TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DUTY OF THE LORDS.
SOME years ago an Irish Roman Catholic Bishop with Unionist views is said to have asked a Home Rule colleague whether, if he could get Home Rule by merely signing his name to a piece of paper, he would sign it. The Home Rule ecclesiastic paused for a long time, and then at last exclaimed : " Yes, I would ; I'd sign it and pray God to save the country from the consequences." That is almost exactly Mr. Asquith's position. He is willing to pass Home Rule, but he is going to pray the House of Lords to save the country from the conse- quences—from strife, bloodshed, and civil war. In these amazing circumstances, what is the duty of the Lords ? They have two courses open to them. They may either play the strict and narrow party game, or they may determine to take up the position and exercise the function which are still theirs under the Constitution, and show that their only thought must now be the prevention of civil war—even though one of the results of preventing civil war may be to save the Government from the destruction they so richly deserve. If the Lords adopt the narrow party view, they will agree to no compromise in regard to the Amending Bill. They will not attempt to amend it or improve it if it is brought in, as seems now most likely, in a shape so attenuated that it will wholly fail to accomplish its object, the averting of civil war. They will, infect, saytothe Govern- ment : " You have got yourselves into a hopeless mess owing to your own trickery and folly. Get out of it as beat you can. You have passed the Home Rule Bill with- out ascertaining—as it was your plain duty to do—whether it was really the will of the country to break up the Union and force the Ulster Protestants against their wishes under a Dublin Parliament. Now, having let loose the dogs of war, you come to us and ask us to help you to catch and muzzle them, since you have not the power to do it yourselves." The temptation to take this line, and to apply the proverb that the Government having made their bed must lie on it, is obvious enough ; but we sincerely trust that the Lords will not yield to it. What they ought to do, what we appeal to them to do, and what we believe they will do is, instead of hurling gibes at their opponents, to show that the function of the House of Lords is now as always to " stand by to save the country," and, without thought of any party advantage, to prevent the nation being plunged into civil war. The folly of others, the recklessness of others, the sacrifice of the safety and welfare of the nation to party by others, furnish an example to be shunned, not followed, by the Lords—not an excuse for doing likewise. If they are called upon to sacrifice themselves and their party interests to save the nation, they must do it. This means in practice that if the Government fail to come to any agreement with the Unionist leaders on the matter of Exclusion, and merely introduce the miserable and useless compromise proposed by Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons, the Lords must not content themselves with simply throwing out the Bill. They must see to it that the Commons are, at any rate, offered an opportunity of undoing their own evil work, and in a way which will prevent civil war. The Unionist majority in the House of Lords must, if necessary, take charge of the Bill when it is introduced, and send it down to the Commons in a form which will prevent civil war. No one would expect them to say, or dream that they could say, that they were by passing an Amending Bill making a bad system into a good system. No such miracle as that is possible. What they can say is this : " If you do not wish to add to a bad Bill the horrors of civil war, if you so far repent of your folly as not to wish to stain your bands with blood, we will show you how this can be achieved, and give you the opportunity to achieve it. We shall for the moment put ourselves in your place, and consider what is the least concession to our views which will prevent civil war. We shall embody that concession in the Amending Bill and send it down to you, and let the onus of reject- ing the compromise rest upon you. When theBill reaches you the country will have a clear issue before it, and Will judge accordingly. You have admitted that some amendment to the Bill you are passing under the Par- liament Act is necessary to prevent civil war. Wo have told you what will save the situation, and have done our part in proposing it. It is now your business to say whether you will coerce Ulster, or whether, you will seize this last opportunity of avoiding civil war." If the Lords act as we suggest they should act, they will not only be performing a patriotic duty, and exercising those functions of peacemaking and moderation which belong to them by the tradition of the Constitution, but they will also be doing a very great deal to restore the country's sense of confidence in the Unionist Party. They will make the balancing man, the man not bound by strict party ties, feel that they are a body of statesmen who take large and self-sacrificing views, and do not wish to snatch at any mere party or per- sonal triumph, but think more of helping their country than of humiliating and destroying their opponents. To put the matter very briefly, the issue will have been placed before the country in a way which will make the voters realize the true position. They will see who is on the side of peace, concession, and compromise, and who is for bloodshed and coercion.
