TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LORDS AND THE BUDGET.
TN dealing with this question we have set forth certain propositions founded on justice and common-sense. We venture to say that during the past week there have been abundant signs that those propositions will be acted upon. To begin with, we pointed out that the
House of Lords, though it does not desire to enter on a Constitutional struggle with the House of Commons, is bound to maintain its undoubted right to refuse assent to a new tax or series of taxes which it regards as unjust or unduly burdensome, and upon the underlying principle of which the people have never been consulted. At the same time, the House of Lords must be most careful in exercising this right not unfairly to embarrass the Executive, or to throw the fiscal arrangements of the country out of gear, if such a result can possibly be avoided. Translated into the language of practical politics, this means that the Lords have a right, as the precedents show, not, indeed, to amend or alter a tax in kind or in degree, but to amend or alter a Tax Bill by leaving out certain of its provisions, and that it is not merely their right but their duty to do so when they bold such provisions to be unjust. The land clauses are unjust and burdensome, and are not required for the fina,ucial needs of the year. Therefore to throw them out is not to embarrass the Government., even though it may annoy them, and may be declared by them to involve the destruction of their party programme.
In opposition to this view it has been urged that if the Lords dare to amend or alter a Money Bill, even though they do not thereby amend or alter a tax in the slightest degree, the Government would reply by an immediate Dissolution. Therefore a Constitutional crisis of the gravest kind would be produced just as much by throwing out the land clauses as by throwing out the whole Budget. To this we replied : "The Government will not dissolve if the land clauses are thrown out, but will merely talk angrily and loudly about the alleged but purely fictitious infringement of the privileges of the Commons." This assertion—or prediction if you will—has been amply justified by the events of the week. On Friday, July 16th, Lord Lansdowne, addressing the National Union of Conservative and Con- stitutional Associations, dealt with the whole question of the rights of the House of Lords. After a very proper passage declaring that the Lords would in any case do their duty, but that it was impossible to say exactly what that duty would be until they saw the final form in which the Budget emerged from the House of Commons, he proceeded as follows :—
"But if I cannot toll you what the House of Lords will do, I think I may venture to tell you what the House of Lords will not do. I do not think you will find that when the time comes the House of Lords is at all likely, to proclaim that it has no responsi- bility for the Bill, and that because it is mixed up with the Enancial affairs of the nation we are obliged to swallow it whole and without hesitation. That, to my mind, would bo not only a mistake, but an unconstitutional proposition. I could easily supply you with authorities from text-books, but I am not going to do anything of the kind. In cases of this kind I prefer to rely not only upon text-books, but upon common-sense. And it seems to vie that, looking at it from a common-sense point of view, it is sunthinkable that either under the theory or the practice of the Constitution, in a country with two Legislative Chambers, it should be left to the absolute discretion of one of those Chambers to impose upon the nation any burdens, however monstrous and intolerable, any taxation, however inequitable its incidence, any new financial system, however subversive of society,—and I believe that to be especially true when one bears in mind, as he must, that this Government cannot claim to have received, on the occasion of the last General Election, any kind or sort of mandate from the country to deal with this vast financial revolu- tion. Therefore, my Lords and gentlemen, we shall have to consider, with an open mind no doubt, the Bill as it emerges from examination by the House of Commons, and we shall endeavour to do our duty by it, undeterred by threats or vapourings such as those."
it is clear from these words that Lord Lansdowne definitely refuses to accept the contention that the Lords can only reject a Money Bill in, tato, and must not strike out of it any new system of finance which they deem unjust. He claims the right of the Lords to alter or amend a Tax Bill, though not to alter or amend a tax. It is clear also that the distinction we have made between rejecting taxes which are only different in degree from old taxes, and rejecting "a new financial system," was in Lord Lansdowne's mind.
The next stage in what we may term the evolution of the Spectator view was a speech made by Mr. Winston Churchill in Edinburgh on Saturday, the day following Lord Lansdowne's speech. Mr. Winston Churchill was very "high and mighty" and very vehement. Here are his actual words :— "I have only one word more to say, and it is rendered necessary by the observations which fell from Lord Lansdowne last night, when, according to the Scottish papers, he informed a banquet at which he was the principal speaker that the House of Lords was not obliged to swallow the Budget whole or without mincing. I ask you to mark that word. It is a characteristic expression. The House of Lords means to assert its right to mince. Now let us for our part...be quite frank and plain. We want this Budget Bill to be fairly and fully discussed ; we do not grudge the weeks that have been spent already ; we are prepared to make every sacrifice—I speak for my honourable friends who are sitting on this platform—of personal convenience in order to secure a thorough, patient, searching examination of nroposals the importance of which we do not seek to conceal. The Government has shown itself ready and willing to meet reasonable argument, not merely by reasonable answer, but, when a case is shown, by concessions, and generally in a spirit of good- will. We have dealt with this subject throughout with a desire to mitigate hardships in special cases, and to gain as large a measure of agreement as possible for the proposals we are placing before the country. We want the Budget not merely to be the work of the Cabinet and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; we want it to be the shaped and moulded plan deliberately considered by the House of Commons. That will be a long and painful process to those who are forced from day to day to take part in it, but we shall not shrink from it. But, gentlemen, when that process is over, when the Finance Bill leaves the House of Commons, I think you will agree with me that it ought to leave the House of Commons in its final form. No amendments, no excision, no modifying or mutilating, will be agreed to by us. We will stand no mincing, and unless Lord Lansdowne and his land- lordly friends choose to eat their own mince again, Parliament will be dissolved, and we shall come to you in a moment of high con- sequence for every cause for which Liberalism has ever fought. See that you do not fail us in that hour."
