TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CRISIS AND THE POSITION OF THE ICING
"There was no sacrifice which he was not ready to make, no obloquy that he was not willing io incur, no misrepresentation that he was not prepared to disregard, to rescue his Sovereign from the embar- rassing and humiliating situation in which ha was placed."—(The Duke of Wellington in 1832.)
TORD LANSDOWNE'S letter to Lord Camperdown, a J letter which has been interpreted to mean that he could not officially countenance Unionist peers going further than abstaining, suddenly changed the whole political situa- tion. Up till that moment it was evident that only a com- paratively small number of independent-minded peers would be needed to vote for the Bill to prevent a creation. The great bulk of the Unionist Party would have absented themselves ; the revolters would have been neutralized, or very nearly neutralized, by the votes of the peers who were not content merely to wish to prevent the creation of peers but who were willing to take the steps necessary to make their will operative, and the Liberal peers would then have been left to provide a sufficient majority to pass the Bill. Lord Lausdowne's letter, however, and the threats of the revolters have apparently been enough to intimidate the majority of the Unionist peers who contemplated voting for the Bill and to turn them into abstainers. This, it is to be feared, may enable the seventy or eighty revolting peers to force a creation. Thus although the vast majority of the House of Lords wish to prevent a creation taking place, there is a very grave danger of a creation. The will of some seventy resolute peers may after alloverbear the will of some five hundred whohave not learnt that he who wills the end wills the means. This, of course, must mean incidentally the deposition of Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Balfour.
The only thing, so far as we can see, which can now prevent a creation is that which prevented a creation of peers in 1832. If we read. the history of those times carefully we see that what in the last resort, but only in the last resort, moved the Duke of Wellington and the peers who acted with him was the thought of the terrible situation in which the King must be placed if the Lords forced a creation. When the bulk of the peers realized this essential fact, though they only realized it at the last moment, they turned back from the course upon which the extremists were urging them. Strangely enough, during the present crisis very little account has been taken of the position of the King, and very little concern shown for the difficulties and per- plexities in which he finds himself. Everybody canvasses what the result will be upon the House of Commons or the House of Lords, upon parties, or even upon individual leaders within the parties, but nobody has yet seemed to think seriously of the King. Is it too late to ask them to do so ? Apparently- it is, but we shall not give up hope till It is absolutely necessary to do so. We appeal therefore with all the force at our command, and fully conscious of the responsibility we take, to the independent peers who up till now have intended merely to abstain and ask them to consider whether in the present circumstances it is not their duty to stand by the King and save him from what must be a position of terrible embarrassment and anxiety. There can be no better way to make the independent peers realize their duty than to set forth shortly how the matter appeared to the Duke of Wellington and his immediate followers when he was confronted with circumstances almost exactly similar to those of to-day. He did think of the position of the King, and thereby saved the situation.
As soon as it became clear that if no other solu- tion could be found the King would be forced to accept the advice of his Ministers to create peers, the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues showed the greatest possible anxiety lest the interests of the King should suffer. It does not seem to have occurred. to anyone that this aspect of the matter could be neglected, or that the diffi- culties of the King would be compensated for by a series of hypothetical party advantages. So anxious indeed was the r Duke of Wellington to protect the King from the consequences of a creation that he actually went so far as to offer to form a Ministry which would itself pass a Reform Bill, and so save the King from having to create the peers. This gallant effort failed, as it was bound to fail ; but the Duke in the House of Lords declared, in terms of deep feeling, that he would rather have done even this than not help the King in his difficulties. He told the House that he should have been ashamed to show his face in the streets if when the King appealed. to him he had answered, "I see the difficulties of your Majesty's situation, but I cannot afford you any assistance, because I have in my place in Parliament expressed strong opinions against a measure to which your Majesty is understood to be friendly." The Duke went on to explain that his aim and object was to do whatever he could to enable the King to resist the creation of a multitude of peers. Lord Lyndhurst, who followed the Duke of Wellington, emphasized the Duke's statement. He told the House of Lords that after an interview with the King he had waited on the Duke of Wellington and explained what had passed and went on to use the words which we have placed at the head of this article. " His Grace promptly said that there was no sacrifice which he was not ready to make, no obloquy that he was not willing to incur, no ?misrepresentation that he was