No doubt we shall be told by the advocates of "no compromise" that our proposal is unsound, because it assumes that the Government have an honest purpose in introducing their Amending Bill. But the Government, it will be urged, are not honest in the course of action they are going to pursue. Their object is not to pass au Amending Bill, but merely to introduce impossible amending proposals in order that they may be able to say to the nation : Look how willing we were to meet our opponents and to let any county of Ulster which feared Home Rule contract itself out of the Bill, and see how unwilling were our opponents to meet us in a reasonable spirit." The only way, it will be said, to deal with political trickery of that kind is to refuse to be any party to it. Do not give your hand to a man struggling in a morass if you know that his object is not to get out himself, but rather to drag you in. Our reply is that, granted the Government's offer is inadequate, our proposal to amend the Amending Bill till it is adequate, whether they like it or not, and to send it down to the Commons, meets in the best possible way the tactics which it is suggested are being employed by the Government. We will assume that the Government would be very glad to see an inadequate Amending Bill rejected summarily by the Lords. That would enable them to make an instant appeal to the country on what might prove very good ground for them. They would tell the electors that they had been perfectly will. ipg to act on the principle that those parts of Ireland which want Home Rule shall have it, and those parts which do not want it shall not have it forced upon them, but that the Opposition, out of party spite, refused this very reason- able settlement. If, on the other hand, the House of Lords does what we suggest, and sends an adequate Amending Bill—a Bill that will really save the country from civil war because it will satisfy the Ulstermen—down to the Commons, and that Bill is then rejected by the Commons, the boot will be on the other leg. In the appeal to the country which must inevitably follow it would be the Government, and not the Opposition, who would have upon them the onus of rejecting the compromise. And in all English constituencies that means a very great deal. Englishmen now, as always, are "Left-Centre." They in- stinctively favour moderate counsels and concessions and compromises. They distrust the notion that any policy is wholly right or wholly wrong.
We have now reached the point where, whatever happens, a General Election at the end of July is almost a certainty. That being so, it is of very great importance to Unionists that the issue at the election should be clear and not liable to misrepresentation, and should enlist on their side all the forces of moderation—all the "Left-Centre" influences. But these will only be enlisted on the side which has shown that it is ready to make sacrifices in the direction of compromise. Let no one suppose that in saying this we are suggesting that the Lords should merely pretend to be willing to compromise because they know that their compromise will be rejected. It is the essence of our proposal that, if the Lords amend the Amend- ing Bill, they should do so with absolute sincerity—should suggest amendments, not for the shop window, but adequate
to accomplish their purpose and prevent civil war. If the Lords, as we hope, should decide to fit a safety-valve to this bad and dangerous engine, it must be a real safety-value and not a sham. They must feel that if by some miracle Mr. Asquith were to induce Mr. Redmond to allow him to Ems an effective Amending Bill in the Commons, the Home Rule Bill, though still a bad Bill, and one which must be repealed at the first opportunity, would, at any rate, not be a Bill for the provocation of civil war. The engine would have ceased to be one which must explode at the first trial.
Before we leave the subject something must be said as to the nature of the amendments which the Lords should insist on, supposing the Bill when introduced contains nothing but Mr. Asquith's old and wholly inadequate proposals. We have never wavered in our belief that the hest compromise available is to take the homogeneous Protestant and Loyalist unit formed by the six counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Derry, Tyrone, and Fer- managh, and either exclude those six counties by a clean cut, or, if preferred, by a poll of the voters within this homogeneous area, voting as an area and not by counties. The object of this plan is, of course, to prevent the very dangerous situation that must arise if polls were taken in the border counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh. To do that would be to create civil war in order to avoid it. But though we think that the best form of Exclusion is the Exclusion of the six coun- ties as one homogeneous area, and though we are sure that on the second reading Mr. Asquith, had he been willing, would have found the Ulstermen ready to accept this compromise, we fully recognize that things may have now travelled so far that this compromise would no -longer be possible. It may be that the only form of Exclusion which would now avail—and it is no use to have Exclusion unless it prevents civil war, i.e., unless it is assented to by the Ulstermen—would be the Exclusion of the whole of Ulster. In other words, we recognize that, though the com- promise of the six counties might have been acceptable a couple of months ago, it may be that the only way in which we can now gain the consent of the Ulstermen will be by agreeing to the Exclusion of the whole province. That, however, is a matter upon which it would be unwise for us to dogmatize.
We still believe that the six counties compromise is the best, and we still hope that it may be possible to induce the Ulstermen to agree to it. All we want to say now is that, even if Mr. Asquith has lost his chance of the six counties compromise, we should not despair. The House of Lords should in that case propose the Exclusion of the whole of Ulster. Remember that there are certain things that can be said in favour of taking the whole province as the unit. The Nationalists dislike the minor Exclusion in principle as much as they dislike the major. From some points of view, indeed, they prefer Exclusion taken by a poll throughout the province as a whole. They know that in that case the majority would be a comparatively small one, and they feel that in future it might be a good deal easier to revoke the popular decision for the Exclusion of the whole province, since if Exclusion is to go by provinces, Inclusion, if there is any change of opinion in that direction, must also go by provinces. In fact, the Nationalists tend to favour the Exclusion of the whole province, if at all, for the very reasons for which we are inclined to disfavour it.
If, then, the Ulstermen now say that nothing but the Exclusion of the whole area of the Covenant will prevent civil war, it is towards the Exclusion of that area that we must direct our efforts. In any case, it is the true function, and therefore the duty, of the Lords to give Parliament a final opportunity of preventing civil war. If they make their offer of Exclusion sincerely and honestly and in no party spirit, we are convinced that in the end the nation will stand by them, and recognize that they have played the part of statesmanship and of patriotism,
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