THE PRIME MINISTER AND LORD CURZON. D ITRING the past, week
the newspapers have been filled with arguments as to whether Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman ought or ought not to have refused to make Lord Curzon a Peer of Parliament. Curiously enough, however, little or nothing has been said in the course of the controversy upon what we venture to think is the essential point,—that is, the public interest. Defenders of the Prime Minister have given us all sorts of reasons to justify his refusal to send Lord Curzon to the House of Lords, but it does not seem to have occurred to any of them to look at the problem in the light of whether it would or would not be for the good of the Empire to have a man of Lord Curzon's great experience of Indian affairs in Parliament. We confess that to those who, like ourselves, stand outside the charmed circle of party politics it seems as if what the Prime Minister should have said to himself in regard to the whole question was : "Will it be to the wider public interest to* have Lord Curzon in Parliament ? " If he felt constrained to answer that question in the affirmative, as we believe any impartial man must answer it, then surely he would have gone on to say : "In that case no pedantic reasons con- nected with party feeling or party etiquette shall prevent me from acceding to Lord Curzon's very natural and reasonable request to go to the House of Lords."
Let us look at the matter somewhat more in detail, and. deal specifically with the arguments that are put forward to defend the Prime Minister for his action, or rather want of action. The first argument is that Lord Curzon is a member of the Opposition, and that it is not the business of Prime Ministers to create peerages in favour of those who are on the opposite side in politics. No doubt that is the rule, and no doubt also in ordinary Circumstances members of the Opposition would feel shy of receiving honours from their political enemies. There have, however, always been exceptions to this rule. For example, during Mr. Balfour's Ministry Sir Edward Grey was, if we remember rightly, made a Privy Councillor, though Privy Councillorships are quite as political in their complexion as peerages. The fact that Lord Curzon had been doing non-party work in India as Viceroy, and that since his return, partly owing to ill-health, and partly to other causes, he has made no speeches of a partisan character, rendered it also specially easy for the Prime Minister to make his case one of the exceptions to w hich we have alluded. If, however, the Prime Minister had been inclined to take the pedantic view that new peerages ought as a rule to be confined to members of the party in power, he might easily have marked the exceptional character of his action by the manner in which the public announce- ment of the honour was issued. As a matter of fact, this could have been accomplished with peculiar ease in Lord Curzon's case, for Lord Curzon is the eldest son of a Peer of Great Britain. As is well known, a Peer's eldest son can be sent to the House of Lords without the grant of anew peerage. The King merely summons him to the Peers in the lifetime of his father in the name of one of his father's baronies, visc,ounties, earldoms, or marquisates. This fact meets another argument which might con- ceivably be put forward in defence of Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman,—the argument that the King is unwilling to, make more than a certain number of peerages in any one year. In view of this circumstance, it can be argued from a party point of view that the strictly limited number of peerages ought to be kept solely for members of the party, and not shared with their opponents. The calling up of a Peer to the Lords in his father's lifetime does not, how- ever, increase the number of peerages, and therefore this contention does not apply. No Liberal aspirant to hereditary honours would have had to go without a peerage because Lord Curzon was sent to the Lords.