not prepared to disregard, to rescue his Sovereign, from the embarrassing and humili- ating situation in which he was placed." Lord Harewood, who had been one of the chief opponents of the Bill, spoke in a similar strain. It was his duty, he declared, in a choice of evils to select the lesser. In his opinion the knowledge that the peers would be made if the Bill could be passed in no other way decided him to withdraw his opposition. " Was he to pass the Reform Bill, or to assist in the com- pletion of a still greater calamity ? He thought the wiser course would be to withhold further opposition to the Bill rather than render that calamity unavoidable ; for over the Crown's prerogative and Earl Grey's advice in regard to it he had no controL" The determination of a compact body of Lords to save the King at all costs from being forced to create the peers in fact controlled and saved the situation. In this context it is interesting and important to quote the text of the letter dated May 17th, but probably not received by the Opposition peers till May 18th, which the King's private secretary, Sir Herbert Taylor, sent out to all members of the Opposition in the Upper House. It runs as follows "Mr DRAB Los.o,—I am honoured with his Majesty's commands to acquaint your Lordship that all difficulties to the arrange- ments in progress will be obviated by a declaration in the House to-night from a sufficient number of peers that, in consequence of the present state of affairs, they have come to the resolution of dropping their further opposition to the Reform Bill, so that it may pass without delay and as nearly as possible in its present shape.—I have the honour to be, yours sincerely,
" lamaanaT TAYLOR!'
When we describe what happened in 1832, and what were the influences which in the end prevailed to prevent the creation of peers, we are not for a moment suggesting that the Sovereign could, in. existing circumstances, take a similar course. The notion of his Majesty directing anyone to write to or communicate with peers in this or any way is impracticable. The Crown is much more withdrawn from the arena of politics than it was in the days of William IV., and must act much more impersonally and automatically now than in those days. But though the King cannot exercise, and ought not, directly or indirectly, to exercise or allow any person to exercise in his name, any influence over the peers, that fact does not deprive members of the House of Lords of their eyes, their ears, or their natural feelings. They have still got brains and emotions left and the power of drawing con- clusions. There has been no whisper during the present crisis as to what are the King's personal views, but in spite of this no man who has the use of his senses can doubt that the rmg, who is not stirred by party passion either one way or the other and is in no need of party majorities, must very much dislike the idea of a creation of peers_ Thathe knows the use of the prerogative to be in- evitable if the Parliament Bill is not passed by some other means cannot alter this fact. We should indeed be acting' on a foolish and pedantic punctilio designed for quite other purposes if we were to pretend that it was even arguable that the King could like a creation of peers. Every sane man knows that he does not like it, and that if in the end it has to take place his position will be one of deep embarrassment and anxiety of the gravest kind. Constitutional kings, and especially the British King, are above all things Moderators and stayers of strife. All the etiquette of the Court is designed to prevent open breaches of social and political peace and to substitute the decisions of internal diplomacy for a fiercer arbitrament. The King then cannot help regarding the violent exercise of the prerogative as a confession of failure.
Let anyone put himself in the King's place and ask what his feelings would be next Thursday, assuming the creation to have become inevitable, and then consider his feelings, assuming the creation to have been avoided. No exercise of necromancy or thought-reading, and no internal know- ledge of Court gossip, but only a little commonsense, is required to judge of this side of the crisis.
We cannot help believing that when the matter has been thought out in this way there must be a certain number of independent peers who will be ready to say : " We are going to do what the Duke of Wellington and his followers did in 1832. and at all costs decide to relieve the King from the terrible position in which he must be placed if events drift any further. We may be called cowards and traitors and be threatened with ostracism from the Carlton Club and with having our pictures hung in black by Unionist Caucuses ; but such threats, even if they have any reality in them, must not be allowed to influence our intentions for one moment. If our careers as Unionists are to be ruined, let them be ruined. We are not going to think of that or of any other consequence. We must think only of our duty —the duty of relieving the King from the necessity of creating the peers. Here is a plain obligation of honour, and this we mean to respect." We believe there are quite a sufficient number of peers who need only to have this view clearly presented to them to act upon it. Therefore in spite of all the contrary omens—and we admit that as we write they are somewhat dark—we keep to our view that the Bill will become law without the added evil of the creation of 300 or 400 peers, the establishment of a Liberal majority in the House of Lords, and the destruction of the peerage as a national institution.
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