THE TRIUMPH OF THE REFERENDUM.
'TIRE chief event of the week is the probability, destined, we hope, to harden into a certainty, that civil war in Ulster will now be avoided. Next only in importance is the triumph of the Referendum, for such we must take leave to call it. For fifteen years and more we have striven in these columns to commend the Referendum to our countrymen as the greatest of political needs, as an essen- tial Instrument of true democratic government, as, indeed, the only way of preventing the sovereignty of the people from being usurped, parodied, and degraded by its so- called representatives—men who too often usurp the forms without the substance of popular government, who indulge the licence without the temper of true democracy. Till within a very short time ago half the world would not listen to our pleas, while the other half regarded them as of evil omen, and thought the adoption of the Referendum likely to do far more harm than good to our Constitution. Now we see the astonishing sight of both parties in the State clutching at the Referendum as the only way of avoiding the unspeakable disaster to the verge of which representative institutions, unchecked by some form of popular veto, have led us. On Monday the Prime Minister asked the Legislature to agree to the Ulster problem being solved by means of a local Referendum. He was followed by the Leader of the Opposition, who urged that the solution by Referendum should not be confined to those Ulster counties which might demand it, but should be applied to the whole of the United Kingdom, which, as he noted, is only a little less con- cerned in the Home Rule question than is Ulster. Both parties in the State are thus united in a common demand—the demand for the use of the Referendum. This " un-English device," this "piece of pure Jacobinism," this" negation of all representative government," this abhorred thing with a strange name which the honest elector could not even pronounce or understand—so it was described only four years ago—has suddenly come by its own, and been recognized without a word of apology as the one expedient needful to cope with the tremendous political crisis with which we are faced. We are not going to weary our readers with personal rejoicings, but after what happened on Monday we may, at any rate, put on record our satisfaction that the Referendum has become part of the accepted policy of the Unionist Party, and that in future the Liberal Party will find it very difficult to raise the objections to it which they have been accustomed to raise. For, remember, they have hitherto told us, not merely that it was unnecessary, but that it was something which was per is evil and dangerous. The Referendum has triumphed. It has come to stay. Though we are in favour of using the Referendum, or Poll of the People, in the Ulster counties, we must, for fear of misunderstanding, note that in this particular ease it will not apparently be used in the way in which, in our opinion, it ought to be used, or rather would be most worthy of use. The proper use of the Referendum is as a popular check on legislation which has been obtained, not on its merits and because the people wanted it, but because of some log-rolling Parliamentary arrangement or some caucus intrigue or manipulation. Under the representa- tive system there is always a danger of legislation being passed, not by the will of the majority, but by the will either of a majority of a majority, or even of a minority within a party majority. In other words, Acts of Parlia-
ment are constantly passed at the bidding of some quite small minority which happens to hold the balance between parties, or, to put it yet another way, enactments are sold in order to keep a particular group of statesmen in office.
The Welsh Church Bill is a case in point. The majority of the people of this country are opposed to the dis- endowment and disestablishment of the Welsh Church, but Mr. Asquith could not keep in office without the vote of the Welsh Nonconformists and that section of the English Nonconformists who are with them in this matter. Therefore this body of men has had to be placated by this particular legislative act. But if the will of the nation is to prevail, legislation obtained in this way ought to be submitted to the popular vote. We ought to ascertain whether it is really the wish of the people that the State should be secularized in that part of the United Kingdom called Wales, plus the English county of Monmouth. In truth, the veto power is required in every Constitution to mitigate what Walt Whitman called "the insolence of elected persons," and the only hands strong enough anil resprsisible enough to exercise such power are those of the people themselves through a direct vote. That is the teaching of democracy in Switzerland and in America.
The Poll of the People has, we hold, been a failure only when used for non-legislative purposes. It has always been a success when used as a check upon legislatioe, whether in America or in Switzerland. By this we do not mean that all the Bills vetoed by the people have been bad Bills, but that the essential object of democracy has been gained. The people have not seen laws passed to which they objected. The Referendum may not have given them the best laws, but it has given them the laws they wanted, and not the laws they did not want. That is sufficient for those who, like ourselves, are not Jacobins but democrats, and are wil]iog to bow to the will of the people when that will is made clear. But to make the will of the people clear and operative a definite, specific question must be put to them, and not some abstraction upon which no reasonable man can give the answer, " Yes " or "No." It is futile to ask the ordinary man whether he is in favour, say, of Home Rule or against it, for he very naturally counters that question by saying : "I cannot answer till you tell me what you mean by Home Rule." But though the Referendum is inapplicable to an abstract question of this kind, any man can answer " Yes " or " No " to the question : "Do you want the Bill which has just passed through Parliament, entitled 'A Bill, to be the law of the land or not ? " That is a fact upon which any man can have an opinion, just as he can have an opinion, right or wrong, as to whether he wants Mr. Blank to be Member for the Blank division of Blankshire. This distinction between abstract questions and specific questions may seem tiresome to our readers, but it is, we are convinced, absolutely essential to the safe working of the Referendum that it shall be borne in mind. The question put to the electors must always be the specific question whether they want this or that Bill, and not whether they want an abstraction. For example, we should wholly object to asking the nation in the abstract whether they desire universal military service. We should, however, have no objection whatever, but should approve of their being asked in regard to a specific