party and advanced Radicals running, Conservatives, Libthat Mr Asquith is so keen eral Unionists, and Constituabout the Veto, and what we tional Liberals alike, the imhave assigned as his reasons perative duty of concentrating for pressing forward the Dis- their attention the two solution might more properly great objects which tower be described as theirs. Even above all others at the present ministerial supporters were dis- moment, namely, the preservagusted at the indecent haste tion of the Constitution and with which the Bill was hurried the suppression of the Irish on and the sinister auspices Dictatorship. under which it was introduced, and two of them broke out into open mutiny. Mr Asquith was silent as to "the guarantees," without which he declared not long ago that he could not continue in office. If he had obtained them he might as well have said so. But we scarcely see how his Majesty could give guarantees for the passage of a measure not yet in existence, or give a carte blanche for any measure whatever that the Government might choose to introduce. In 1832, when William IV. gave the same kind of guarantee to Lord Grey, it was in favour of a measure which had been exhaustively discussed in both Houses of Parliament for two years, and no secret was made of Let them remember that the situation is in no way changed from what it was two years ago before the Veto question became acute. The same dangers which confronted us then confront us still. The Veto of the Lords is all that stands between us and the triumph of Socialism all along the line, meaning a widespread deluge in which not only our political institutions but our personal liberties would either perish or be crippled. Thanks to the House of Lords, these evils have as yet been averted. At the last General Election the Radical and Socialist party received a notable check. The work must now be completed. The people must establish their it. It has been subse- rights once for all to be the quently asserted that no such final court of appeal when the guarantee on this occasion two Chambers disagree. Why was really given. If it were are the Socialists and their not, cadit quæstio. But if Radical allies opposed to this it was, it was not thought demand? Why, because they necessary to conceal the fact. know very well that the people However, to dismiss specu- of England are not on their lation, we must now gird side. They may support candiup our loins for the com- dates representing some popular ing struggle, and we cannot demand, behind which their too urgently impress upon all esoteric doctrines are kept in parties who would fain arrest the background. But whenthe headlong race to ruin ever these doctrines come to which the Government are be fully recognised, and their nature clearly understood, their end in itself. That end is the advocates will have little to preservation of the political hope from a popular arbitra- and social system which has tion. Now, the Government existed in England for 700 proposal to repeat its terms years, under which we have once again-is that measures grown to be the great nation passed in in three sessions of that we are, and have reared the same Parliament and three the great Empire which we times rejected by the House of rule in the interests of civilisaLords shall at once become tion. We regard the people of law without giving the people Great Britain as the natural a chance of expressing any guardians of this Constitution, opinion on the subject; and in and the Veto vested in the doing this they profess to be Upper House as the appointed advancing the cause of demo- means of securing them a free cratic self-government!! This judgment when the whole or singular inversion of what is any part of it is called in quescommonly understood by the tion. Can they be slow to term apparently proceeds on recognise as they ought the the assumption that the House sacred trust thus committed to of Commons represents the them? people at the end of four or five years as truly as it did at the beginning-an assumption rejected by Mr Asquith, but we do not see on what ground. This, then, is one of the two points on which the people of Great Britain must keep their eye steadily fixed throughout the coming contest. To rob the Lords of their Veto is to rob the people of their rights. We are certain of this, that the more all reasonably intelligent men reflect on the subject the more clearly will they see that this is the literal truth. But while concentrating their minds steadily on the one object, the maintenance, that is, of the constitutional function discharged by the the Second Chamber in the interests of popular freedom, they will, of course, at the same time recall the reasons which make it so necessary to maintain it. It is a means to an end rather than an their The second point to which closest consideration should also be devoted is the position now occupied by Mr Redmond. Mr Redmond goes to America, and comes back with a pocketful of American dollars, to be spent on securing the overthrow of the British Constitution. If the Constitution is to fall, we think we hear Englishmen, Scotsmen, and even many Irish exclaim— let it be by less ignoble means than these! Does it not make one's blood boil to think of his country being bought and sold by a petty gang of of Irish traitors who plan their conspiracies in safety beyond the Atlantic? Is that august fabric which has withstood the statecraft of kings, the violence of usurpers, and weathered storms, as Lord Cromer well said, which convulsed the whole continent of Europe, to crumble into dust at the bidding of a tenth-rate of reaction by which the demagogue? If this is to be so, then indeed we shall begin to think that what we hear of the degeneracy of the British race at the present day has some mixture truth in it. of But it is morally certain that we shall never be driven to any such reflection as this. We believe that victory awaits us, and the people must remember that in the coming battle they will be fighting for something more than their own liberties. They will be They will be fighting for the liberty of the Crown. George III. and George IV. successfully resisted the pressure put upon them from one quarter. Their descendant is now exposed to similar pressure from another. And we must take into account that when William IV. reluctantly yielded to it, though the pressure was the same, the occasion was infinitely greater. The great majority of the nation had then declared unmistakably in favour of Parliamentary Reform. It had been referred to them twice, and twice they had given the same answer: 1832, therefore, affords no sort of precedent for 1910. We see no reason to doubt that the verdict of the constituencies last January will