Page images
PDF
EPUB

PAST AND FUTURE.

THE Liberal Party has now been in power for nearly five years, and it is time to take stock of what has been done in the past, and to glance at what is likely to happen in the future, should their lease unhappily be renewed. We would therefore, in the first place, direct the public mind rather to the extreme importance of the next General Election, which seems likely to take place in January, than to the particular questions at this moment engaging its attention, since the issues involved in it will be of far greater magnitude than any which were raised by either of the two last appeals to the people, pregnant with grave results as they undoubtedly were.

The Liberal Party, then, or what calls itself such, has been, we say, in power for nearly five years. For nearly the whole of this time it boasted overwhelming majority in the House of Commons.

an

It professed to believe that it was called to the management of affairs to settle a variety of important questions which the Unionists had left unsettled. In short, it was to inaugurate a new era in legislation, and demonstrate to the world its innate superiority in the arts of government over the Unionists, whom it had dethroned. And what is the record? Of all their glittering promises only one has been fulfilled. They

VOL. CLXXXVIII.-NO, MCXXXVIII.

have established old age pensions. All the rest have fallen to the ground like leaves from the trees in autumn. Of course some business has been transacted, some minor legislation has been accomplished: and measures have been passed which, had it not been for the intolerable braggadocio of the Government and their supporters, might in ordinary times, and considering the performers, have been thought— if below mediocrity-a respectable achievement. But questions of the first magnitude are now just where they were when Mr Balfour left office. Ireland, indeed, is in a worse state than it was then. And Ireland has still to be dealt with. Education question, Church questions, military and naval questions, agrarian questions, economical questions-all stand waiting for solution. Government have settle one of them.

The

The failed to

And why have they failed? Chiefly because the extreme section of their supporters, to whom they have sold themselves, have compelled them to put forward measures in a form so repugnant to the commonsense of the community, and the traditions and sentiments of the English nation, that it was found impossible to pass them. Failing in legislation, they took refuge in revolution, a device of which history has many examples. And now, are

T

we willing that all these great questions should be left in the same hands for another six years, at the mercy of men whose principles and purposes are well known, and whom their previous failures will only render more violent?

If not, who is to settle them? The old moderate Liberal Party, to whom we used to look for assistance against Radical extremes, has practically disappeared. The retrospect of the last five years abundantly proves that the scanty remnant of that Party is wholly unequal to the discharge of this function: a function claimed by the late Duke of Devonshire as the distinctive duty of the Whigs, who by that time had become absorbed into the moderate Liberals. No such Party any longer exists capable of stemming the revolutionary flood. On the contrary, what once was that Party is swept along with it. The Duke's theory of a political "buffer" has totally collapsed. If any further proof were wanted of the complete prostration of the Government at the feet of the combined Nationalist, Radical, and Socialist dictatorship, we have but to point to the successful pressure put upon the Government to hold an Autumn session. The transparent insincerity of Mr Asquith's excuse for it is too pitiful to be amusing. He would adjourn Parliament, he said, at the end of July, to meet later on, because the House of Commons has been sitting so long that members

must be tired. If that were all, we may be quite sure that men would much rather sit through August than spoil their autumn holiday by sitting through November.

It is clear, then, that if we are to be saved from the calamities with which we are threatened, it can only be by the Unionists. Let the electorate ponder well on this. We have told them, and shall tell them again, what Socialism means, what Socialist finance and class taxation is meant to accomplish. If a Radical majority is returned at the next election, all the old measures of pillage and plunder will again be revived: the Scotch Small Landholders Bill, the taxing of Land Values Bill, the iniquitous Licensing Bill, Disestablishment of the Church, to say nothing of the financial ulcer which is eating into the heart of our prosperity. Electors must remember this toothat after the next general election they will be unable to say that none of these questions were before them. If they vote for the Liberal party this time, their decision in favour of these iniquities will be final, there will be no backing out. And this is why we say that the issue before the public next time will be one of greater magnitude than was raised either one year ago or five. In 1906 we did not know what was in store for us. Now we do.

The responsibility which now rests on the constituencies of the whole United Kingdom

should be brought home to their minds as frequently and forcibly as possible. If they now, with their eyes open, commit themselves once more to the hands of the Radicals-implying, as such an act would do, approval of their principlesthere will, we repeat, be no locus pœnitentiæ for them. Nobody has pointed out this more clearly than that far-sighted statesman, Lord Beaconsfield. "You must remember," he said, that, "not to use the epithet profanely, we are dealing with a peculiar people."

"There is no country at the present moment that exists under the circumstances and under the same

conditions as the people of this realm. You have, for example, an ancient, powerful, richly-endowed Church and perfect religious liberty. You have unbroken order and complete freedom. You have landed estates as

large as the Romans, combined with commercial enterprise such as Carthage and Venice united never equalled. And you must remember that this peculiar country, with these strong contrasts, is not governed by force; it is not governed by standing armies; it is governed by a most singular series of traditionary influences, which generation after generation cherishes and preserves because it knows that they embalm custom and represent law. And with this, what have you done? You have created the greatest Empire of modern time. You have amassed a capital of fabulous amount.

You have devised and sustained a system of credit still more marvellous. And, above all, you have established and maintained a scheme so vast and complicated of labour and industry, that the history of the world offers no parallel to it. And all these mighty creations are out of all proportion to the essential and indigenous elements and resources of the country. If you destroy that state of society, remember this-England cannot begin again."