Bill for carrying out the policy of National Service : "Do you wish this Bill, already passed by Parliament, to become law ? " That is what happens in Switzerland, and that is what happens nine times out of ten in America. when a Poll of the People is taken. Happily the question which we now hope will be put to the Ulster counties is a specific, not an abstract question. It is "Will you go under the provisions of this Bill, or will you not ? " That is : "Will you veto the Bill, or accept it for the county in which you live ?" We have thought it necessary to deal at length with this point, since if it is not carefully considered some people might imagine that here was a precedent for an abstract question being referred to the voters, which would involve a breach of the principle which we have always advocated—namely, that the Referendum must be used as a power of veto lodged in the hands of the people and not for miscel- laneous purposes. Here we should like to point out once again how the Referendum, if adopted as part of our Constitution, will free us from the necessity of establishing some brand-new Second Chamber of doubtful authority— will get us out of the difficulty of setting up an institution which will either be so weak as to be no check on the House of Commons, or else so strong that the House of Commons will not tolerate its existence. The Referendum will give us the check which we desire to see established over the House of Commons, and yet provide a check to which it cannot have the " face " to object, for even that arrogant body admits in theory that the nation is its master. To be specific, what we desire is to leave the Constitu- tion as it is, except for establishing the rule that, in case of a deadlock between the two Houses over any legislative enactment, that enactment shall be referred to a Poll of the People in the form in which the House of Commons desires it to be placed before the nation. If a majority. of the people voting are in favour of the Act— that is, in favour of the Commons' decision and against the Lords' decision—it should become law forthwith. If, on the contrary, the majority are against the Commons' decision, then of course the Bill would fail. This entirely meets the objection that the Commons cannot tolerate the House of Lords dissolving their Assembly by demanding a General Election on a disputed measure. In short, it gives no fresh power to the Lords, but puts the veto power where it should be—in the bands of the people.
All the Lords would have power to do would be to invoke an appeal to the master if they regarded it as necessary. At the same time, and in order to meet a party objection, a minority of the Commons might be given the right to demand a Referendum when what Radical extremists consider so odious and ominous a thing as an agreement between the two Houses takes place. If the Referendum were brought into play for this purpose, there would be no need to repeal the Parliament Act. It would, as the Americans say, be "side-tracked." As for the House of Lords, we should leave it as it is, except that when a Peer succeeded by hereditary right to a peerage he should not be able to obtain his writ, as he does now, merely by submitting to the Lord Chancellor his mother's marriage certificate and his birth certificate to show that he is legitimate and the eldest son. We would in addition require proof that he was qualified, by having performed acts of public service, to receive the writ to sit in Parliament. We would make such acts of public service real, but also wide. It would not be in the least difficult to draw up a list of qualifications, as, for example, that a Peer should have sat in the House of Com- mons or in a County Council, or served in the Army, Navy. Civil Service, or Diplomatic Service, or, again, achieved certain distinctions in law, science, or the arts. To con- vince those who think it would be impracticable to render a schedule of qualifications we may note the fact that the thing is already done in Italy. The King can only make Senators of men whopossess certainqualifications in virtue of public service which are enumerated in the Constitution.
The effect of this plan would be to weed the House of Lords of its weak members. It is true that those weak members now practically never attend, but the possibility of their presence is a cause of scandal which had much better be removed. The hereditary element plus public service would, we believe, be an ideal foundation for a Second Chamber, for we thoroughly object to the principle of repeating popular election. To parody what one of Stevenson s characters says in The Wrong Box, "one man drunk with platform rhetoric, very good business; two drunk men, all my eye." In our opinion, it is an enormous advantage to have some men in the Legislature who owe their position to another cause than having managed to get a party caucus to nominate them, and who feel that they are not beholden to somebody else for their power and are not bound to defer to the views of those who sent them to Parliament. This is a feeling which is seldom absent from the mind of the representative person. To say this is not to condemn the representative system in foto' but merely to point out one of its drawbacks. A
man who owed his position to the fact of birth plus public service would make an ideal trustee for the purposes of a Second Chamber. His feeling would be : "I was put here to see that the people have a chance of being consulted on doubtful matters. I do not owe my position to any
outside influence, and nobody can say that I got it by false pretences and am deceiving my party, and so forth. I am a trustee for the nation, and can act on the true principles of trusteeship." A House of Lords such as we have sketched, plus the Referendum, would be strong enough to see that the people's rights were maintained, and yet not so strong as to involve itself in constant conflicts with the House of Commons. We know the arguments for a strong Second Chamber, and think it quite possible that they are arguments which ought to prevail in founding a new Constitution. But we have not a new Constitu- tion but an old one to think about, and in the circum- stances what we propose is, we believe, not only most likely to prevail, but on the whole the best compromise. One of the arguments in its favour will, we think, appeal to most reasonable men. For good or ill, we have an aristo- cracy, and in the main a very satisfactory one as well as a very rich one. We desire to harness these men of leisure, of birth, of wealth, and of tradition to the service of the State, and this we can best do by maintaining the House of Lords and its character. We confess that we look with horror upon a mere titular aristocracy, but this we shall have if we abolish the House of Lords. The Rouse of Lords, properly understood, is a useful instrument for making the leisured classes work for the State.
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