The Dominion. THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1911. THE BRITISH POLITICAL CRISIS

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1142, 1 June 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1911. THE BRITISH POLITICAL CRISIS

« Some telegrams printed during the past few days seem to indicate that the British Government's plans for the establishment of single-chamber government are not proceeding according to programme. Nothing could have been more emphatic than the Prime Minister's declarations after the election that'the Parliament Bill would become law, unaltered, in a very short time—declarations that finally amounted to an undertaking to have the Bill on the Statute-book before the Coronation. That, at any rate, is what Mr. Kedmond was given to understand was the programme; and that the Radicals so understood the position also was evident from the menacing tone in which they sought to prepare an embarrassment for the Peers by hoping that they would have the decency to swallow the Bill without wincing

and not force a painful scene during the prc-Coronation season. The Bill was certainly got through the House of Commons on schedule time, but there has been a very important change in the programme. The Unionist leaders in the Houso of Lords have plainly intimated that

they will not accept the Bill, and have announced intentions of the kind which the Govcrrrmcnt declared it could not permit. If he had followed the precedent he set himself last year—when, without waiting for the Bill to be considered, be rushed to the country—Mn. Asquith should have already asked for a dissolution or obtained his army of supernumerary Peers. Exactly what is in his mind it is impossible to say. The House of Lords, which has not, at time of writing, begun to consider the Bill in Committee, is to adjourn on Thursday until after the Coronation, which means that tho Bill is to be held over after all to a time when the Lords can amend it without disturbing anything but the sleep of the Radicals. Two very significant speeches by Ministers were made during the second reading debate in tho Lords. Lord Loreuukn last week said there was no prospect of compromise, bnt there "were hopeful signs that there was the possibility of nlattcr for consent hereafter, if the Liberals were given equality of opportunity in passing measures through the reconstructed House of Lords. Fresh relations between the Houses must be established."

Lord Morley's speech in dosing the debate was even more important. He declared that "the Government was prepared to discuss amendments which were not opposed to the effective predominance of the Commons." This is an enormous withdrawal from the Government's former insistence upon tho impossibility of allowing the alteration of even a comma in the Bill. The amendments that are contemplated were indicated by Lord Lansdowne as "safeguards during the period preceding the reconstitution of the House of Lords sufficient to protect the foundations of the United Kingdom from irreparable change." There arc many ways in which these safeguards may be provided. Specific questions, as Home Eule, may be excluded from the operation of the Bill; the Referendum principle may be incorporated; or it may be provided that- the Bill itself shall not come into operation without first receiving the endorsement of a special popular poll. In the House the Government firmly resisted the proposal that any measure should be excluded from the operation of the Bill. In a speech of April 20 Mr. Asquhh, although he failed to meet the major charges against the measure, showed the very great difficulties in the way of discriminating between the matters that tho Bill should cover. It is certainly _ very difficult indeed, where there is no written Constitution with a supreme interpretative body like the United States Supremo Court, to make any effective discrimination at all. Thus, if it were provided that "measures relating to the government of Ireland" should not be touched by the Bill, there docs not exist, nor, without a complete constitutional change, can there be devised any body that can absolutely decide what are, and what are not, measures of the kind described. The principal charge against the Bill, however, is its establishment of single-chamber government. , Nobody can honestly deny that this charge is absolutely true. Those who deny it are blinded by their passionate hatred of the Conservatism of the House of Lords, and that hatred blinds them also to the great peril to' Britain under singlechamber government whatever party may be in power. ' Sound government will be at an end, and the Unionists will be as bad as the Liberals if their power is unfettered. With the House of Commons absolutely free from any check, the Jacobin spirit—a keenness to thrust theories upon an unwilling peoplewill rule the Unionists and Liberals alike. The most that Mr.' Asquitii is ablo to say is that the power of temporary delay which is left to the Peers will give the nation time to let the Government know its wishes, and that the Government will act accordingly. But who in his .heart believes that a Government set upon a certain scheme, and equipped with the power to carry it out no matter what happens, will deny itself the exercise of that power? What distant observers fail to understand is that there can be any sense in maintaining a Second Chamber at all if that Chamber is to hayc no power of revision. Why, if the House of Commons must be absolute, should anything be done cither to retain or reform the House of Lords? That question has never been faced and answered by the Government. Mr. Asquith has urged, as a reason why Home Rule should not be excluded from the operation of tho Bill, the alleged fact that the nation knew perfectly well that Home Rule would be an immediate consequence of it. But this is far from Doing a true statement of the case. The majority of the Government's supporters had no thought beyond a desire to make the progress of a Liberal Government's schemes as easy as the progress of a Unionist Government's. The Government did nothing to remind the nation, at the time when it most required the reminder, that Home Rule was a consequence of the abolition of the veto. Mr. Asquith was as, vague and elusive as ho could contrive to be whenever he was forced to refer, to the matter. He and other Ministers were careful to omit all reference to Home Rule from their election addresses. The Unionists hold, and with reason, that they have a good warrant to prevent tho Bill being used to carry Home Rule, especially when Mr. Redmond has it in his power to 'turn the Government out of office unless its Home Rule proposal is to the last comma exactly what the Nationalists desire. He must be a very stout Home Ruler indeed who would insist that it is in those circumstances that Ireland's independent Parliament should be established. It can hardly be doubted that if they decide to prevent such a caricature of government and take tho consequences, the House of Lords will have at its back a great body of Liberal opinion, which though friendly to Irish aspirations, yet will not tolerate the Government's method of satisfying the Nationalists.