The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1912. IMPERIAL POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 154, 16 November 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1912. IMPERIAL POLITICS.

The scene in the British Parliament so graphically reported in our cablegrams yesterday is not without parallel, although it is many years since the rival , parties reached.such a stage of personal bitterness as to necessitate the Speaker taking the extreme action of adjourning the House. The proceedings reflect no credit upon the Unionist Party, who were mainly responsible for the disturbance. On Tuesday last the Government was defeated in committee on the Home I Rule Bill on an amendment moved by Sir F. G. Banbury, limiting the Imperial contribution to the Irish Parliament to £2,500,000 annually. The division was a close one, the voting for tho amendment being 22S against 206. The Unionists claim this.is a victory which should call for the immediate resignation of the Government and the dropping of the Home Rule Bill. . But the division was admittedly a snap one, taken in the absence of a large number of Liberal and Nationalist members who are strongly in favor of a measure whieh passed its second reading by so substantial a majority. Tho Government has very properly adopted the attitude of testing the • feeling of a full House before taking the drastic action that is suggested by its opponents, and has moved for a recision of Sir F. G. Banbury's amendment. This the Unionist Party objects to, on the ground tha,t there is no precedent in political history for the recision of a motion during the same in which it is carried. The objection is a purely technical one, which has ben ovcruled by the Speaker, and, as even-body with any pretensio-is to intelligence at all knows, the written law of Parliament makes the ruling of (lie Speaker as immovable as the laws of the Modes and Persians, and as hard to circumvent as the decision of a football referee. Under these circumstances the Unionist Party has adopted a policy of deliberate obstruction. But it is hard to understand why, if their success was not a haphazard one, they should be so anxious to dodge a further trial of strength, instead of pinning their faith to a. faulty technicality. If they have a legitimate majority against the Bill it i-s the simplest matter in the world for them to prove the contention by rallying to the lastman and voting against the motion for recision. Being perfectly well aware that they have not the faintest hope of defeating the motion, they have adopted the simple expedient of obstruction, and their tactics have been sueccs-fnl to the extent of closing down (lie IF-tuso at their first effort, after a xa ;;e whieh was .'discreditable io then:.- ■■lv- individually in its details, and n stanling de-eraee to ' the party. The personal attacks on Ministers, amounting practically to physical

violence, are not what might have been expected from a party which claims to represent the culture and intelligence of the country, and if these are "the gentlemen of England," the longer the reins of power remain in the hands of the proletariat the better for the Empire. Their red federation tactics will not find any grace in the eyes of unbiased critics, and it is to be hoped that the Government will insist upon proper Parliamentary procedure, even if the whole of the Opposition ha 3 to be "named," man by man, by the Speaker. Feeling is apt to run high in party politics, but it is seldom that such an august body as the Imperial Parliament so far forgets itself as to become a laughing stock in the eyes of the world.