ADVICE TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 141, 15 June 1906, Page 4

ADVICE TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS

The Duke of Devonshire, as reported yesterday, has delivered to the Unionist Freetrade Club an exceedingly interesting address, in which he dealt with several subjects of a livelier and more pressing importance than the fiscal issue which gives the club its raison d'etre. ( As a practical issue to put before the House of Commons or the electors tariff reform is indeed absolutely dead iust at present, but within the Unionist Party it continues to act as a powerful disintegrating force, and it must continue to embarrass their future unless it can be given a fresh lease of life as a national question or dropped altogether. By the irony of fate, Mr. Chamberlain bus been able to tighten the grip of his piopuganda upon the party, while, to all appearance, it has hopelessly lost its hold upon the constituencies; and, finding Mr. Balfour, the member for the City of London, a good deal moie complaisant than Mr. Balfour the Prime Minister, he has come perilously near to making his fiscal shibboleth a test of membership of the Unionist Party. From this point of view, the Duke of Devonshire is justified in treating the question as of the utmost gravity to those who, like himself and tho club he was addressing are equally loyal to Freetrade and to tne Union. "Although Fr«etrade was safe at present," he said, "the Unionist Party wus in nowise safe, inasmuch as a policy of tariff reform exposed it to serious internal danger. Mr. Chamberlain's" proscription of all differing from him was the most audacious thing ever advanced. Mr. Balfour had not yet stated whether he accepted Mr. Chamberlain's version of the concordat." -Mr. Balfour's safest plan is to keep quiet and let Mr. Chamberlain go his own way, and that is what he is 'doing. How could a statement mend inattera? It would only be by "most unjustly eliminating all the 'if's' " that the Duke would be able to make sense of it, and 1L Balfour would complain as he did when the same critic applied the same treatment to the letter in which the then candidate for the City concluded tho "concordat." But the Duke's reference to the Education Bill and the House of Lords ar« of much greater interest. "Mr. Cihamberlaih," he sftid, " had predicted a general election in l9o7"after the 'Education Bill was rejected. 1 By whom is it to be rejected?* The Opposition in the House of Commons was powerless to reject it, and the rejection could only bo by the House of Lords' opposition in rejecting the Bill and in, its attempts to amend it." The Duke proceeded to express tho opinion that it would be better to " allow the Horse of Lords to mind its own business," and after this fatherly admonition to Mr. Chnmberkin he had some good advice also for their Lordships upon the part they were asked to play. "If they neglected (? rejected) or wrecked the Bill," he said, "they might precipitate an election with a threefold issue — religious questions in schools, tho constitutional rights of the House of Lords, and a constructive fiscal policy Which Inriffites appended to other principles of party." A campaign for the abolition of the House of Lords, disestablishment of the Church, and secular education would supply exactly the kind of fighting in which Mr. Chamberlain would have gloried in his Radical days, but his breach with his past is too complete to admit the Machiavellian suggestion that he is asking the Lords to stand firm now in order that those who "toil not, neither do they spin," may get their deserts. A powerful movement for secular education would indeed be the most certain consequence of the wrecking of Mr. Birfell's Bill, 1 and Mr. Chamberlain's feelings would be divided in such a case, for this is one of the few articles of his former political creed which still remain to him. While the Church of England as a whole seems to be so incensed with the Bill as to be resolved upon war to the knife, not a few of the wisest of its sons are able to see that uncQtnproini&ing •opposition to the Bill ancV the wholesale denunciation of " simple Biblical teaching" in which the Bishop of Birmingham and others of his colleagues indulge wall do more for secular education than for denominationalism. " What is to be feared," says Archdeacon Sinpleton, "is that extremo men on both sides will become so embittered thnt the Government may cut the knot and give nothing but secular education." Tho House of Lords and the Established Church may combine to precipitato this issuo, but their combined strength will hardly go further