REFORM OF THE LORDS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 126, 13 May 1911, Page 1

REFORM OF THE LORDS.

i MAIN POINTS OF BALFOUR’Si SPEECH. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE REFERENDUM. >RESS ASSOCIATION. —COPYRIGHT]. ! London, May 12. Mr. Balfour said that they must have a strong and effective Second I Chamber, able to carry out its; great duties, not the pitiful, beggarly modicum of responsibility given by the Parliament Bill. The Government proposed indefinitely to postpone the admittedly ; necessary reform of the House of; Lords and insisted that they should meanwhile be governed by one • chamber alone. He called that a gross, palpable, and almost criminal inconsistency.

The Labour party were consistent. They constantly declare that they see no object in having a Second Chamber. They could vote for this bill with a clear conscience. The bill gave them a Single Chamber government. Their position was unassailable, but he could not imagine any inconsistency greater than that of the Government saying that the future constitution must be bi-cameral, yet the Parliament framing it may be a Single Chamber Parliament. The only explanation of such humiliating straits is that able men have been drawn thereto by the necessity of keeping a majority in the House, of Commons. Mr. Asquith, speaking at Manchester, had claimed that if Home Rule were relinquished, the Government would have no difficulty in securing the assent to the Parliament Bill. This was an inversion of the real facts. There would have been no Parliament Bill but for Home Rule. There might have been reforms of the Second Chamber and a change of the relations of the two Houses, but never the absurdity of suggesting the transfer to a Single Chamber, elected on a different issue, of all the most fundamental, important and invaluable elements of the constitution. Whether what the Government proposed was Horae Rule on the Gladstonian or some other unknown model, it ought never to be passed by a Single Chamber alone, but either subjected to the revision of two independent, legally co-equal chambers, or referred to the people as a whole. (Cheers.)

The true solution of the constitutional question was, firstly, a change in the constitution of the Second Chamber, not an alteration of its powers ; at all events not the fundamental alteration of its powers proposed by the Parliament Bill. Secondly, deadlocks should be met by conferences for conciliation and joint sittings. Thirdly. matters of grave importance and special instances should be dealt with by a referendum. (Cheers.) Nothing could be more entertaining or more pathetic than to see their opponents, who had been talking about democracy throughout their lives, struggling to show that an appeal to the people on a specific issue was the worst service renderable to the democracy.

Mr. Balfour concluded by claiming that the Unionists were the only true democratic party in the State.