The plain man would surely take this to mean that the Government had decided to dissolve if the House of Lords struck out the land clauses. It appears, however, either that Mr. Winston Churchill spoke on the assumption that what be thinks to-day the Cabinet will think to-morrow, or that he is a conspicuous victim of his own cumbrous joke about "terminological inexactitudes." Here is Mr. Asquith's explanation, given in the House of Commons on Wednesday, of what his colleague really meant,—that there would be a Dissolution some day, but by no means to-day, to-morrow, or the next day :— "Mr. LANE-FOX asked the Prime Minister whether his attention had been drawn to a speech made by the President of the Board of Trade at Edinburgh on Saturday afternoon ; and whether that right hon. gentleman was speaking on behalf of the Government when he stated that any amendment of the Finance Bill by the other House would be followed by an immediate Dissolution of Parliament.
Mr. ASQUITH.—My right hon. friend informs me that he did not use the language imputed to him in some of these questions. He said nothing as to an ' immediate ' Dissolution, and all that be intended to convey was that a Constitutional conflict between the two Houses must ultimately be settled by an appeal to the country. In regard to that part of the questions which inquires into the views of his Majesty's Government, I have to point out that it is clearly impossible for his Majesty's Ministers to state now what advice they would feel it their duty to tender to the King as to the exercise of the prerogative of Dissolution in hypothetical circumstances which may never occur."
It is impossible to read Mr. Asquith's carefully worded answer—we are told that he read it from a paper—without arriving at the conclusion that we were right when we unhesitatingly declared that there would be no immediate Dissolution if the Lords threw out the land clauses, but merely angry talk of the same sort as that of which we have had periodic outbursts during the present Parlia- ment. We do not desire, however, to discuss now the wisdom of the Cabinet's decision upon this point, though, given the circumstances, it was, in our opinion, inevitable.
All we desire to do ia to record it as a decision of which the House of Lords must take note. There will no doubt be hot-headed people in the House of Lords, and in the Unionist Party generally, who, eager for an immediate fight, will urge that the throwing out of the land clauses will not be enough, since it will not produce a Dissolution,
and that the Lords had much better reject the Budget as a whole, and therefore oblige the Government to face the country at once. We sincerely trust that Lord Lansdowne, as the Leader of the House of Lords, will not let him- self be moved by such wild talk as this, but will, as the trusted adviser of the Peers, point out that they would be very foolish in thus pushing matters to an extreme. A conflict upon the question whether the Lords have a right to refuse their assent to a new and, as they believe, unjust set of taxes, when those taxes are not required for the financial needs of the year, is one about which they need have no fears. The announcement of the Prime Minister shows that the Liberal Party realise that that question would be a very dangerous one for them to fight on. But a conflict with the Commons in which the Lords could be represented as refusing the Executive money for national defence is a very different matter.
To insist that the land clauses, which are items in a political programme rather than true fiscal measures, must receive the endorsement of the country before they can be adopted would bring to the Lords the support of those moderate and " Left-Centre " voters who in this country decide the issue at a General Election. But it is by no means certain that such "balancing" electors would consider the Lords justified in taking the tremendous step of throwing out the whole Budget. Indeed, as far as we are able to diagnose public opinion, we believe that most persons, if they were forced to give a decision on the subject, vould think it necessary to say that, in existing circumstances, the Lords had exceeded their rights in rejecting the Budget as a whole, and were acting on party rather than on national grounds. It must not be supposed that we think the Budget would be rendered perfect by the withdrawal of the land clauses. On the contrary, we should still see many grave defects. We are inclined to believe that the super-tax might be very easily made more just, and, further, that the Death- duties have been raised beyond the point of safety. Here, however, it is a question, not of principle, but merely of degree. Every one admits that the Income-tax and the Death-duties must remain part of our financial system, and increases in those taxes are eminently a question for the Executive. If the Liberals may increase them, the Unionists when they return to power can, if it is found that. they are working unjustly, decrease them, just as they have been decreased or amended in the past.
We need not, however, elaborate this point. We feel absolutely sure that any man of moderate opinions who thinks the thing out will not fail to agree with us that it would be rash in a high degree for the Lords to throw out the present Budget as a whole, and entirely contrary to the traditions and essential spirit of their House. Rash proposals have been made before, and no doubt will often be made again, by individual Peers, but we are convinced that we can trust to the good sense of the House as a whole to reject them. Our confidence in this respect is increased by the knowledge that Lord Lansdowne has in a very special degree won the respect of the Peers, and that he is the last man in the world who would be likely to urge them to extreme courses. We must repeat that it is abundantly clear from the precedents that the Lords, though they have no right to impose a tax or alter or amend a tax either in degree or in kind, have a right to amend a Tax Bill by leaving out altogether any particular tax or series of taxes. Here is safe ground for the Lords, and, unless we are greatly mistaken, they will act on it, provided the land clauses ever reach them. But wilt those clauses ever reach them ? We very much doubt it if, as we said last week, the Lords make it clear that they do not mean to play the game of the Government by rejecting the Budget as a whole, but do mean to reject the land clauses.
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