PARLIAMENT AND THE LIBERALS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 260, 7 November 1906, Page 4

PARLIAMENT AND THE LIBERALS.

The House of Commons seems to have made up its mind that under the circumstances it will do well to satisfy the demands of Labour as far as that is possible in the matter of the Trades Disputes Bill. The controversy on this measure has centred chiefly round clause 4. which practically reverses the famous Tafl" Vale decision by rendering trade unions safe, from any action at law for the recovery of damages for injury sustained through the acts of members or officials of such organisations. When the Attorney-General brought down the first "Trades Disputes Bill, he was careful to point out that the principle of Agency must be upheld against the unious as against individual employers; and this was the view publicly stated by such eminent legal authorities as Mr Asquith and Mr Haldane before the present session. But the Labour party would not listen to Mr Lawsou Walton's arguments, and they forced Government to accept in place of the. original bill, a measure proposed. by Mr Hudson including the celebrated clause 4. Wo can well understand the hesitation of the House about conferring such immunity upon labour organisations. But it seems to have been admitted that unless some such modification were ac cepted, the legislation of the past forty years in. favour of the unions would remain practically null and void; and even distinguished lawyers have therefore been induced to support the subversion of a great legal principle on behalf of the unions. It is a great triumph for Labour; but. the Liberal Government would have come out of the controversy better if it had boldly declared for Mr Hudson's hill in the first place instead of adopting it under compulsion.

- Of -even greater public interest and importance is-the sti-uggh? that has long raged •round the Education Bill: in spite of- all warnings the Lords "go on their way-adding amendments'-at-the request of the Bishops, till, as- Lord Crewe complains, they.hare ''battered the bill out of recognition." Their last achievement has been to make the extensiop of "facilities for religious instruction" under Clause 4 mandatory instead of conditional j and this, of course,

entirely .defeats the purpose of the bill with respect to such concessions.- There ca;i be no longer any doubt that when the bill goes back to the Lower House, Parliament will find itself confronted by a constitutional crisis of the first magnitude. Shall the House of Lords be permitted to defy the House of- Commons?—in other words, shall a small section of the nation, directed in this case by a still smaller section. which cannot be termed unbiassed or disinterested, be allowed to impose its will upon the main body of the people? The position of the House of Lords has always been anomalous, and since Democracy has been accepted as England's political creed, the situation of an Upper Chamber of hereditary legislators has become highly precarious. More especially it is unwise for the Lords spiritual to enter into direct conflict with the progressive spirit that now pervades the country, and is so strongly represented in the Lower House. An attempt to disqualify the Bishops from sitting in the House of Lords would be a by no means unnatural consequence of this present crisis. 'But a further contingency which the. Anglican Church should always bear in mind" is the danger of Disestablishment, while, the Lords temporal may find that the outcry over their rejection of the Education Bill may swell the demand for some radical reorganisation of the Upper Chamber which will render it for the future impotent against the popular will.