THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE LORDS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 80, 6 April 1910, Page 6

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE LORDS.

In an exceptionally full House, and by almost its full majority, tho British Government has got the approval of tho Commons to the first step in its campaign against tho Lords. The total strength of the House of Commons is 670, and it is a very rare thing for as many as 600 members to take part in a division. The unprecedented excitement created by Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill resulted in a muster of no lees than 656 for the division on the second reading, but a crisis which will repeat that result is not likely to recur once in a generation. In the last Parliament the two most hotly-contested measures were the Licensing Bill and the Budget, yet the second reading of tho former only brought 542 members into the lobbies, and the final rally on the Finance Bill before it was sent to meet its doom upstairs only totalled 528. The fact that 610 members took part in the division on Monday is therefore a convincing proof that excitement at St. Stephen's is at boiling-point, and suggests a doubt as to the accuracy of the impression which the cabled reports have from time to time conveyed to us, that but a languid interest has been taken in the debate. The size of the majority is also satisfactory. Liberals, Nationalists, and Labour "men must have voted -"solid" in order to give the Government a majority of 106, which falls short of the maximum only in about tho same proportion as the aggregate vote falls short of the full strength of the House. But though affording a good trial of strength on the main question of principle involved, the division does not carry the matter much further. The House has merely resolved to go into committee in order to consider tho Premier's resolutions on the relations of tho two Houses and the duration of Parliament, after rejecting the amendment by which the Unionists asked it to declare for reforming the Constitution instead of limiting the powers of tho House of Lords. ' The last stage of the debate on the Premier's preliminary motion does not present any very striking features. Mr. Lyttelton is reported to have "administered a stinging rebuke to th« Home Secretary, Mr. Churchill, for hi 3 ungenerous and unseemly fashion of imputing to the King a policy that the King was unable to deny." It is quite likely that Mr. Churchill overstepped tho mark, though we see nothing very terrible in his remarks cs cabled. He expressed himself as convinced that if the Budget is passed and an ajopeal is then made to the constituencies on the constitutional question, "they v/ould rally round the Government, and then the Crown and the Commons would cooperate in restoring the balance of the Constitution, and would restrict for ever the House of Lords' vato." This may or may not prove to be an impossible policy, but we cannot see that it makes any imputation against the King which he need have any desire to deny. Mr. Churchill may have said something more to justify the thunders of Mr. Lyttelton and of tho anonymous correspondent of The Times whoso lcmarks were deemed worth cabling, but, if so, it 5& surprising that we have not been supplied with particulars. Mr. Lyttelton's appeal to tho Constitution which haa just been given to South Africa as n, justification of tho powers claimed by the House of Lords was nob very fortunate, and it was well answered by Colonel Seely. It is not to a Second Chamber as such, but to an unrepresentative and undemocratic Second Chamber, that tho Liberals desire to deny the right of meddling with Money Bills. The democratic safeguards with which this right has been surrounded in South Africa would, if applied to the United Kingdom, effeat a constitutional revolution of which nobody dreams as practicable, and beside which tho present proposals would seem mild indeed. As Colonel Seely says, no selfgoverning colony has ever endured a Chamber on the hereditary principle, nor could such a proposition ever be seriously made. It is not argument of this kind, bnt the menacing attitude of the Nationalists, with which Mr. T. P. O'Connor — who, as the only one of their number representing an English constituency, has> hitherto appeared as a moderating foree — now fully associates himself, that constitutes the peril of th» Government.