The Star. TUESDAY, JULY 4, 1911. THE POSITION AT HOME.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10196, 4 July 1911, Page 2

The Star. TUESDAY, JULY 4, 1911. THE POSITION AT HOME.

The people are taking the crisis that has arisen in politics in the Old Country very calmly. With the carrying of Lord Cromer's amendment to the Parliament Bill the, fate of that measure was presumably sealed, for it is not in reason to suppose that the Government . will accept the mutilation to which the ; Bill has been subjected. The demand . of the House of Lords that a joint com- j mittee of the two Houses should decide | what are and what arc not money Bills j strikes at the very root of the Govern- i ment's policy, which is that the House of Commons, expressing the opinion >f the electorates, should alone have control of the finance. Every Parliament : jealously guards the control of taxa- j tion, and of all matters even remotely | affecting taxation. Money Bills are j hedged about with all sorts of restrie- | tions and conditions. In our own Par. | liament it is scaredv competent for a ! private member to move an amendment , that might increase taxation without ; the consent of the Government, which, , of course, is charged with the duty ,of j safeguarding the finances. The House of Commons at Home has alwa"" looked with the gravest suspicion on motions emanating from the House of Lords if the finance of the kingdom were affected, and tne House of Commons itself prescribes special forms and formalities to be observed so that the representatives of the people may have every opportunity of checking a money Bill or a Bill involving an increase of appropriations from the public purse. To allow the House of Lords to have a voice in the determination of what are and what are not money Bills would involve the abandonment of the constitutional rights that have been won by the Commons in the past. It is always competent for the House of Lords to submit reasons for disagreeing with a decision of the House of Commons 011 such a question, and there is nothing in the Parliament Bill which deprives the peers of the right which they have always enjoyed in this respect. But Lord Cromer's amendment seeks to increase the powers of the House of Lords in a direction contrary to the emphatic determination of the constituencies. It is a matter for surprise in the circumstances that we have been given so I little information by cable on the position that has arisen. We are told, on the authority of a Tory paper, that the King has given 110 promise that he will meet the desire of the Government and appoint a sufficient number of peers to ensure the carrying through of the Liberal policy, but of course the King has not yet been asked to appoint peprs. In all probabilitv the matter has not yet been laid formally before him, and it will be time enough to discuss what he would do when the other means of bringing the House oi Lords to reason have failed. Attention seems to have been temporarily diverted from the crisis by the move that has made in Morocco but it will command public attention again in a few days. In the meantime, it would be helpful to have an indication of the feeling of the public as revealed in the newspapers, but we dare say that the cable agpnt is only reflecting the prevailing uncertainty in the extreme brevity of bis references to the subject.