HC Deb 29 March 1910 vol 15 cc1162-278
The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith)

moved: "That this House will immediately resolve itself into a Committee to consider the relations between the two Houses of Parliament and the Question of the duration of Parliament."

It is less than three years since the late House of Commons carried, by a large majority, a Resolution declaring it to be necessary that the power of the House of Lords to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be restricted by law. Since that date three events have occurred which may be regarded as landmarks in the development of the controversy which was then formally begun. The House of Lords, for the first time in our Parliamentary history, has taken upon itself to reject the whole financial provision of the year. A General Election has been held, in which the relations between the two Houses, having regard both to finance and general legislation, were, as I think everybody will admit, at any rate a leading issue. And we have seen, since we reassembled here at Westminster, action spontaneously taken by the other House, of which I will only say for the moment— I shall have to revert to it later on—that it constituted an admission that the wholehearted complacency with which that body surveys itself is not shared by the nation at large, and that by some process, as yet undefined, there must be at least a superficial transformation. Thus we have had within the last six months first, and by way of climax to a long series of acts by which the decisons of this House have been flouted and set at naught, an encroachment by the House of Lords upon a domain which has come to be regarded by universal consent as entirely outside their constitutional province. Next we have had an election in which, if our interpretation of it is correct, a large majority of the representatives of the people have come here with the direct and express authority of their constituents to bring this state of things, both as regards finance and legislation, to the earliest possible close; and, lastly, we have the acknowledgment of the Lords themselves, that with all the virtues and all the wisdom which they are conscious of possessing, they are like a certain class of heroines in fiction, "not fully understood." At any rate, they are an item on the debit side of the electioneering account of the party opposite. These things mark a substantial and significant advance since the time of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Resolution; and, in the opinion of the Government, they not only warrant, but give imperious urgency to the Motion which I am about to make—that this House should immediately resolve itself into a Committee to consider the relations between the two Houses of Parliament and the question of the duration of Parliament.

The scope of subject-matter which we propose should be referred to the Committee are confined, as the House will observe, to these two topics. That assumes that in our view it is expedient we should have in this country —should continue to have in this country —two legislative chambers. Speaking for myself, I am ready to admit that is an opinion which I have not always held, or at any rate not always held with any great strength of conviction. It would be quite easy for an industrious person who wished to embark upon a singularly unattractive and unprofitable task to cite from speeches I have made in days gone by expressions, at any rate, of scepticism on that subject. I believe I once—and not in the extreme heat of political youth—went so far as to say that leaving upon one side Federal Constitutions like those of the United States and Germany, which stand entirely upon a footing of their own, I could find no country in Europe, or outside, in which it could be shown that the existing Second Chamber was in fact rendering indispensable service to the State. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] Hon. Members cheer. After longer experience, perhaps closer study of the facts, possibly that insidious and potent influence, the growing conservatism of age, have brought me to the conviction that whatever may be the case elsewhere, in this country there is both room and need for a Second Chamber. [OPPOSITION cheers.] Yes. Let me say there is no subject in which greater confusion of thought and speech exists, and I will try to make clear—I am told I am now a past master in the arts of ambi- guity and evasion—I will try to make clear what I do, and what I do not, mean by a Second Chamber.

I deny entirely, and my opinion cannot be too strongly stated or too emphatically repeated, that we live in this country, except in name, under a bicameral system. We do not. When the party opposite is in a majority here only one Chamber counts, and that Chamber is the House of Commons. We are then, and I am speaking of a very recent experience—an experience which many of a went through between 1895 and 1905, a period of ten years—not a small period in the constitutional life of a nation—we are then, we were then, without any of the checks and safeguards in the way of delay, in the way of revision, still less of threatened reference to the people, which are commonly represented as among the primary and essential functions of the Second Chamber. When that state of things exist we are exposed, the country is exposed in the full blast, without screen or shield, to all the dangers and drawbacks of single Chamber Government. On the other hand, when we, who for the time being sit upon this side of the House, have a majority here again there is only one Chamber that counts, and that not the House of Commons, but the House of Lords. The experience of the last Parliament, which sat from 1906 to 1910, supplies frequent and almost continuous illustrations of that truth. We are told, I know, that even in that Parliament Liberal measures became law; they were allowed to pass. Yes, but why? They were allowed to pass into law on a purely tactical ground, boldly and plainly announced by Lord Lansdowne in the month of December, 1906, in regard to the Trade Disputes Bill—a measure which was offensive in the highest degree to the House of Lords, and which in the very same speech was denounced by Lord Lansdowne himself as fraught with danger to the community and inaugurating a reign of licence. And how did Lord Lansdowne then speak —I am going to quote his exact words— what did Lord Lansdowne say was the function of the House of Lords in the presence of a Bill which a large majority of them regarded as in the very highest degree pernicious in the best interests of the State? They were passing through a period when it wan necessary for the House of Lords to move with gnat caution. Conflicts and troubles might be inevitable; but let their lordships, so far as they were able, be sure, if they were to join issue, that it was upon ground which was as favourable as possible to themselves. Yes, favourable ground, favourable to what? Favourable to whom? Favourable to some great cause? Favourable to some vital principle? Nothing of the kind. Favourable to the maintenance of their own powers and privileges. The whole case against the claim of the House of Lords to be in any thing but in name a Second Chamber could not be better stated. What does it come to? You have a frankly partisan assembly, always ready to pass the Bills of one party, and always ready to reject and to maim the Bills of the other party, subject only to this restraining consideration, that it rests upon a purely hereditary basis and, as it is in the long run devoid of any other authority, it must be careful at all hazards not to risk its own skin. Speaking for myself, and I believe for a great many other people also, I would far rather live under the absolute and untempered autocracy of a Single Chamber which, after all, is elected by and responsible to the people of this country, than have superadded to it as a kind of constitutional appendage this simulacrum of a Second Chamber, which, on the avowal of its own leader, is ready at a pinch to sacrifice what it conceives the best interests of the nation if by so doing it can only renew its own licence under normal conditions to continue its habitual and mischievous intervention. I say then, first of all, that at present we have no Second Chamber system at all, but only a travesty and caricature of such.

