TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE POSSIBILITIES OF COMPROMISE.
WE have ourselves never felt able to cherish any very strong hopes of the possibilities of compromise. In our opinion the determination of the Government not to risk loss of office owing to a quarrel with either of the two parties which constitute their composite majority renders any real concession impossible. As the Party hacks put it, compromise means for the Ministry political suicide. Therefore it has always seemed to us certain that the Prime Minister, with the full consent of his colleagues, we are sure, will insist upon his pound of flesh, his whole pound of flesh, and nothing but his pound of flesh. He is Shylock rnalgrg lui. But though we feel bound to be pessimistic in this respect we need hardly say that we welcome whole-heartedly all efforts for securing a compromise such as were made by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his speech on Wednesday last. If the Government and the majority of the House of Commons and the Liberal Party were in a mood to listen to reason, or if the nation, as a whole, were not in a state of mind so strangely apathetic—drugged, it would seem, partly by the tremendous wave of prosperity which is now making men think far more of commerce than of the Constitution and partly by the festivities of a ceremonial year—one would feel certain that such arguments as the Archbishop used must have their effect. Unfortunately, however, we see no sign that they are having any effect what- ever. It is idle to conceal the fact that, however much the Liberal Party is divided on other points, it is absolutely united in regard to the pound of flesh. Not a single Liberal, official or unofficial, exhibits any indication of wavering there. Even the Lord Chancellor, though he spoke, as he always does, in a moderate and conciliatory spirit, would not concede an iota in the essentials. We gather from him that the fishes will ultimately be allowed some little choice as to the ingredients of the sauce in which they are to be cooked ; but when they point to the fact that they do not wish to be cooked at all, they are sternly reminded, even by so humane a politician as Lord Loreburn, that they wander from the point. As far as cooking is concerned, their doom is irre- vocable, and it is most unbecoming of them to express any dislike of the process.
But even if no concession worth having can be obtained, it is obviously the business of reasonable men to suggest concessions and to let the responsibility of rejecting them rest upon the Government. Some day the nation will be in a different and a wiser mood than it is to-day, and then it will remember with regret that these concessions were refused. No doubt, in a sense, it will then be too late, but nevertheless such regret need not be altogether infructuous. It will help to stimulate the reaction which must come, and also to give driving force to the best remedy to the Parlia- ment Bill which will still remain open—the remedy of the Referendum. An interesting, if not very important, form of concession, and one which, it seems to us, the Govern- ment could quite well make, even without violating the prin- ciples of Shylock, is suggested in Wednesday's Morning rest. Lord Midleton, in his very able speech, outlined the course which the majority of the House of Lords will take when the Parliament Bill gets into Committee after the Corona- tion. The essential combat, Lord Midleton indicated, will take place on the Constitutional guarantees which the Peers will endeavour to insist on in Committee. They will propose to exempt from the operation of the Parliament Bill any Bills which apply to the Crown and the succession thereto, and to the creation of separate legislatures for different parts of the United Kingdom, and will endeavour in the case of Money Bills to set up a special body to decide what are and what are not Money Bills instead of leaving it to the Speaker, as now proposed. The writer in the Morning Post continues as follows :— " It is on the Constitutional questions, however, that the principal controversy will arise. If the Government is determined to have the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, then un- doubtedly there is a strong feeling among the Unionist Party outside Parliament that the Peers should stick to their amend- ment and take the consequences, even if they mean another General Election. If, on the other hand, Ministers give way on the question of the Crown and the succession to the Throne the Lords would probably bow to force majeure ; with declara- tions in both Houses by the Leaders of the Opposition that the Veto Bill is regarded by them as a merely temporary measure to be repealed as soon as the Unionist Party comes into power; with, in its place, a scheme for once more placing the govern- ment of the country on a bi-cameral basis. It may, we think, be taken for granted that when the Veto Bill reaches the Committee stage no time will be wasted on mere amendments of form. There will be concentration on the points just men- tioned, and the discussions will not last beyond two or three nights."
