M R. GERALD BALFOUR has the natural dislike of every competent
Minister to the introduction of important Bills under the Ten Minutes Rule. But a reason which he does not give for this dislike has far greater force than the reason he does give. " Without adequate explanation and defence," he said on Tuesday, " prejudices are apt to take root and flourish which. possibly in the light of fuller discussion at the time might never have been formed." In the present case nothing of the kind has happened. The objections to the Unemployed Workmen Bill are so obvious, and to our thinking so unanswerable, that no amount of discussion is likely to affect them. The harm that has been done by its introduction under the Ten Minutes Rule is that an interval has been secured in which Members may remind themselves, or be reminded by others, of the obligations of party loyalty. We question whether there are ten Unionist. Members outside the Government who do not regard both the principle on which the Bill is founded, and the machinery devised for its execution, as alike mis- chievous. If its provisions had been subjected to a really full discussion when it was first introduced, this honest dis- like would have had a chance of coming to the surface. Men would have begun by calling the Bill names, and they might have been loth to eat their words when the division-bell rang. The Ten Minutes Rule prevents them from committing themselves in this way. It is only decent to withhold your condemnation of a Bill until you have heard what the Minister in charge of it has to say in its behalf. By the time that you have heard this, other considerations come into play. No doubt there is a great deal to be said against the proposal. It gives the sanction of Parliament to a very dangerous principle, and it does this on the motion of a Government and a party who are specially bound to resist measures of this character. But the rejection of the Bill by Unionist votes will mean the overthrow of the Government which introduced it, and its reintroduction and passing by their Liberal successors. Consequently the choice does not lie between having the Bill and not having it, but between having it at the hands of our own people and at the hands of the Opposition.'
When the case is stated in this way, there is reason to fear that a good number of Unionists will keep their own party in office even though it involves voting for a measure which down to yesterday that party was pledged to resist. Their excuse will be that though it is a pity that bad• things should have to be done, it is better that bad things should be done by good people than by bad people. Con- servative dislike to national workshops is as great as ever ; but since they are certain to be set up, they will do less harm if they are set up by Mr. Balfour than if the task is handed. over to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Or supposing them to be equally mischievous whichever of the two is their author, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman will do other mischievous things which Mr. Balfour will not. When this reasoning is set out in full it seems as though it could take in no one It is capable of being applied to. 9,v9ry case as it arises, and is consequently. are equally willing to carry out their own principles Or those of their opponents, the end for which political parties exist disappears. Unfortunately, the reasoning never is set out in full. The party which has recourse to it is most careful to protest that what it is doing is purely exceptional.
It mild not be treated as ,a precedent. On the contrary, it will stand, alone, without, parallel or likeness,an isolated chapter in a volume of uniformly beneficial legislation. this way the objections raised by the consistent minority on their, own side are disposed of without difficulty. The Bill has all the faults which are alleged against it, and if it were to be followed by other Bills of the like nature, no. censure could be too strong for it. But when it is meant to stand alone, to have no successor, to be really that thing so often talked of and so seldom met with—the exception which proves the rule—there is no need for the tenderest conscience to be troubled. How can a legislator's work be made more aareeable than by a compromise which enables, him to °declare in private that the Bill is a thoroughly bad Bill, and in public that it is absolutely necessary to pass it ? And if it should become expedient a year or two later to pass another Bill of the same kind, it will be so convenient to forget all about the peculiar character of the present Bill, and to remember only that, as the principle has already been conceded, there can be no harm in carrying it just a little further.
It is only just, however, to admit that Mr. Gerald Balfour has not deceived himself by any arguments of this sort. He is not at all blind to the far-reaching con- sequences of his own Bill. His defence is that to say that " respectable persons out of employment through no fault of their own, but simply by reason of the fluctua- tions in our industrial system," must not look to the community to provide them with work is not " practical politics." There is "a growing feeling" that they "should have some prospect before them other than the workhouse or the Guardians' relief yard," and this feeling " must be reckoned. with." Mr. Gerald Balfour evidently thinks that it is in itself a reasonable feeling, and so far he justifies his own action in regard to the Bill. He has a.
perfect right to introduce a Socialist Bill, provided that he does not disguise its character. In his speech of Tuesday he kept quite clear of this fault. He defended a State provision of work for the unemployed not based on the plea of destitution, or making those who avail them- selves of it paupers, on the score that if the principle is not recognised to the extent contemplated in the Bill, it will hereafter be made the foundation of a much larger Bill. Socialists up to a point we must be ; the only question which remains undecided is where that point is to be fixed. We see no reason to suppose that Mr. Gerald Balfour is right in treating the provision of national workshops as inevitable. At all events, we should like to have seen the question thoroughly argued. out, and the objections to their creation fully stated both in Parliament and in the country. If it had been left to some future Government to bring in the. present Bill, and to some future Opposition to set put the case against it, this advantage would have been secured.
As it is, the Bill will be defended by those who ought to have been its critics, and Socialism will lose half its terrors because it is preached by Conservative politicians angling for working-class votes. We are asked to welcome this way of settling the question on the ground that, as the work is to be done by Conservatives, they can be trusted to insert the necessary safeguards. We agree with Mr. Bond that measures which have to be surrounded with safeguards are usually best left alone. In the end the principle works and the safeguards do not. At any rate, if there is to be legislation of this kind, we prefer to see the principle and the safeguards provided by different hands. Mr. Gerald Balfour would have been better employed in proposing amendments to an Unemployed Workmen Bill introduced by the Radicals than in vainly trying to make a Bill of his own harmless.
The scheme it is proposed to set on foot is sufficiently condemned by its author's own account of it. It is described as " attackinc, the problem from above." It is to deal with classes fl and E in Mr. Charles Booth's classification,—that is, with regular workers at low wages and regular workers at standard rates of payment. Classes A, B, and C, including the hopelessly unemployed . and those having casual or intermittent employmentwaga. left to the Poor Law Guardians, and Mr. Gerald Balfoui • appears to hope that the two lowest of these three classes will be subjected to "more drastic treatment." On what he bases this expectation he does not say, and, judging from recent experience, we should greatly doubt whether there is any foundation for it. Our own belief is that the outcome of the Bill will be the universal provision of out- door relief, for the lower classes of the unemployed by the Guardians, and for the upper classes of the unemployed by the authorities created by the Bill. To make an arbitrary distinction between these classes—to say that A, B, and C shall become paupers by receiving relief, while D and E shall receive relief and not become paupers—will be so plainly unjust that in a very short time the whole body of the unemployed, skilled and unskilled, will be regarded as equally working men with those who are receiving wages from private employers. Nor will this be the only way in which the Bill will lower classes D and E to the level of classes A, B, and C. The work given to all five classes must necessarily be very much the same, and it must be more or less agricultural. But the lowest class of the unemployed will be familiar with agricultural labour—so far as they are familiar with any labour at all—whereas the skilled workman will be able to make nothing of it. When he comes to digging, he will take a day to do what the labourer out of a job will do in a couple of hours. This is how the Government propose to protect the artisan against the loss of self-respect that accompanies conscious inefficiency.
THE NEW ENCYCLICAL.
Previous page
