THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 76, 31 March 1913, Page 11

THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

BBEAKDOWIT. DaINGER TO EMPIRE. (TYom Our Special forrespondent.) LONDON", February 21. A striking address on the breakdown of Parliamentary Cuvermnent in the Old j Country was n-icmly delivered at Hythe by Lord llyttte. lii.- text was taken fwtii a. speech made hy Mr. lionar Law in the Hon»t vi Common-! in December last, in the course of which the Leader of tlte Opposition -xu\: — "Under the] conditions under v. ;ii< h we are working, ] the House of Commons has ceased to be a legislative as-enibly i:i any of j thi lerra," and he concluded by averting • that if the I'urli.irucniary conditions j •were to become permanent, our inslitu- j lions could not be preserved, and would not be wotili preserving. Those, Lord: JJythe urged, were weighty word-, such | «>tf. lie said, merited tin , serious consideration of pverv E:i;_'li-hman.

A sreat constitution;!! ol'-jnp , hnd hcnn pawed thrn'ijrli the House of Com- ', nioii-. with i!'.:i:iv hi' iv mo-it important l ;*mvi<ion> un !i~-ii - ■<!. an 1 mijrht, under i fehr Parliament A;-., linvmi , law without ever hiring hr-rn .- ihniia.-d to the judcrnwit of flip cli .■t.irale. The Him so of: LoTds could d-'lay lerri«lation, but it could no lonppr co;'ipel ;in -appeal to tlio ■people. The (lnu«c if Commons was om- i iripotpnt— th'"uiL r "'i ii wnp admitted on j all hand* to hi- unrJilc to de.il efiwtirely | ■with tho h'.isimws p!a<*M before it. The House of Common.- hml degenerated into a mere machine fur registering tlip decrees of the f'.iliini't of the <l-.iv. for thp pimple reason that v had too niuoH to do. '■ For this neither p>litirnl party was to j Wamc Tt was the re-ult of the system : by which w ;Utenmted to carry on the flovernment of the-e Islands anil the Empire. " Parli-.! .lent is overweighted: Parliament i- almost ovprwhelmed." , •were the words used by Mr. flWMone ' thirty yfa.rs ftp"), and the congestion of J>'.i-ine«s in Pa'liament had been lamented hv --tntp=man after statesman ! since that time. TTIE CAUSE AND THE REMEDY. Parliamentary Government. Lord jrtytne argued, had broken down simply because they wore attempt'ng to <ieal | 5n a single legislative assembly with three distinct el-asses of busi-ness: (1) The separatp int?rnal cfl'airs of England, Feotland and Ireland., in which Canada ■would be dealt with by the Provincial Parliament of Ontario or Qivebec. in Australia by the State Parliaments, and in _ South Africa by the IYovincial Parliaments of the Cape and of the Transvaal; (-) questions affecting the United Kingdom as a whole, which would be dealt ■n-itll in Canada by the Dominion Parliament, in Australia by the Common wealth Parliament, and in South Africa by the Union Parliament: (H) the frovernment ff the greatest Empire thp world had - cvpr seen, including within its borders nearly a quarter of thf human race. I nder such circumstances a breakdown could not be surprising, said Lord liythe. and Tip assured his audience that to a Canadian, an Australian or to a South African, or to anyone who hail passed as much time as he had in the outlying Dominions, the remedy was ob- I vinu*. We in the Old Country had been ! neouUomed from time immemorial to see all our aiTairo—]»ot>]i National -and- - Imperial—dealt with by what we were pleased to call the Motner of Parliaments, while every Canadian, -every Australian, and every South African was Jivinor under three Parliaments, each ' ilp:iling with a distinct class of business — I'll hi« Colonial or Provincfal Pn.rlia-I meit. [21 the Dominion, Commonwealth! or Union p nr ]iament. n<: thp ense mip-ht j lie. and f.l) tlie Tmpprial Pnrliament. in which at present he was not represented. ' HOME RULE ALT, ROUND. Looking- at thp matter from the English point of new. bord llvthe -asked: Why should the Church in Wales be disestablished by the votes of Irishmen; and Why should the Church of England in England be disestablished > by iri.sJi Roman Catholics. Scotch Presbyterians and Welsh Nonconformists? it ■was a question which concerned only Englishmen, and by tlu votes of their representatives alone should such a question be decided. He thought that if English Conservatives would reflect on ■the consequences of maintaining the present system of government they ' •would arrive at the snme conclusion :rs lie hud. viz.. that it wa= time Englishmen managed their own domestic affairs without the interference of the Irishmen or Scotchmen. Home Rule was needed lor England quite as much as Home Sale *or Ireland. THE IMPERIAL SIDE OP THE QUESTIOK. Turning to wider issues Lord Hvthe said the great danger to the future of the Empire was the fact that imperial and domest lc questions were, under our present system of government in the Home country, dealt with in the same Parliament, and were submitted to the electorate in the same confused issue The danger to the Empire from the continuance o fthe present system lay in two directions. On the one hand it tended to throw a large proportion of the democracy of thp Homeland into s> n attitude of hostility to the Empire, because they very naturally resented questions of supreme importance to them in their daily lives being subordinate to Imperial matters. On the other hand, the present system of government prevented a clear verdict being obtained from the electorate on Imperial questions, such as Imperial preference. He was not arguing for or against Imperial preference. His point was that so long as the pre.sent systom of Government continued it wag impossible to obtain the real judgment of the country on the policy. Touching the matter of !A REALLY IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT Lord Hythe said he was not prepared to suggest in what precise form colonial representation would ultimately be provided for, but he did assert that it could not be done by adding colonial representatives to the House of Lords, the Privy Council, or any existing body, and that an Imperial Council or Parliament in ■which were represented all parts of the Empire which bore their fair share of the burden, would have to be created if the British Empire was to remain united, and that the next step in the direction of Imperial unity was for the Mother Country to set her house in order and put her constitutional arrangements on the same plane as those of the other self-govern-ing Dominions. His conception of the constitutional structure of the Empire was that it must rest on four federations or four pillars, in Canada. Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, on which the copingstone of the Imperial edifice—an Imperial Council or Parliament —would in due Course, be placed. The Mother Country wilh her enormously greater pupulation had far more need to put her O-'-'--aia«ii. on a. husinpfrs

footing than Canada. A-istralia, or South Africa. Those polonies had all been federated (using the word in a loose sense) on different linps. but, in his opinion, thp Canadian Constitution afforded the bnst model of what was required in the Old Country, and it was evolved on similar lines to those which must h< , followed in our own case. The establishment of subordinate legislatures in England and Scotland, as well as in Ireland, w.ig the real solution of present rtifikiilties. In the li«ht of Canadian experience, .=aid Lord llythe, it was idle to assert that this would be tantamount to the dismemberment of the Cnited Kingdom, and he rrged that the problem of nmendim: the Constitution to meet present-day needs must bo approached with a. greater breadth, of view and with a more reasonable spirit than were being displayed by party politicians, oil both sines, in the hitter controversy over tho Irish Homo Rulo Bill.