Another argument which has been used in the Press to excuse the Prime Minister strikes us as even weaker than those just named. It runs somewhat as follows :—" Why should Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman be asked to do what Mr. Balfour would not do, or at any rate did not do ? Mr. Balfour's party appointed Lord Curzon to the Viceroyalty. When, then, Lord Curzon resigned it was Mr. Balfour, if any one, who should have made him a Peer." Those who use this argument forget that by the time Lord Curzon had returned to England Mr. Balfour was out of office, and the present Government were in possession of the seals. But apart from this fact, there is another reason why Lord Curzon did not receive a summons to the House of Lords from the leader of his own party. Lord Curzon when he first got back was most anxious, and rightly anxious in our opinion, to return to the House of Commons. He refused a peerage of the United Kingdom when he was made Viceroy, but took instead an Irish peerage, on the ground that he desired to return to the Commons when his period of Indian service was over. This desire to be in the Lower House continued until a very short time ago, when Lord Curzon found that the state of his health precluded the notion of his being able to undergo safely the strain of work in the Commons. We are, of course, well aware that it will be said that though Lord Curzon may have wished when he first got back to England to -return to the Commons, he could not, even had his desire been different, have asked for a peerage from Mr. Balfour because of the friction between them over the incidents which led to Lord Curzon's resignation of the Viceroyalty. That Mr. Balfour would have taken so petty a revenge upon Lord Curzon as to exclude him from the Peers because he had failed to agree with the Cabinet on the question of Lord Kitchener's demands in regard to the Military Member of Council we cannot admit for a moment. But even granted for the purpose of argument that Mr. Balfour bad shown such pettiness of mind, that certainly would not excuse the present Prime Minister deciding the question of Lord Curzon's peerage, not on the merits, but on the narrowest party grounds. If Mr. Balfour had shown pettiness, Sir Henry. Campbell-Bannerman had not the less but the more reason for maintaining a sounder position. In a word, for a Prime Minister who took, as a British Prime Minister unquestionably ought to take, a large view of his office and responsibilities, the personal estrangement between Mr. Balfour and Lord Curzon, if there was one, should have been a ground for, not an obstacle to, granting Lord Curzon's request to be sent to the House of Lords. Surely the Prime Minister should have said : "I am not going to allow a matter of personal pique to prevent Parliament enjoying the fruits of Lord .Curzon's Indian experience. The fact that my predecessor would not have been willing to do his duty in this respect, if it is a fact, is no reason for my keeping a Unionist ex-Viceroy out of the House of Lords. I am the Prime Minister of the British Empire, and not merely the opponent of the Unionist Party.' As we have said, however, the con- siderations just given fall to the ground owing to the fact that Lord Curzon would not have taken the peerage from Mr. Balfour, however much Mr. Balfour had pressed it on him, for the very sufficient reason that Lord Curzon desired, if possible, to go to the House of Commons. He fully believed when he first came home that his health would warrant such a course.
Only two arguments remain to be considered. The first is the very narrow one,—" Why should Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman do anything to oblige Lord Curzon ? Lord Curzon was nothing to him, and. had. no right to expect anything from the Prime Minister." This argu- ment, which we may not unfairly define as the churl's argument, is, we are sure, one that would never appeal to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, for, whatever defects he may have as a politician, discourtesy of this kind is quite foreign to his nature. The second and last argument is that the King for reasons of his own did not desire to send Lord Curzon to the House of Lords, and that though the Prime Minister would feel obliged to insist on his nomination being accepted in the case of a member of his own party, he would not feel justified in pressing the point in the case of a political opponent. The argument is theoretically extremely ingenious, but we see no reason whatever to believe that it is founded in fact. It strikes us as the merest hypothesis constructed as an explanation of circumstances otherwise inexplicable.
We have shown, we think, that no good argument can be produced in defence of Sir Henry Campbell- Bannermau's action, or rather want of action. On the other hand, it may be shown that there were very strong considerations urging him to send Lord Curzon to the Lords. It is a commonplace that magnanimity pays in politics, and all politicians like to do what pays. Again, magnanimity and good nature are qualities which belong to Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- man. If he had summoned Lord Curzon to the Lords in his father's lifetime on public grounds and in the public interest, the country as a whole would have applauded so reasonable and so honourable a breaking away from the extreme rigidity of the party system. How, then, are we to account for what has happened ? The only explanation we can think of is that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, like many Prime Ministers before him, was afraid of the criticism which his action would have received from the more narrow-minded section of his followers. No doubt the Tapers and Tadpoles of the Liberal Party—and they abound in that party quite as much as in its rival—would have professed great indignation at anything being done for a Tory. Their line would have been : "If Lord Curzon wants anything from us, let him become a Liberal. As long as he is opposed to us, he should look to his own friends for honours. It is not business for Liberals to manufacture Tory Members of the House of Lords." If Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was afraid of criticism of this sort, he was exceedingly ill advised. He has missed a real chance of showing that he can rise above the ignobler party considerations, and that be is capable of acting in the public rather than in the parts interest.
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