CENSURE MOTION

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10309, 9 August 1911, Page 5

CENSURE MOTION

OFMR A. J. BALFOUR.

DEFEATED IN THE COMMONS

(Received Last Night, 8.40 o'clock.)

LONDON, August 8. In the House of Commons, Mr A. J. Balfour, Leader of the Opposition, moved his censure motion as follows: "That tho Government's obtaining a pledge for the creation of Peers is a gross violation of Constitutional liberty, precluding the people from promrancing on the question of Home Rule for Ireland."

On rising, Mr Balfour was greeted with prolonged cheering. He declared that, in advising.the Crown, the Government had not acted in obedience'to "the great, overwhelming pressure of public opinion, but to further Parliamentary arrangements with sections of tho House supporting them, and in order to prevent the people from pronouncing on the question of Home Rule. The Government had dragged the King into a position in which the Prerogative was so misused as to arouse the indignation of nearly half the people of the United Kingdom. That was a cruel position for the Advisers of the King to place His Majesty in. The King was the fountain of honour, but tho Government was determined that the stream from the fountain should be poisoned and corrupted. He did not question that the Government, by searching the by-ways, would have no difficulty in finding gentlemen willing to accept the new honours upon the terms imposed, but these gentlemen would be hut supers in a sordid drama in which Ministers were the chief actors. It would be contrary to the whole spirit of tho Constitutional Government to erect an executive authority which would manipulate either the Chamber or the Commons. Mr Balfour instanced the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and asserted that in no cose had the Executive of the Lower House been permitted to flood the Second Chamber. "Modify or reform the Lords if you like," said Mr Balfour,' "but don't , pack it with hired voters until it becomes a supple instrument at the Executive's will." Although all Opposition members did not agree that immediate steps were necessary, all were determined to resist the Government to the uttermost. Mr Asquith" had for eight months kept secret what had passed between himself and the King. All this time he was masquerading as a Constitutional Minister, although he had used the Prerogative "as no Minister had ever dared, of even a King in the old days of the Prerogative had dared, to use it. When this was realised, the wise and sober opinion of the country would say that a Constitution mutilated and shattered as this has been, cannot be left in the ruined form in which Mr Asquith had left it.