TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE KING AND THE CONSTITUTION.
NIVE do not think that the Prime Minister did any service to his country, to his party, or to his Administration by the way in which he introduced the King into the Constitutional controversy. No doubt he only did so against his will and under dire pressure. The spirit in which he would have liked to handle the subject was shown by his perfectly correct and sensible speech on the Address, and not by the speech of Thursday week,— the speech in which he was compelled to parade himself before the country in green chains. At the same time, we do not wish to exaggerate Mr. Asquith's action in this par- ticular, nor have we anything but condemnation for those who would take advantage of his plunge and for party purposes splash in after him with jeers and outcries which only aggravate the original offence. Here, indeed, the reflection of the pseudo-Crabbe of the " Rejected Addresses " is worth remembering :— " He who in quest of silence, silence hoots, Is apt to cause the hubbub he imputes."
We have no intention of increasing the hubbub, but we feel that it may be useful, and can certainly do no harm, if we discuss quietly and in vacun the position of the King, and the various considerations which are likely to affect, and ought to affect, his action. The first thing to remember in any speculation as to what the King will do in the Constitutional crisis with which we are faced is that he will act rather as an Institution than as a man. Every tradition of the Royal house during the last seventy years in which the King has been trained, or perhaps we should say has trained himself, and every instinct, will move him in this direction. He will, we should imagine, not so much ask himself the question : " What do I person- ally think is the right thing to do ? " or " Who has blundered and who ought to bear the burden of such blunders ? " or any such natural and individual question, but rather, " What is the proper function for the British Monarchy to perform in the case which has arisen ? " or, to put it even more impersonally, " How ought the British Constitution to work in the circumstances ? " We may begin by remarking that these circumstances are in a very large sense peculiar. In ordinary circumstances the Sovereign is accustomed to guide his political action solely by the advice of his Ministers. He may no doubt sometimes find it expedient to advise his advisers. It is notorious that both the late Queen and our present Sovereign have often done so with very good results, and have thereby obtained the gratitude of those advisers. Here, however, by the very nature of the case, a situation has arisen where the King cannot divest himself of responsibility for a choice of action by accepting the advice of his Ministers. If we could suppose the King saying in private to his advisers : " Tell me as loyal friends rather than Ministers what answer I ought to give to your official advice," how would they reply ? They would, we cannot help thinking, be obliged as men of honour in that case to say that an occasion had arisen where the Sovereign must act on his own responsi- bility,—they could not be expected to be judges in their own cause. Within the known, accustomed, and prescribed limits of the Constitution the King is clear of all responsibility in accepting the advice of his Ministers as long as they remain his Ministers,—that is, as long as they have the confidence of the House of Commons. When, however, it is a question of altering the Constitution by revolutionary action (we do not call it revolutionary in order to beg the question, but merely to describe its abnormal nature), the Sovereign, as Grand Chairman of the Nation, is bound, however reluctantly, for once to act on his own initiative. It is in essence a case of procedure with which he has to deal, and that it is necessarily the Chairman's function to decide.
We come, then, back to the question : How will the King act in the circumstances which Mr. Asquith tells us are going to arise if and when the Lords reject the Veto Resolutions? What will be the considerations that ought to move him when he asks himself the question : " How ought the British Sovereign to act ? " If we may borrow an analogy from the House of Commons, the King will find himself very much in the position in which the Speaker finds himself when he has to decide at some very heated moment whether or not to grant the Closure at the demand of the Ministry of the day. In these difficult circumstances the Speaker banishes from his mind any feeling that he may have as to the past actions either of the Government or of the Opposition. He may be annoyed at the bad tactics of the Opposition, and think that they have nobody but themselves to thank for the Government having determined to ask for an imperative use of the Closure; or, again, he may hold that the Govern- ment have played their cards badly, and have raised , unnecessary obstacles by irritating the Opposition. When, however, he is face to face with the practical question : " Ought I to grant the Closure to-night or not ? " what he has to consider is whether, first, he is acting in the spirit of the Procedure Rules—that is, of the Constitution of the House of Commons—and next, and this is even more important, whether he will be backed up by the general opinion of the House, which, remember, means something more than a mere mechanical balance of votes on a particular occasion. He has to interpret the spirit of the House in the best interests of the House. This does not ' of course mean that he may have to take the line of with- standing even the overwhelming wishes of the House. In • so clear a case as that he would naturally obey. What he has to avoid is an irrevocable step, unless it is clear that his action will be fully endorsed by those from whom he derives' his powers. This is the attitude of mind with which the King will approach the subject if he determines to act, as we believe he will act, as an Institution rather than as an individual. The mediaeval lawyers described the King as a " corporation sole," and drew fine distinctions between actions taken in respect of his body natural and of his body corporate. If we are right, the King will act in respect of his body corporate.
