The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1914. THE KING AND POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 173, 21 January 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1914. THE KING AND POLITICS.

Tins condition of irrational excitement into which a number of people in England have been thrown by the near prospect of the passing of the Home Rule Bill is forcibly exemplilied by the fact that many individuals are making a personal appeal to King George, askingjiiin to wHhhold his assent from the Homo Rule Wiill until there shall have been an opportunity for the electors to express their opinion regarding it. Lord llftls- | bury (who, of course, knows better) declared in the course of a recent speech at Chelsea, that ''it is for bis Majesty alone to decide whether the thing proposed to Ik done io good or the reverse for his country." If the King has not the power to do this/then, says Lord llakbury, "lie is not much of a King"; and he further points to the well-known formula that, according to the British Constitution, the King, the Lords and tlie Commons must all give their consent to legislation. That formula is all right in theory; but the power of the constitutional monarch has bit by 4>;t been whittled down, and for several centuries no British King or Queen has come into collision with Parliament. If King George wished to prevent the Home Rule Bill becoming law, he would have to dismiss his Ministers. This means, of course, that lie would have to take /i side in a party controvery, and this {action is by Ministers rightly described as "unthinkable.''' Yet the Conservative newspapers are doing all they can tu incite the King to take the rash and uncalled-for course referred to. Several of them are daily publishing a form of individual petition to his Majesty and are calling upon their readers to sign and forward such petitions to the King. It is possible that half a million or so of such appeals will reach their destination —only to lill the waste-paper baskets of Buckingham Palace or of Downing Street. The newspaper editors ought to have more sense than encourage "peo- ] pie (o such futile eil'ort- King George has the same power of veto over Xew Zealand legislation that lie has over British legislation. It is conceivable that, on such a question as that of defence or of ''little navy versus big navy," an i:;suc might be raised here that could be viewed as vital to the unity of the Empire. We should thus have au agitation analogous to that raised at Home over the Irish question. Would anyone here think of petitioning the King , (o ve'o the policy of the ''little navy" people? Would any newspaper be so silly as to advocate the withholding of the Royal assent from a measure embodying that policy? And, if even a majority of the electors in the Dominion signed petitions to that end, does anyone suppose that the King would pay the least attention to them? As a matter of plain fact, we all know that the King would never even see such petitions, as they would be simply passed along to his Ministers, whose advloe lie always follows in matters of thsi kind. The attempt to draw his Majesty into parly politics at JTorne must therefore fail "and fail miserably. Meantime, people who preserve their calmness and poise can only wonder and deplore—wonder at the extremes to which party feeling carries English people who are otherwise sane and well-informed, :md deplore the lack of loyalty, good scn.e and good feeling that would drag the Crown into the muddy arena of parly stnle. Whatever may be the King's personal opinion of Home Rule,'there is not the slightest likelihood that it will be asserted.