THE FATE OF THE LORDS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 16, 13 July 1911, Page 5

THE FATE OF THE LORDS

UNIONISTS ARRANGING PLANS. GOVERNMENT'S FIRM ATTITUDE. By Cable. —Press Association.—Copyright Received 12, 10.10 p.m. London, July 12. The Unionist leaders are holding meetings and considering whether they will force the Government to carry the Parliament Bill with fresh peers, or offer

no resistance to its passage. The Yorkshire Post and Birmingham Post deprecate the peers prolonging the contest till the Crown swamps their resistance.

The Telegraph expects the Government will not consent to remove Home Rule from outside the Bill's scope or recognise the necessity for the referendum, but will accept the exclusion of the Crown and Protestant succession from the Bill. The Government, it is also expected, will reject Lord Cromer's joint committee proposal for money Bills, but will agree to a purely Commons committee, under the Speaker, and accept Lord Newton's amendment as a new clause.

The Welsh Liberals are expecting the adoption of the Parliamentary Bill, and are organising a campaign for disestablishment.

The Master of Elibank has completed a list of 500 peers, including a number of Commoners, thus necessitating byeelections. Preparations in their constituencies led many Unionists to believe that a general election was immine»t.

THE KING AND THE PEERS. PLAYING THE GREAT GAME LOYALLY. "The First Yea r (if King George" is the subject of an unsigned article in the June Contemporary Review. The writer believes that King George will apply and has already applied the Victorian theory of a constituional monarch on strictly Victorian lines. "He will be not less stubborn, not less argumentive, not less keen to press his own views and to promote the policy which he deems best for the realm; but he will be abide by the rules of the game, of which the dominant is this: 'The Sovereign becomes an automatic registration machine when he is unable to find an alternative Ministry.' "

After describing the course of events from the failure of the Conference last year, the writer proceeds:— "The King granted Mr. Asquitli's demands for a dissolution on Mr Asquitli's terms, and loyally waited the result of the general election. Probably no one waited the verdict of the polls with more anxiety than King George. If the result had been indecisive, he would have been face to face with one of these supreme opportunities which make or mar a Monarchy. If, on the other hand, the coalition came back with a threefigure majority, the course of events would pass beyond his control. So far ac this issue was concerned, lie would sink at once into the position of an automaton, whose signature would either be withheld from the writs of summons of peers, whose only qualification was their hereditary rank, or could be affixed to patents of 500 new peerages, as Mr. Asquith directed. He might hate this automatic exercise of his prerogative by the Prime Minister; but the King i.s far too loyal to the Constitution, and far too good a sportsman to think of evading his obligations. "The moment the result of the general election was declared the King recognised his position. Another dissolution was out of the question. The Opposition could not furnish him with an alternative Cabinet that could face the House of Commons for a single day. Not the overbearing striogbnce of a usurping Minister, but the abject and hopeless' impotence of the Opposition reduced the King to a position of an obedient automaton in tiie hands of Mr. Asquith. That he did not like the position may be taken for granted; but King George has never allowed any one to perceive that the action of the'automaton was not the free exercise of his own royal will. Should the Peers persist in compelling the exercise of the royal prerogative to enforce the will of the Commons, that prerogative will be exercised without tremor, or hesitation, or holding back. The King will play tiie great game, according to the strictest rules, loyally and royally to the end. Ihe hotheads of the Opposition may rage, but Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne know that the King has no choice but to do that which is the inevitable result of their own inability to furnish him with ail alternative Cabinet. As tor King George, he has no doubts. He knows his duty, and for him to know is to do.

"Hence the close of the first year of the new reign linds the nation absolutely free from any anxiety or excitement. The King lias shown that the balancewheel of tlie Constitution is functioning with perfect regularity, and that being the case, the crisis is no crisis, but merely a Parliamentary incident, which is about to be quietly solved in a perfectly Constitutional way."