BRITISH POLITICS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 921, 22 November 1910, Page 3

BRITISH POLITICS.

elections fixed for 28'i'u. London, November 20. Parliament will be dissolved on the 28th iust., and the elections will commence on Saturday, December 3rd. Mr Asquith, Prime Minister, attended a luncheon yesterday by the National Liberal Club. Most of the members of the Ministry were present, and the Premier was accorded a tremendous ovation. Mr Asquith admitted it was unusual for a Government enjoying the popular confidence on all questions of general policy to find itself obliged to advise a dissolution. But new circumstances demanded a new precedent. No House of Commons was more emphatically representative of the will of the people than the House of Commons of 1906 ; yet measures embodying that will were thwarted and defeated by the Lords. The climax came when the Budget was rejected. The House of Commons elected in January last, with a majority of over one hundred for the Government, was in favour of limiting the Lords’ power ol veto. After a truce they must relinquish the method of compromise as a thing which had been tried and failed. Negotiations were over, and war was declared.

Mr Asquith said the latest borough elections would be concluded on December Bth and the latest couuties on the 17th. This would be much better than to have the elections hovering over their heads through the Christmas holidays. liberals, he said, denied that they were proposing unchecked domination by a single Chamber. Surely Cord Rosebery was aware they had been living, when the Tories were in office, under the yoke of single Chamber tyranny. What liberals proposed was to confine the Second Chamber to those subordinate functions admittedly appropriate to such a body, aud to secure the lull and even working of the two Chambers, whichever party was in power. The representatives of the people were entitled to the controlling voice in both policy aud legislation.

The ancient and picturesque structure of the House of Lords was condemned by its own inmates as unsafe. Parricidal pickaxes were already at work, and constitutional jerry-builders were hurrying from everywhere with new plans.

Mr Balfour said the course Mr Asquith had taken was absolutely without precedent in the history of the country. “lie has chosen a month in which the register is old and the electorate in the least satisfactory state, except in Scotland.” Mr Balfour added that he expected the Government was afraid the House of Lords would make proposals agreeable to moderate men, and had therefore advised a dissolution. He declared that as a House of Commons man he did not want an elected Second Chamber, which would usurp the position of the first chamber. Mr Asquith declared that he did not prefer guarantees, and at the end of the debate was beseiged with demands lo define ‘‘contingent guarantees.” He declined to do so, and said he wotdd continue to decline to make a statement regarding his advice to the King, who must stand aloof from political conflicts. In the House of Lords, the Kail of Crewe made a similar statement to that made by Mr Asquith in the Lower House. Lord Cromer and the Marquis of Lansdownequestioned the Minister regarding the subject of guarantees, but he declined to say more than that if the Government was returned to power with a working majority he assumed the Lords would give effect to the will of the people.