be repeated with marked emphasis in December. That verdict was a moral victory for the Unionists. It meant that the tide had turned, and was flowing again strongly in favour of the constitutional cause. Nothing certainly has occurred since then to arrest the march Unionists gained a hundred seats. On the contrary, we should say that much has occurred to strengthen it. Mr Asquith's failure to meet the bills which have become due since then has shaken the confidence of the country in his political character. He has been like a cat running after its own tail, and never able to catch it. At the same time, his hardly veiled servitude to the party of treachery and disunion, by whom he is kept on his throne, with all the sweets of office and none of its authority, has lowered him immensely in the eyes of that still numerous class who like to see something of dignity in their rulers at all events, if they see nothing else, and who now look for it in vain. These traffickings with Irish disloyalty have always been fatal to the Government. The Lichfield House compact killed the Whigs. The Kilmainham compact ruined Mr Gladstone. Mr Asquith has thrown out a bait to the Labour party which we suppose is intended to reconcile them to the acquiescence of the Government in the Osborne judgment. It can scarcely do that, however, for before a member can be paid he must be elected. And it is these preliminary electoral expenses which are the stumbling-block. The successful candidates who on taking their seats would be entitled to a salary would be comparatively few in number. But who is to pay the expenses of the this. If the Labour Party one. thousand and one unsuccess- alone be sufficient to prove ful ones, who, if a fight is to be kept up at all, must always be run in great numbers and far in excess of those who are returned? Besides which, the diminished self-importance of the Trades Unions, which is the natural effect of the Osborne judgment, will not be compensated merely by the payment of members. It will not give them that control over the elections which is what they covet; and they are not likely, we think, to accept it as an equivalent for what they have lost. That payment of members is a bad thing in itself, and will certainly tend to lower the character of the House of Commons, needs no demonstration. But what do the Government care for that? It may be, however, that the nation will care something about it. And there are times, we know, when baits addressed only to the material interests of the country fail of their effect. Mr Gladstone sought to bribe the constituencies in 1874 by the total repeal of the Income-tax, with the result that he was turned out of office by a majority of fifty. We regard the Unionist prospects, therefore, as decidedly hopeful. For even if the party do not gain an absolute majority at the General Election, they are sure to gain seats enough to show that the reaction is still in progress, and that the future belongs to the Constitutionalists. The gain of a dozen seats, or even less, less, would success, is the return of a homogeneous Opposition, stronger than any other party in the House of Commons. Unless the Unionists obtain a large majority they are better where they are. A powerful Opposition is much better than a weak Government. Of course, where an Opposition is composed of various discordant elements, a Government with only a small majority may have little to fear from it. But that is not the case when the Opposition numbers nearly half the House, and is compact, united, and fighting in defence of great principles. With a House so constituted the House of Lords would feel that they had a large body of public opinion at their back, and it is evident that whatever might be attempted, no great constitutional change could be effected with the nation so evenly divided. We look forward, therefore, to the results of the forthcoming contest not indeed without anxiety, but without alarm. The country, we are certain, will not submit to be governed by the crack of Mr Redmond's whip, or the clink of Mr Redmond's dollars. Whatever their opinions may be about the Veto and about Home Rule, they will not dance to any such tune as that. Nor will they, we believe, continue to feel any great degree of respect for those who do. To repeat what we have already said-voters will do well to recall all that is at stake in the maintenance of the Veto, and all the evils which they were anticipating with gloom and grief two years ago, should the Radical party succeed in shaking off the check which the Constitution has lodged with the House of Lords. The situation, we repeat, has not changed. They have the same enemy to oppose; the same ruin to avert; the same contempt of religion; the same jealousy of birth, rank, and all the culture and social amenities which they carry with them; unhappily, also, the same ignorance of the past, the same wild and foolish expectations of the future, and, what is worse than all, as it includes all, the same contempt for Parliamentary government which it is too often forgotten that Mr Parnell openly professed. Redmond is Parnell's pupil, and the Prime Minister of England is the slave of Redmond. It is commonly supposed that Mr Asquith is a sharpsighted politician. If so, it is surprising that he should not have seen how completely in his speech at the National Liberal Club he gave himself away. In answer to Lord Rosebery's well-grounded fears of a single-chamber Government, he pointed to the years between 1900 and 1905 to show that we were then actually living under a singlechamber Government — when the House of Commons "was passing measures which had never been submitted to the electorate, and which at the first opportunity that electorate repudiated with unexampled emphasis." Why, is not this the very argument for a second chamber which the supporters of the Veto have urged from the beginning? That the Lords on those occasions did not use their Veto is nothing to the purpose. If they had disapproved of the Government measures they could have done so. They had the power. They could have appealed to the people, who would have welcomed their intervention. Now take the question of Home Rule. Here is a revolution to which the majority of the British people are decidedly opposed. Will they not on appeal repudiate this also with equal emphasis, and will they not be grateful for the exercise of the Veto, the suppression of which would have prevented them from doing so? The rest of Mr Asquith's speech on this particular point merely recounted what the Government choose to call their safeguards, but which have been shown over and over again to be wholly illusory,-never, perhaps, more clearly and pointedly than by Lord Lansdowne in his House |