The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 4, 1911. THE BRITISH CRISIS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1170, 4 July 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 4, 1911. THE BRITISH CRISIS.

. Yesterday's mail brought reports of the first three days of the debate in the House of Lords on the Parliament Bill, but it cannot bo said that tho speeches throw any new light on the point upon which light is at the present moment most anxiously desired, namely, the Government's plan for meeting a vital amendment of the Bill. We were told on Friday last that Lord Morlex had declared that the Government would never accept the amendment submitting tho definition of a money 'Bill to a joint committee, and had added that if Lord Lans-

downe persisted in--his proposal to exemjit Constitutional issues from the operation of the Bill all possibility of agreement would vanish. It

is incredible that Lord Lansdowne should have failed long ago to satisfy himself as to the effect of any given actionon his part, and it is therefore impossible that he can be "bluffing," as Lord. Morley's eleventh-hour warning suggests he is. Whatever the situation may be from the Liberal point of view, it is certainly not one, from the Unionist point of view, for a silly "bluff" at the last minute. The probability is that each side has its own mind made up, but suspects the other of "bluff." This would be natural enough, and would sufficiently account for the Daily News's implication that Mb. Asquith has, and the Observer's direct counter-statement that he has not, received assurances of the King's readiness to swamp the House of Lords with a new creation of Peers. In such a situation there is nothing for the distant observer to do but possess his soul in patience. Tne second reading debate, although unhelpful in this respect, was yet of value for those who sincerely wish to understand the rights and wrongs of the Bill. Lord Morley, who opened the debate, was guilty of evasions and suppressions that must have .disappointed those of ins great army, of admirers who forget that as a politician he has never earned that measure of esteem and. homage which all vie in rendering to him as a man of letters. Nothing but the paralysing neat of party pre-occupation, surely, could have led the biographer of Burke and Gladstone to say: "My argument is if a general election returns a Parliament it entrusts powers to the Ministry to pass whatever Bills they think fit." Nobody who T:nows him will need to be told that in quiet times that doctrine would not receive rougher handling from anybody than from Lord Morley, if lie chose to tackle it. It is a doctrine that even Mr. Asquith has shrunk from accepting, although, obviously, it is tho only reply to the cardinal argument of the Unionists that a majority obtained mainly on one issue, or .jointly on several issues, may bo used to force through, if no chcck is provided, a proposal to which, is opposed. Governments *'do that everywhere. Later in his speech, Lord Morley (idmittcd that a system under which the Commons should always prevail may be single-Chamber government. Still worse was his defonce of the Liberal-Irish coalition. lie represented the joint and mutual- depend-encies-of the English Radical, Scottish, Welsh, . Irish, and Labourite groups as an actual argument for the Government; just as a New Zealand Minister would affirm as the happiest guarantee of good government that mutual back-scratching amongst M.P.'s in respect of public works votes which we all know is tire prime curse of our politics. And so it was throughout Lord Morley's speech. Less adroit than Mr. K%QUITH', who left unanswered whatever dialectic could not cope with, the Lord President rashly accepted every challenge by taking up positions that, when the smoke clears away, he will recognise as indefensible. Tho most interesting part of his speech was the passage dealing with Home Rule. On the 1893 Home Rule Bill, he said, there had been .82 sittings:

. Does anyone suppose when we bring in a Home liulo Bill—l do not say there will bo 82 sittings, but there will be a great many. It will be- an immensely long process. There will be all the blaze , P res , s ,> au( l all tho thunder of tho platform all the time. Are we to suppose that the reiterated and deliberate arguments used in this Houso by very competent advocates are to count for nothing, and that they will make no impression at all upon the mind of tho voter? There will be all this blaze of public opinion. Perhaps some sort of blazo may come from the country immediately concernedi To suppose that a Home Rule Hill is to go through two years unchahged and unmodified for tho purpose of the Government, is really to show a curious ignorance'of legislative conditions in this country.

But to say that 'is to forget that what may have boon true of the old order is not true of the order post helium. And, in any case, if Mr. Redmond can force the Government to effect the great change proposed, who doubts that a Government of that kind will be more completely than ever under Mr. Redmond's thumb 1 The admirers of Lokd Morley in the colonics will, we know, think wo must have misunderstood him, or suppressed something. But we think they will dismiss that notion when we say that in this speech, and throughout the controversy, he has consistently avoided, even though challenged, any reference to the one famous piece of counsel directly relative to the present situation given, not once but many times, by his hero and colleague, Mr. Gladstone, as recorded in his own biography—namely,, that it would bo "a vital danger to the country and to the Empire, if at a time when a demand from Ireland for larger powers of self-government is to_ be dealt with, there is not in Parliament a party totally independent of the Irish vote."

There was no sign on either side in this debate of any willingness to think of anything but a fight to a finish. The Archbishop of ' Canterbury's eloquent plea for a peaceful settlement was tossed aside by the Lord Chancellor. His appeals for compromise, which- were really appeals for coolness, were of no avail, although he cited as the exemplar the great Liberal leader wh&c counsels even Loud Mojiley is unable to remember, or, remembering, to heed. Should the Government really be in earnest, and should it also have n lloyal guarantee in its pocket, it is possible that instead of creating its army of Peers all at once it will create a large batch by way of showing its intentions. But this possibility cannot but have been foreseen, and the amendment of the

Bill—unless some cliangc of plan is inado at the, last moment by tho Unionist Peers—will proceed to completion. Out of the resultant chnus, one thing is certain to emerge, namely, the beginning of a new conception of what constitutes a Government's mandate. Lord Motley's theory, which we have quoted, must be either confirmed or condemned. And it cannot ho confirmed while common sense remains in Britain.