We need hardly say that this is a solution to which we should agree, even though it does not in any sense meet the general Unionist objections to Single-Chamber Government. We do not imagine that any Liberal Govern- ment will ever want to alter by statute the prerogatives of the Crown or to interfere with the Act of Settlement or any other statutes governing the succession. The tendency of the Liberals and Radicals is rather to exalt the powers of the prerogative, since in these days they are wholly exercised by the Ministry. Again, no one wishes to alter the succession or to make anyone else than " the heirs of the body of the Electress Sophia," who are Protestants, capable of sitting on the Throne. So long as the Liberals have Single-Chamber Government in the matter of finance and of all ordinary legislation they must surely be satisfied. Even they will not insist that the Monarchy ought to be capable of being abolished or the succession changed by the closured and guillotined Act of a Single Chamber. If, however, this concession is made in a matter which concerns a field where legislation is not likely to take place, we trust that the Unionists will make their amendment to the Bill in a thoroughly democratic form. We suggest that they should ask, not that the Con- stitutional status quo shall remain in the two cases named, but instead that no Bill concerned with these matters shall become operative until a poll of the people has been taken thereon, and a majority obtained for the Bill. Such an amendment would be clearly and sincerely democratic, and not open to the appeal to prejudice—namely, that the Lords were claiming for themselves special rights in regard t) the Crown. It would make the people, not the Peers, the guardians of the Throne. It would also have the very great advantage of introducing the Referendum into the Constitution, though only in that very restricted and special form to which the Prime Minister has already told us he sees no absolute and essential objection.
Here, we may remark, is an example and proof of what we urged a month ago in these columns in regard to Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Referendum Bill. We sug- gested that instead of Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Bill being postponed indefinitely the House of Lords should take up the non-contentious and administrative part of the Bill and create, so far as they could create, the machinery by which a poll of the people is to be taken. In other words, what we wanted them to do was to leave aside for the moment the question of when a Referendum should be put into operation, and to put into shape a well- considered measure which should, in effect, say : " If the Legislature ever determines upon holding a poll of the people, this is how it can and should be held." By doing this the Peers could have got ready to hand all the machinery for taking a Referendum. Unfortunately, as we think, our advice was not listened to or acted upon. But even now, though late, it is not too late. Once more we suggest, then, that the Peers should read Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Bill a second time and go into Committee. They then might strike out of the Bill, for the present, all but the administrative portions and refer those portions to a Select Committee, which could thresh out the details for putting a poll of the people into operation. There is no very great difficulty in the matter, and a committee of the Lords, in which peers who had been members of the House of Commons would be strongly represented, could in a very short time produce a working measure, introduced by a. first clause, declaring that " if Parliament should at any future time refer a measure to a poll of the people, such poll should be taken in the manner following." An administrative Act of this kind could with the greatest ease be attached as an amendment exempting Bills affecting the prerogative of the Crown or the succession to the Throne from the provisions of the Parliament Bill.
While we are dealing with the subject of compromise and concession we have one more suggestion to make. As our readers know, we support Lord Lansdowne's Bill for the reconstitution of the House cf Lords. Unfortunately; however, it seems that on the one hand the Government are not inclined to take it up, and on the other that it will meet with the opposition of a very large number of Peers. In this case it would seem that the Bill must be lost altogether. That would be a great pity. Might it not be possible to take from it and pass that portion which is, in fact, agreed to by almost all reformers—namely, the qualification proposals ? What we suggest is that it should be enacted that the Writ of Summons in future should not be issued to any peer who does not possess one of the quali- fications set forth in the schedule to Lord Lansdowne's Bill. The effect of this would be that in future no one would sit in the House of Lords unless he was in the doulile position of being a peer by hereditary right and of having also proved his capacity to legislate by having performed some of the public services set forth in the schedule. The qualifications, be it remembered, are not of a very drastic kind, and would not, except in a very few cases, keep out peers likely to do useful work. It may be noted also that this proposal would not limit the prerogative of the Crown in regard to the peers. Newly created peers would be allowed to sit on the ground that the creation of a new patent must be considered as a qualification. We must assume that the Prime Minister never recommends a man for a peerage unless he has the required qualifications. A new peer does not, at any rate, sit merely because he is the son of his father, but because persons presumed to be competent to judge of his qualifica- tions have recommended him to the Crown as a member of the Upper House of the Legislature. It is true that the danger of the House of Lords being swamped would still remain, but that danger is with us now, and therefore the position here would not be worse than it is at present.
The net result of our proposal if carried out would be that the House of Lords would be purged of those peers who have no claim to legislate except that they are the sons of their fathers. The hereditary principle would be preserved, but with the corrective of public service. In addition, while the House of Lords would be reduced in numbers, the proportion of Liberal peers would be distinctly higher than now. Almost all the Liberal peers in the present House are either peers who have been created by the Liberals or else peers who have held office of some kind. And here we may remark that in one or two ways the qualifications might be usefully increased. As Lord Haldane pointed out, peers who are or were presidents or chairmen of Territorial associations might be regarded as qualified. We fully admit that most reformers will regard our proposal as insufficient. It may be pointed out, however, that it would not in the least prevent further reforms in the future. Our scheme can perfectly well be regarded as an interim reform, subject to improvement and development at a later date.
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