of the Referendum. But the moment the Referendum is adopted for settling disputes between the two Houses, the humiliating position created by the Parliament Bill—that is, Single-Chamber government in fact, but cloaked by a sham or rather a manacled House of Lords—instantly passes away. The House of Lords recovers its dignity and that modicum of power which is all it has claimed in this generation, the power of seeing that the will of the people shall prevail and not the will of a combination of Parliamentary cliques. If the Referendum were not a possibility, or rather a great deal more than a possibility, the House of Lords had better perish. While it is the policy adopted by the Unionist Party, and a policy which daily and hourly grows in strength and popular estimation, as needs must a policy so democratic, the House of Lords has not only the right but is under a solemn duty to endure and wait and be patient. It is far better that the Peers should suffer the humiliation of a degraded, or if you will abjecting, position for a few years than that in a moment of anger and indignation, however well justified per se, they should become parties to the ruin of the Constitution." Surely some such words as these—would that we had the power to give them the great orator's thrill—would. have been worthier of Lord. Rosebery.
It is all very well for the Peers to talk about personal humiliations and so forth, but we venture to say plainly that such talk is rhetoric, which they had much better put on one side. If certain action is for the good of the country as a whole, the Peers ought not to trouble them- selves whether a "personal humiliation " is or is not involved. The Duke of Wellington and the Peers of his time thought they were suffering a deep personal humilia- tion in 1832. But the Duke wisely and patriotically advised them to suffer that humiliation, and history shows that he and they did well. Here, however, it will no doubt be said, and in a sense truly, the humiliation is greater. Whereas the Bill of 1832 was a thoroughly good. Bill in itself, the Parliament Bill is a thoroughly bad. one. Such an argument, though true, is not germane. The point is that the Duke of Wellington thought he was suffering a personal humiliation and yet endured it. The Peers, then, if they are wise, will not let their action be swayed. for a moment by personal considerations, and this, we ven- ture to say, is what Lord Rosebery should have told them.
If we may repeat ourselves, what the Peers have got to do is to remember that the Parliament Bill is not, and can- not be made, permanent. If they and the Unionist Party will only concentrate their efforts upon adding the Refer- endum to our institutions, the effort to establish Single- Chamber government will prove futile. As soon as we have the Referendum for deciding deadlocks between the two Houses, the Peers, whether reconstituted. or as they exist now, will possess a function which it is peculiarly appropriate that they should exercise—the function of acting as remembrancers to the democracy, and of being able on great and important occasions to see that the people have the opportunity of saying whether they will or will not be governed by a particular piece of legislation that has been prepared in the House of Commons. That will be the duty of the Lords when the Referendum is part of the Constitution—surely not an ignoble or useless one. Can it be wise that the Peers should wreck these possibili- ties of the future in order to indulge a sense of personal indignation in the present ?
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