IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 300, 13 May 1911, Page 5

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

• NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. London, May 11. The unemployment section of the Insurance Bill allows workmen over sixty to draw the excess of their premiums over their benefits received with compound interest at 2'/ 2 per cent. The Government has also empowered the refund to the employers of their contribution on behalf of workmen unable to pay in times of depression or owing to systematic short time. SPEECH BY MR. BALFOUR. London, May 11. Mr. Balfour, at the Primrose League meeting at the Albert Hall, heartily supported Lord Lansdowne's reforms, which had gone as far as it was right or possible in the direction of change in the constitution of the Lords. He uttered a warning of the folly of so changing the Lords that they would overshadow the Commons.

"GROSS, PALPABLE INCONSISTENCY." Received 12, 10.30 p.m. London, May 12. Mr. Balfour, speaking at the Albert Hall, said the country must have a .strong and effective second chamber able to carry out great duties, not the pitiful and beggarly modicum of responsibility given by the Parliament Bill. The Government proposed to indefinitely postpone the admittedly necessary reform of the Lords, and insisted that they should meanwhile be governed by one chamber alone. He called that "gross, palpable and almost criminal inconsistency. "She Labor Party is consistent. They constantly declare that they see no object in having a second chamber.- They can vote for this Bill with a clear conscience. The Bill gives them a singlechamber Government. Their position is unassailable, but I cannot imagine inconsistency greater than the Government saying the future constitution must be bi-cameral, yet the Parliament framing it may be a single-chamber constitution. The only explanation of such humiliating straits is that able men are driven thereto by the necessity for keeping a. majority in the Commons." Mr. Asquith, at Manchester, had claimed that if Home Rule were relinquished", the Government would have no difficulty in securing assent,to the Parliament Bill. This was an inversion of the real facts. There would have been no Parliament Bill but for Home Rule.

THE UNIONISTS AS DEMOCRATS. DEFINITION BY MR. BALFOUR. Received 12, 10.55 p.m. London, May 12. Mr. Balfour continued: There might have been reforms of the second chamber and a change in the relations of the two Houses, but never an absurdity suggesting the transfer to a single chamber, elected on a different issue, of all the moat fundamental, important and invaluable elements of the constitution. Whether what the Government proposed was Home Rule on a Gladstonian or some other unknown model, it ought never to be passed by a single chamber alone, but either subjected to revision by two dependent and legally co-equal chambers or referred to the people as a whole. (Cheers). The true solution of the constitutional question was, firstly, a change in the constitution, a second chamber with no alteration of its powers, at all events not the fundamental alteration of powers proposed by the Parliament Bill; secondly, that deadlocks should be met by conferences for conciliation and joint sittings; and, thirdly, that matters of grave importance and special instances should be met by a referendum. (Cheers). Nothing could be more entertaining, or more pathetic, than to see their opponents, who had been talking about the democracy throughout their lives, struggling to show that an appeal to the people on a specific issue was the worst service renderable to the democracy. He concluded by claiming that the Unionists were the only true democratic party in the STate.