The consideration which must dominate the King in his action as an Institution is the question : " What is the will of the nation? " The King, it is hardly necessary to point out, will no more claim here than he does on any other occasion to overrule the settled will of the nation. In the last resort he would say as frankly as any other member of the community : "The will of the people must prevail." That for King, Peers, and Commons alike is the ultimate sovereignty,—the fate behind the fates. But, we may imagine the King proceeding, the need of bowing to the ultimate will of the people must not make the Sovereign yield to every gust of opinion that is dubbed or dubs itself the will of the people. A. tremendous respon- sibility is placed upon the King as Grand Chairman of the Nation in interpreting and carrying out the will of the people, and he would be guilty of a terrible dereliction of trust if he were to act either in anger, in panic, or even in haste. When the will of the people is clearly ascertained his course is easy. There is then, indeed, only one course open. But he must make sure. It must never be possible for any one to say of the King that he misunderstood the wishes of his people and in the hubbub of cries failed to catch their authentic voice,—that voice which it is his special function to understand and to interpret. Granted that the King is going to determine his ultimate action by the will of the people, we may consider how he would be likely to deal with the specific question of the creation of Peers. Would not he be bound to say : I can only pledge myself to the general proposition that I shall use the powers entrusted to me by the Constitution to enable the will of the people to prevail after I have heard thevoice of the people pronounced in unmistakable accents' ? This would mean, no doubt, that if a direct appeal were made to the people as to whether the proposed revolution in the Constitution were to take place, and the people answered unmistakably in the affirmative, the King would accept advice to give effect to such expression of their will. The King, however, as it seems to us, is precluded by the spirit of the Constitution from binding himself by any more specific pledges, or from giving any assurances that the Sovereign will act in what we may term a mechanical and automatic way after the next General Election. When the people have been consulted, and the General Election has taken place, it will be his business, and a most difficult and responsible business, to interpret and carry out the decision that has been reached. To ask the King to go further than that, and to tie his bands as to action to be taken in circumstances which by their nature cannot be foreseen, appears to us utterly unjustifiable. If at a General Election a strong wave of opinion adverse to the Lords were to sweep over the country, the King's task in determining his action as an Institution would be com- paratively easy. Again, it would be easy supposing the present Government lost heavily at the elections, and, taking the country as a whole, there were a marked change in the aggregate of votes. The difficulty, of course, arises in a case where neither side has obviously prevailed. Here the King, as we have said, must act as an independent interpreter of the national will. But that extraordinarily difficult and delicate act of interpretation would be rendered nugatory were the King to pledge himself in advance. He cannot do so because neither he nor anybody else knows the circumstances. You cannot say exactly how you will negotiate an unknown and very difficult fence this day three months. You can only say that you will ride as straight and as cleverly as you know how. For example, we can imagine circumstances where a general agreement might rapidly arise that the only reasonable plan would be to submit the Bill for altering the present functions of the Lords to a direct vote of the people. If that should turn out to be the general wish of a new House of Commons, which is by no means an impossi- bility—unless we are mistaken, a great deal will be heard of the Referendum at the next General Election— the King would be in a very false position if he had beforehand pledged himself to create four hundred Peers provided that the Liberal Party and their allies had a majority on the Address in the next Parliament. Again, it is quite conceivable that even though the Liberals and their allies obtained a majority, more than half the House might be of opinion that the power of delay which it is proposed to substitute for the power of reference now possessed by the Peers ought to be applied in fairness to a revolution in the Constitution, after the plan which in the future is to be applied to all legislation, great and small. In such a case the King would stultify the function of the Sovereign were he to give a premature pledge as to imme- diate action. In a word, it seems to us that the King, whatever may be his personal feelings—and remember those personal feelings are quite as likely to be feelings of annoyance with the Peers as feelings of annoyance with his Ministers—will be bound to adopt the attitude of " I must wait and see."
Before we leave the subject of the function of the Monarchy in the present crisis we should like to point out that it is just possible that the King may be able in existing circumstances to suggest a compromise which may prove beneficial and acceptable to the majority of the House of Commons. Though every one thinks a Dissolution is inevitable, both sides detest an immediate Dissolution, and this feeling is shared by the more reasonable and sensible portion of the community. That being so, might it not be possible for a compromise to take place with general consent,—a compromise which would avoid an immediate appeal to the electorate ? Let us assume that when the Lords have rejected the Resolutions Mr. Asquith advises the King to create four hundred Peers, or whatever is the number required to pass them. In that case, might not the King very well say as a preliminary that he could not take the responsibility of accepting advice which would have the effect of rushing through a tremendous Constitutional change ? The Resolutions them- selves, and the arguments which have been used to enforce them, admit in the plainest possible way the need of the power of delay in important legislation, and confide that power to the Upper House. But no case so much requiring delay as the present case is ever likely to arise. How, then, can the King accept advice for exceptionally rapid action ? The Resolutions insist that the proper plan is to introduce the Bill into the House of Commons, pass it, and send it to the House of Lords in three successive Sessions with a total interval of at least two years. If when that process has been carried out the King receives advice to create Peers, his Ministers would clearly be in a fax stronger position. No doubt even in those circumstances an appeal to the country would be necessary ; but if a period of delay and full consideration had been accorded to the Peers, and if then the country returned a verdict in favour of the Bill, the case for the use of the prerogative would be fully established. That this would be a reason- able course of procedure we cannot doubt. Further, we believe that it would. commend itself to a very large part of the Liberal Party. If, however, Liberal critics speak frankly, we shall. we fear, be told that, though good enough in the abstract, it cannot be adopted. And for this reason. Mr. Redmond would not agree to it. The Ministry, therefore, could not survive during the period of delay accorded to the Lords. But is this a true diagnosis of the case ? Is it certain that Mr. Redmond is so very eager for an election ? In any case, it seems not a little unfortunate that a line of procedure so reasonable, so Constitutional, and so much in accordance with the Government's own policy as that which we have sketched should be denied the country merely because of party exigencies. The nation is very tolerant, but we can hardly believe that it will prove so tolerant as to accept the notion that a great revolution must be accomplished in haste and muddle, and with the added inconvenience of dragging the Sovereign into the political arena, merely because Mr. Redmond says that it must be so, and that no other plan seems good to him.
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