LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
• -•-•••••■■••• THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND HOME RULE.
TO TRH EDITOR OF TOM " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—We are threatened with a constitutional crisis, which very possibly may vie in importance with any crisis which has arisen in our Parliamentary history. The House of Commons is to be called upon to pass into law, and that without con- sulting the electorate, a Home Rule Bill which, as far as its main provisions are concerned, has been twice rejected by the electors to whom it was referred. The presumption is, there- fore, that the country, which rejected Gladstone's Bills of 1886 and 1893 by very large majorities, is not in favour of Mr. Asquith's Bill of 1912. This, then, is the plain situation :
Constituencies which were free to accept or to reject Gladstone's Bills, and which chose the latter alternative, are to have no option in regard to the present Bill, whatever hostility they may feel towards it. Furthermore, if this action is taken in regard to the Bill in question, it is inevitable that similar action may be taken in the future in regard to any Bill supported by any majority of the House of Commons enjoying any salaries which they may be pleased to grant themselves. The rights of the constituencies are thus com- pletely confiscated. In order to accomplish this act of treason to the electorate, which is now in process of completion, Mr. Redmond made its perpetration a con- dition of his support to the present Government. He said to Mr. Asquith, in my own hearing, "You must toe the line." Mr. Asquith thereupon toed it, and the Nationalists proceeded to fulfil their part of the shameful bargain by voting for a Budget of which they highly disapproved, thus keeping the present Government in office.
Mr. Redmond may now fairly say, "I have worked the three-fold trick which Parnell failed to work, that is (1) I hold the Government in the hollow of my hand; (2) the Government bolds its well-paid majority in the hollow of its hand; (3) and the majority of the House holds the country in the hollow of its band. John Bull may writhe like a second Laocoon, but how can be free himself from the coils which are crushing out his electoral life ? I answer the question frankly, as far as my own poor judgment is concerned, and let all who feel deeply on this matter speak plainly whatever may be their own inconspicuousness. I think that the House of Commons itself should preserve the electoral freedom of those who have sent them to Westminster. It is the only constituted body which can do so, and it should do so at all costs. The Government, at the dictation of Mr. Redmond, are asking its unstable and composite majority to usurp the authority of the electorate, from whom alone it derives its own power. This is treasonable, and should be made impos- sible. This is what Cromwell called, when speaking of a Single Chamber, "the horridest tyranny." It seems to me, then, that it is the duty of the minority in the House of Commons to guard the rights of the nation until the nation can speak for itself. There is only one way of saving us from a bona-fide revolution, and that is by consulting the people. For a Home Rule Act passed contrary to their wishes constitutes a revolution, the results of which no man can measure, and the crime for which no punishment can be too
1.We agree that to dissolve after and not before the final passing of the Home Rule Bill would be an outrage on the Constitution and on the principle of democratic Government. The best way of insisting on a Dissolution before and not after the third time of asking is, however, a very difficult question, and one which cannot be discussed in a footnote to a letter. All we can do at the moment is to insist with all the power at our command that the Unionists form the Constitutional and the Conservative Party, and that it can never be right for them to adopt revolutionary methods or make precedents in lawless- ness. In any event their rae is and must be to be Constitu- tionalists, and they must take all the consequences that flow from this fact. —En. Spectator.]
Previous page
