Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1913. HOME RULE AND THE LORDS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 26, 31 January 1913, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1913. HOME RULE AND THE LORDS

The rejection of the Home Rule Bill was moved in the House of Lords on Monday. Tho debate, we are told, was "lifeless." Here was one of the most momentous and far-reaching measures ever submitted to a British Parliament, a measure deemed by about nine-tenths of the Lords to be threatening Ireland with revolution and civil war, and the United Kingdom with disruption, yet the interest displayed in the Bill by the House was so languid that the debate is described as lifeless. It is a straiige and unfortunate result of the grave constitutional change effected by the Parliament Act. So far as the Lords themselves are concerned they have only themselves to blame. The blind arrogance with which in a democratic age they set themselves to destroy Liberal measures passed by large majorities in the House of Commons reached its climax in the infatuation that led to the rejection of the Budget in 1909. The Liberal Government, even if it had desired to do so, could no longer fence with the question. The struggle between the two Houses had been brought to a definite issue, and unless it was determined in favour of the House of Commons, every Liberal measure would be at the mercy of an irresponsible hereditary chamber .in which Liberalism must always 1 be in an insignificant minority. The result of two successive appeals to the country within the space of twelve months was that the Lords were hopelessly beaten. The first General Election of 1910 compelled the House of Lords to accept the Budget; the second completed the triumph of the Commons by insuring the passing of the Parliament Act, or Veto Bill as it was then called. Thus it is that the Lords are now almost impotent in the presence of a measure that they detest infinitely more than the Budget. They would like to treat Mr. Asquith's Home Rule Bill as they treated the only Home Rule Bill that was ever submitted to them before —Gladstone's Bill of 1893, which they rejected by 419 votes to 41. OBut to put the present Bill to death is beyond the power of the Lords. Ai two years' sentence marks the limit of their jurisdiction. Thus it is that the debate now proceeding has been deprived of all the excitement that would have attended it a few years ago. Even when we know what is going to happen, an intense dramatic interest attaches to a death sentence. But though the Lords' intents are murderous, they can. as we have said, do the present Bill little harm, and therefore neither they nor anybody else can work up any excitement over their proceedings. Three or four months ago the decision of the Lords, though of course a foregone conclusion in any I event, would not have .been a matter of such complete unconcern, for it looked at that time as though the present Government could not outlast, the two years for which the Lords would be able to suspend the Bill. But the grievous perplexities of the Unionists over Tariff Reform, following on their frank championship of anarchy in Ulster and in the House of Commons, have given the Government a new lease of life, and the most sanguine Unionist can hardly be expecting now that the coalition will have fallen to pieces before ' the two years required to put the Home Rule Bill on the Statute Book without the concurrence of the House of Lords have passed. So slow, indeed, has been the progress of the Bill through v its committee stage in the House of Commons that more than a third of the prescribed period has already passed. It was on 9th May that the Commons gave the Bill its second reading, and it is from that date that the time runs. There will, of course, be another, although necessarily a short, session ihis year, and the. session. of 1914 may be expected to open as usual in the first week of February. If during each of those sessions the Home Rule Bill is passed again by the House of Commons, and the third reading does not take place next year before the 9th May, the Royal Assent will be given as a matter of course, despite all that the Lords can do. No wonder, therefore, that even the Lords themselves cannot take much interest ih the present proceedings. For years they had been allowed to retain the deadly weapons inherited from their forefathers, but latterly it was on the distinct understanding that these weapons should be but very sparingly used. This condition having been flagrantly violated, the weapons have been rendered almost as innocuous as the dummy rifles that figured in Sir Edward Carson's Ulster parades. We hope to see an obsolete Upf er Chamber replaced before long by one with the blood of democracy in its veins, but Home Rule and many other things will have passed first. Whatever the subject may be, debates in the House of Lords under existing conditions must be as flat as that which was expected to conclude yesterday. The graver the issue, the less' the chance of the Lords being allowed to deal with it effectively.