TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GREAT CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATE.
TO those who will pore,—not without consequences plea- santer for oculists than for eyes,—over the long and close columns of the great Constitutional debate, there will at least accrue some reward for their toil. A few conclusions appear to us to stand out very distinctly, even after all that has been effectually said on either side has been given its full weight. In the first place, it will be seen that the constitutional contention that it lies with the Crown to distribute as it chooses the troops granted to the Crown, under such limitations as Parliament has annexed to the grant, is not really disputed by any one. The importance of this prerogative lies in this,—that when the troops receive an order from the proper officers of the Crown, it shall not lie with them to say that to obey that order would be infringing the conditions annexed by Par- liament. As it is the prerogative of the Crown to give the order, it is the duty of the Army to obey, without raising any political issue. A great deal of the laborious effort spent in showing that the Crown really has this prerogative was there- fore quite irrelevant. Of course it has. Of course the difficulty raised as to the originally proposed 55th Clause in the Indian Government Act of 1858, for which a substitute was subse- quently found in the Home of Lords, turned on this point. That clause, as originally proposed, rendered it illegal for her Majesty to order her Indian troops beyond the frontiers of India, " ex- cept for repelling actual invasion or other sudden and urgent necessity." To this it was objected that the Crown had always had the prerogative of making peace or war, and that it had always had the same prerogative for moving troops for the purposes of making peace or war ; and that to render this action of the Crown's intrinsically illegal, was not consistent with the traditions of Parliament or the safety of the Empire ; but, it was added, that Parliament should keep its check over the Crown in the old fashion, by insisting on the pre- liminary right of voting the exact numbers of the British Army and the supplies for it ; by forbidding the Crown to bring into any dependency or colony of the Empire troops not sanctioned for that service, either by Parliament or by the legislature of the particular dependency or colony, when it had the powers granted it for such a purpose ; by asserting the right of Parliament to control the Indian policy of the Government ; and finally, by requiring the pre- vious assent of Parliament to the use of the revenues of India for the payment of any military force employed outside the Indian frontier, unless it were a case of " sudden and urgent necessity," in which case the consent of Parliament must be asked and obtained as soon as possible. All this is as clear as day. No one denies that when the Crown gave the order to go to Malta, the troops were bound to obey ; and that no one but the Crown could give the order. But what is traversed is, first, the constitutional right of the Crown to give such an order at all without asking the assent of Parlia- ment, inasmuch as it increased the forces at its disposal within a dependency for which Parliament, and not the Government of India, provides the means of defence ; next, the constitutional right to provide even temporarily, without Parliamentary assent, for the payment of those forces out of the Indian revenue, without such an emergency as some of the Ministers plead, and others of them have all but implicitly disclaimed ; and lastly, the political right to initiate a most important policy, teeming with the largest consequences, on which the most eminent statesmen were known to be profoundly divided, without giving Parliament the opportunity of pronouncing its opinion upon that policy. All that the Government can be said to have effected by their arguments is this,—to have thrown a certain very light shadow of doubt on the question whether the prohibition contained in the Bill of Rights against increasing the standing Army by troops not either directly, or indirectly through other legitimate Legislatures, sanctioned by Parliament, really was intended to apply beyond the United Kingdom ; and next, to have shown, as the Solicitor-General did, that as regards the Indian Government Act, it is legal, and not illegal, to use the revenues of India provisionally for the payment of troops beyond the frontier, " for preventing or repelling actual invasion of her Majesty's Indian possessions, or under other sudden and urgent necessity." This was quite the maximum which the Government succeeded in establishing. Those who will read carefully Mr. Herschell's remarkable legal disquisition will see, we think, the strongest reason to believe that even if it had been lawful to send Indian troops into Abyssinia or China without the sanction of Parliament,—that did not at all cover the case of sending them into a dependency of the British Empire without such sanction, since all the dependencies for which Parliament, or some other Legislature empowered by. Parliament, provides the defences, is in all probability secured by the Bill of Rights against the invasion of an extra-Parlia- mentary army ; so that though we admit a shade of doubt on the matter, we believe that the case of the Opposition on this point is far stronger than the case of the Government. The Solicitor-General's point was better established. If a case of " sudden and urgent necessity " existed, it clearly was lawful to use the Indian revenues provisionally without the sanction of Parliament ; but that sanction should have been sought on the first possible day, and the necessity should have been pleaded and regretted. On the third point the Government not only made no case, but carefully and even anxiously ignored it. It was pressed upon them from all sides that as regarded the policy of the measure, a stronger case for consulting Parlia- ment could hardly be imagined. Mr. Childers showed how strong a protest Lord Salisbury himself had made against turning India into a monster barracks for supplementing our European Army. He showed how dangerous the highest authorities had pronounced the policy of bringing Native regiments over to serve with Europeans on the eve of a war, and how carefully the question had been discussed before a Committee of the House of Commons. And Mr. Forster in his speech put with the greatest breadth and force the large issues which this new policy opens up ; the great change which will come over our Foreign policy in Europe, and the policy of European States towards us, if we thus deliberately enter the field as a Power depending as much on our military as on our naval strength; the great change which will come over our policy towards India, and the views with which the races of India will regard our Government, if we begin to rely on them for the propping-up of English influence in Europe ; and finally, the great changes which will come over the Indian Administration, if one of the purposes which in future it is compelled to regard as of first-rate significance is the purpose of keeping a large surplus force ready for disposal in Europe, and keeping the Indian peoples in the humour that will beat admit of our sparing such a force. All this was put before the House with admirable strength by Mr. Forster, and there was not a syllable, not a suggestion of reply. The Government never denied that they had struck a political coup de'tat in acting as they did, without asking Parliamentary advice. They only even endeavoured to prove that it was not unconstitutional to bring Indian troops to Malta without Parliamentary sanction, and failed to render this really probable, though they did throw some shadow of doubt on the illegality of the step,—and succeeded in proving that if there really was a tremendous emergency, it was not illegal to use the Indian revenues provisionally without the sanction of Parliament for the payment of troops outside the Indian frontier ; but some of them explicitly asserted, and some of them implicitly denied,—or at least, spoke in a way that must throw the greatest doubt on the nature of their own opinion,—that such an emergency really existed.