Subsequent changes may apparently have robbed these words of some of their weight, but they have not really done so. The august fabric here so eloquently described still stands, and appeals to the descendants of those who raised it to save it from destruction.

A General Election before the Conference has arrived at any definite conclusion will, so think the Radicals, enable them to play the veto grievance for all it is worth, and if these tactics succeed, then what we have above indicated will necessarily follow. They think that an Autumn session may not impossibly have the effect of breaking up the Conference, which is just what they desire. A compromise is the last thing which they wish for. Whatever it might be, it would have the effect of deferring the consummation on which they have set their hearts. And this is the real meaning of the Autumn session. present opportunity of destroying or emasculating the Upper Chamber is lost, the question, they fear, may drift into the limbo of half-forgotten causes, and dwindle to the dimensions of a faction fad. This is what the Confederates are so anxious to prevent. Any kind of compromise, however temporary, would tend towards this result. Yet the Radicals on this point may possibly overreach themselves. There can be no doubt that at the present moment the Conference is decidedly popular, and that all that large body of persons who dislike the thought

If the

of going to extremities, hope it will save them from any such disagreeable necessity. How far this hope is well founded is another question. But it exists, and along with it the very reasonable desire that the Conference should have fairplay. Now, if any suspicion of the real truth ever gains ground among the people, and an impression gets abroad that the Confederates for their own ends are "hustling" the Conference, with a view to defeating the very object for which it was convened, the General Election will certainly run in favour of the Unionists. We trust that it will do so on many other grounds as well. But the practical British mind has always a leaning towards compromise-and to ensure it, is sometimes willing to give more than it receives. In this frame of mind the people are not likely to look with much favour on those who are trying to prevent any compromise from being effected at all.

However, that is the Radical game, and perhaps, from their own point of view, it is the best they could play. Some risks must always be run in battle. The success of the combined Nationalist and Socialist cause depends on their getting the House of Lords out of the way somehow or other as soon as possible. Their best chance of doing so is, they may believe, to go to the country declaring compromise to be impossible and the Conference a failure. In the pursuit of this great object,

they must hurry on the election and chance it. If the Government in November bring forward the Veto Resolutions, and the Lords reject them, the Radicals will have got their πоν στŵ—a definite cry,-and this is perhaps the most hopeful policy they can adopt, though at the risk of encountering a very powerful hostile public feeling.

Their fear of a compromise, though they may be wise to act upon it, is perhaps a little in excess of what may reasonably be expected. The difficulties in the way are very great. For it must be borne in mind that this is a question on which the central point at issue admits of no dissection. The power of the House of Lords to reject measures sent up to them from the Commons under the conditions which exist at present, call it by what name we may, cannot be cut in half.

And even if it could, the Radical party have declared that they will not endure it in any form or shape whatever. What said Mr Keir Hardie only last May? We could not proceed too quickly to get the House of Lords settled-which means, as he explained himself

[ocr errors]

few minutes afterwards, "sweeping it out of existence.'

[ocr errors]

There are three kinds of compromise which may be considered by the Conference. One relates only to Finance Bills, which the House of Lords has never yet been declared constitutionally unable either to amend or reject, though the right has never been exercised

where nothing else has been at stake. Now one suggestion is that this power should be definitely abandoned, except in the case of tacking, and that some proper authority should be appointed to decide what constitutes tacking. It is possible that some settlement may be arrived at on this point. If the Lords consent to the surrender of a potential right which they have always possessed, and the other side agree that anything which the Government introduce into a Money Bill, not obviously part of its essence, must be submitted to the judgment of some independent authority before it is recognised as forbidden ground which the Lords must not touch, there would be an element of give and take in the transaction which would bring it within the definition of a Compromise. The Government would lose the use of a convenient fiction by which measures might be smuggled through under the cloak of a Finance Bill; and the House of Lords would surrender a principle which might well be kept in reserve for possible emergencies. But the Authority must not be the Speaker of the House the House of Commons. The decision must be given by some person or tribunal wholly unconnected with the political world. And this can only be a Court of Law. But the abuse known as tacking is only one part of the great principle involved, and a small part of it. The control of the House of Lords

over legislation in general, and not merely over finance, is what the Radicals would destroy, and what Conservatives are bound to defend; and on this point, as between these two antagonists, whether any genuine compromise is possible, is a question on which considerable difference of opinion prevails in both political parties.

How are we to reconcile the constitutional check upon hasty legislation now in the hands of the Lords with the impatience of all interference from above manifested by a numerous and powerful party in the House of Commons? If any such reconciliation could be effected by the Conference now sitting, it would deserve our warmest thanks; and we fancy that the public in general believe that it will succeed in doing so. But the closer we

look into the question, the more more insoluble the problem seems to be. One suggestion is that the Upper Chamber should be greatly reduced in number, and that when a conflict occurred with the Lower, the two should sit together and deliberate in common. Yet it is difficult to see how this would satisfy the Radical demand for complete exemption from aristocratic control. The Peers and the Conservative Commoners together would always be too strong for the Radicals, and it would appear to matter very little, from the Radical point of view, whether the veto was exercised in the one Chamber or the other. And

« PreviousContinue »