[TO THE EDITOR Or TEE "SpEcremoa."] Silt,—As a Socialist it
is not often that I find myself in agreement with the views of the Spectator and of the leader of the Conservative Party in matters of politics. In respect, however, of their opposition to single-Chamber government, and of their advocacy of the Referendum, I find myself in agreement.
The principle of the Referendum, indeed, has been stated by so great an authority as Professor Werner Sombart to be a fundamental of Socialist policy, while Dr. Menger and M. Renard have even approved of the bicameral system. It need not be a matter for surprise, therefore, that a Socialist should support so far as the two above points are concerned the new Conservative policy. As there is at the present time, how- ever, a tendency among Conservatives to identify the Socialist position with that of the left wing of the Liberal Party, perhaps you will be good enough to allow me to make clear in your columns that, so far as the points in question are concerned, this is not so.
It will be well to commence the discussion by stating a principle on which all Constitutional parties are agreed. We all believe that " the will of the people should prevail." If this be granted, the only ground on which single-Chamber government can be defended is that the will of the majority of the House of Commons faithfully, and all the time, reflects the will of the people. This seems to me to be an
indefensible proposition. At any moment the will of the majority of the House of Commons may fail to reflect the will of the people. Indeed, I had hitherto been under the impres- sion that the Liberal Party itself had declared that the Con- servative Government for a considerable time before the Election of 1906 had failed properly to interpret the national will, and that the result of that Election had proved this to be the case. It should be noticed, too, that the failure of the will of the majority of a representative Assembly to reflect the will of the represented is inherent in the representative system, and in the case of the House of Commons does not arise from defects in our political system. Under a perfect system of representative government there is no guarantee that the majority of the representatives will on any given question, at any given time, accurately interpret the desires of the electors.
This does not mean that representative government is of no value Many political, and practically all administrative, questions are of such a nature that the people are quite willing that they should be dealt with by the House of Commons. There are some questions, however, which are considered by many to be of such vital moment that it is undesirable that they should be settled by the House of Commons alone. It is felt with regard to such questions that they should be submitted to the arbitrament of the whole body of the electorate.
It is my opinion that the Liberal Party will before long accept this principle, which has been so consistently advocated by Mr. J. A. Hobson. No man except a revolutionary, desiring to use a chance majority in the House of Commons for revolutionary purposes, could object to this point of view. Every man who accepts the Constitutional position that political changes of a fundamental nature should not be made until the majority of the electorate is convinced of their necessity must accept the principle of the Referendum. The fact that the Liberal Party appear to oppose this prin- ciple must, I think, be regarded as accidental, and due to the present complicated political situation.
It has been argued above that certain matters may be safely left to the House of Commons alone, while there are others which after having been passed by that House ought to be submitted for final decision to the whole people. Who is to decide which questions fall under the second category ? This seems to me to be the only legitimate function of a Second Chamber. Would it not meet the views of all moderate men if a new Second Chamber or Court were established which would have no powers of either amendment or rejection, but power simply of deciding which measures were of such a nature that the voice of the whole people should be asked to declare itself in regard to them It may be said that such a Court would favour the Con- servative Party, and that only Liberal measures would be submitted to the Referendum. This I refuse to believe. Surely the party spirit has not so destroyed the sense of fair play in the minds of Britons that it is impossible to constitute a Court which will be able to decide fairly whether any legislative act of the House of Commons is so important, or contains elements of such novelty, that before it is allowed to become law it should be submitted to the whole people. This Second Chamber or Court of Appeal in respect of the Refer- endum would be so constituted that its members when in office should take no part in party politics, and that the dis- cussions in it should be confined to the points in respect of which it was called upon to deal.
The discussion of the constitution of the Second Chamber, however, will but divert attention from the main points on which I desire the agreement of all moderate men. These points may be summarised as follows :—(1) If the veto of the House of Lords is destroyed, it will be necessary to provide for another check in respect of the power of the House of Commons over legislation. (2) That such check might be found in the creation of a Court having the power of referring any measure passed by the House of Commons to a Referendum, but having no powers of veto or amendment.
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