Still, the defeat of the Liberals was crushing, and all the more crushing for the contempt with which the most impressive and weighty part of their argument was treated. Sir Stafford Northcote took his usual line, minimising the meaning and importance of everything that had happened. In the Abyssinian case, when the Government was in a minority, he was repentant. But with a majority at his back, he was only frigidly surprised at all the pother. As for the Constitutional control of the House of Commons, did any one doubt it g Who supposed for a moment that the Queen would use her prerogative dangerously f As for Parliament, it is supreme. The controversies of the old days are obsolete. What was the difference practically between asking the House to vote the money after the expense was incurred, and asking it to vote the money before the expense was incurred ? Any- how, without their voting the money, the policy could not go on,—so what were they afraid of ? ' Foolish, excitable creatures,'—he seemed to say to the Liberals,—' put ice to your heads; get a good night's rest ; take some alterative or soda-water, and then consider the matter again. It is all a fuss about nothing ; all a mare's-nest. No one challenges Parliament. It is omnipotent. All we ask is that you should be just as content with endorsing a policy we have initiated, as with initiating a policy which we endorse. And what can you want better ? So long as you are asked to write your name at the back of the bill, what matters it whether it is drawn in our favour or in yours I' That has been the Chancellor of the Exchequer's line throughout the whole of these proceedings. He has affected never to be able to see what all the trouble was about, and really we consider that no tactics could be more successful. Lord Carnarvon resigns, and Sir Stafford Northcote wonders, and sings a little lullaby to the House of Commons. Lord Derby resigns, and Sir Stafford Northcote hardly raises his eyebrows. Parliament is about to separate, and he assures them they may go in peace ; there is no emergency, no new or urgent feature in the case. The day after, it appears that a new and great stroke of policy has been initiated, for which the sanction of Parliament, except " under sudden and urgent necessity," is admitted on all sides to be requisite. Parliament reassembles, and he explains the " sudden and urgent necessity " as a matter chiefly concern- ing the cost of transport. His comrades talk a very different language, and talk of deep secrets and hair-breadth escapes, such as might have been supposed to whiten the hair of all the Cabinet. Sir Stafford Northcote listens to all this exciting phraseology, but echoes not a word of it. He is challenged as to his reasons for not consulting Parliament on the new policy, in a time which he had described as hopeful, and he simply ignores the challenge. He is like Sir Joshua Reynolds, as described by Goldsmith,—" When they talked of their Raffaels, Correggios, and stuff, he shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff." He heard Mr. Cross's speech, but he never endorsed a word of it. He heard Mr. Forster pressing for information, but he put it all aside. And really he could not have done better. The Members of the Government act like the different partners in a solicitors' firm ; they each take a different class of clients. Mr. Cross looks after those who do not like to trust Government, unless there be real urgency. Sir Stafford Northcote accounts for those super- fine politicians who like to have constitutional crises pooh- poohed, and to hear that all dangers to liberty are as obsolete as the megatherium. The two lines are not very consistent. But then, the human heart is not very consistent ; and they each of them provide what one class of minds most easily assimi- lates. But we cannot say we like this division of labour. If Mr. Cross is right, Sir Stafford Northcote is acting a part ; and if Sir Stafford Northcote is right, Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Cross are acting a part. And both the one section and the other must be acting parts, in tacitly ignoring the line of their colleagues, and getting credit both for courageously taking up tremendous responsi- bilities under great emergencies,—and also for doing nothing in particular which it ought to interest any reasonable Englishman to challenge, in such a time and such a country as our own.
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