The Dominion. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1911. THE COMING STRUGGLE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1044, 6 February 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1911. THE COMING STRUGGLE.

The British political situation will this week take its place in the fore-, front of public topics, and the King's Speech will be awaited with tho keenest possible interest. The Government laid such heavy and continuous stress throughout the election upon tho fact that tho sole issue was No Veto that most people will expect an immediate pronouncement of the Government's intention _to reintroduce the Parliament Bill of last year and submit it to the Peers with something like a plain intimation that, if ncccssary, the King will create a sufficient number of Peers to swamp the Conservative majority, in tho revising Chamber. But this is by no means certain. Nobody wishes for such a solution of any deadlock that may ariso between the Houses, and least of all, we should say, Me. Asquitii and tho more moderate of his colleagues. It is not even known whether ■ the Government has obtained from the King a guarantee that this weapon will be available; and in any event Mr. Asquitii is very unlikely to_ take t;hc unusual course of issuing in tho Kino's Speech a threat that a certain action "will follow a certain attitude on the part of tho Lords. A perusal of the latest Unionist newspapers to hand helps hardly at all to an understanding of the official Unionist view. In several Unionist quarters it is urged that the. Bill must be passed, with whatever reluctance, in the sure hope that in another Parliament it will bo repealed. Thus, the jforniiiQ I'ast, taking this view, "that the Coalition are entitled to claim a. mandate for the principle of No-Vcco"—but not for Homo Itule— contemplates the passing of a Parliament Bill which "may bo something very different from tho present draft." "Unionists," it . proceeds, "distrust tho wholo principle of Single-Chamber government too profoundly to regard the situation as portending, at most, anything more than a temporary suspension of the Constitution, which another Parliament would suroly restore and try to fortify with special safeguards against future revolutions. For the present the consolation they feel is that the mandate of the Coalition, such as it is, at least removes any possibility of the. King being callcd upon to create dummy Peers. Tho House of Lords has known its constitutional duty in the past and would know it again. Thq oation. is.thankful that the..Crown is not to be dragged into ,the party arena after all." There is, on the other hand, a strong section of tho Unionist party utterly opposed to the Bill, and willing to challense Mr.. Asquith to do his worst. This course would throw unon the . Government '.the duty of initiating a movement for some kind of "compromise, for, quite apart from the discredit that would fall upon the Government that manufactured 500 Peers, there is one strong practical consideration which will weigh heavily with tho Government. For to make the House of Lords a huge and unwieldy Chamber of ICOO members, predominantly .Liberal in character, would be to make tho problem of House of Lords reform tho very first business of the Government—a question that would have to be given preference over Home Rule. Which of those rival views—the view that in the long run it will bo best to swallow tho Bill, and the view that a stout resistance will force tho Government to open up negotiations for a settlement by agreement—will bo adopted bv the Unionist majority in tho House of Lords itself, is really an open question. There is, of course,"a third line that tho Lords may take: they can add to tho Bill a clause providing for tho submission of the Bill to a poll of tho people, and in that case Me. Asquitii "would find it impossible to establish any respectable reply to the charge—should ho reject this amendment and rely upon the creation of Peers—that "ho has chosen to hand over the settlement of the nation's question's to a scratch, body of newly-enrolled friends of his party. , : It would be unfair, in a summary of the present position—which is largely a fight for the establishment of Single-Chamber government for tho benefit of the Nationalists—to fail to notice tho best attempt that has been made—so far as wo have read—to provide a fair reply to the criticism that tho_ Bill deos actually establish tho Single-Chamber system. It appears in tho Westminster Gazette of December 21. There it is argued that, under the suspension Veto, "Governments would not desire to exposo important measures' to tho chapter of accidents or to risk ihe popular hostility _ which would surely declare itself if they took up an impracticable attitude to reasonable criticism." But does not 'the Government's present attitude go very far towards discounting this optimistic view? Tho Gazette procoeds to ask whether anyone with a practical knowledge of tho working of affairs will deny that the Lords' right, of postponement "is not a great power which leaves abundant scope for reasoned criticism and the nlay of public opinion and the moral forces 1

It is true (it states) that wo can theoretically conceive of somo desperate Government which would be deaf to criticism, impervious to agitation, indifferent to the loss of by-elections, and which, in spite, of all manifestations of hostility, would insist on placing a mischievous or unpopular measure on tho statute-book. But even in such a case the Nemesis would be very swift. For with-the shorter term which the Parliament Bill sets to tho duration of Parliaments, such a Government would have but a brief career before coming to irretrievable disaster. Wc are obliged to fvame our institutions 011 the assumption that those who work them will behave rationally, and if wo depart from this assumption wo can prove every part of the structure to be rotten aud impossible." There is something in this argument, but is there not also something in the argument that the evil measures

of the "desperate Government" will be irremediable, and will remain, with nil their badness, after the nation has put another and better Government in office? Is it not concoivable that, in order to defend Free-trade, the present Government could establish women's suffrage and "the right to work"—neither of which steps,'once taken, could be retraced ? The risks are too great. The djest service the Unionists can render tho nation probably is the rejection of tho Parliament Bill, which would force tho Government to abandon' its extreme policy, and secure that in any event the reform of tho House of Lords will destroy the strongest plea of the 1 Radicals for a destructive alteration of the Constitution.