What then do I desire? When I speak of the necessity or the expediency of a Second Chamber in this House, I do not accept the view — and I suspect very few people on either side accept it — which is put forward by advocates in the other place, like Lord Curzon, who seem to think that the whole function of a legislative assembly is to protect people primarily against their own representatives, and ultimately against themselves. I do not think my colleagues and I desire to see a Second Chamber which can be described as in any sense co-ordinate with the House of Commons. We do not desire to see a Chamber which can compete, or claim to compete, on even terms with this House as the authorised exponent of public opinion and the national will. We desire to see maintained in all its integrity, in the best interests both of the nation and of the Empire, the predominance of this House in legislation—a predominance which is the slowly-attained result of centuries of struggle and advance, and which we believe to be the sheet anchor of our representative system. But there are functions which can be usefully and honourably discharged, consistent with the predominance of this House, by a Second Chamber, questions of consultation, of revision, and subject, as I have more than once said before, to proper safeguards, of delay. The body which is to discharge these functions consistently with the maintenance of; the predominance of this House must be a body which is relatively small in number. It must-be a body, if it is to have any credentials whatever for the performance of its task, which rests upon a democratic, and not a hereditary basis. It must be a body which, by virtue both of its origin and of its composition, of its atmosphere, of its constitutional attitude, is not as the House of Lords is, governed by partisanship, tempered by panic, but a body which is responsive to, representative of, and dependent upon the opinion and will of the nation.

Holding these views, as I do, as to the need for a Second Chamber, and as to its proper basis and functions, it follows that; I do not put forward the Resolutions, which, when we get into Committee, we shall submit to the House, as a final or as an adequate solution of the problem with which we have to deal. On the contrary, I admit to the full that, under these very, proposals, the House of Lords will remain in possession of powers, which, as it is at present constituted, we believe it to be ill-qualified to exercise. A non-representative body, it will be able to interpose serious delays in the fulfilment of what, may be the clearly expressed will of the electors. A partisan body, if past experience is any guide to the future, will be reasonably counted upon to decline to exercise even the suspensory Veto when its own Friends are in power in this House. The problem, therefore, will still remain a problem calling for a complete settlement, and in our opinion that settlement does not brook delay. But this problem is forced into the forefront of politics largely by the action of the House of Lords itself. It is true that the only practical contribution in the, recent Debate which they have made towards its solution is an ambiguous Resolution, which may mean anything or nothing. Even that Resolution was passed in a thin House, in which at least two-thirds of the total membership of the House of Lords did not take the trouble to attend. The "backwoods" have not yet disclosed their secret. They may still —under the guidance of those two distinguished veterans who told in the Division the other day, and in whose bosoms there still glows the unquenched fire, perhaps something of the untempered audacity of extreme and perpetual youth—they may still, under the guidance of those veterans, find themselves able to rout a half-hearted and divided attack. However that may be, in my opinion, and in the opinion of the Government, until you have substituted for the present House of Lords a body constituted on the lines, and limited to the functions which I have indicated, you cannot enjoy any of the advantages which a genuine Second Chamber is capable of bringing, under modern conditions, to a democratic State.

I pass from that to the immediate business of the hour. In the meantime, and as a necessary preliminary to the working out of our declared policy, we have, as a first and urgent step, to deal with things as they are, and, in particular, to deal with the House of Lords as it is, and to prevent a repetition of the unconstitutional raid of last year into the domain of finance. We have to secure, as against the House of Lords, that the wish of the people, as expressed by the mature and the reiterated decisions of their elected representatives, shall in all legislation be predominant. We have, as I think, at the same time, to provide by adequate safeguards that the elected House shall not outstay its authority and purport to act as the exponent of a public opinion which it no longer represents. These are all matters which were clearly brought before the constituencies at the last election, and on which we believe this House is prepared to pass an immediate verdict. The Resolutions for the consideration of which I am asking the House to go into Committee, are of necessity couched in general terms. They are not to be treated as clauses in a Bill. They are, on the contrary, the broad basis on which a Bill is to be built up. Let me briefly pass them in review.

The object of the first Resolution is to obtain statutory definition and protection for a well-established constitutional practice. I do not want to weary the House with matters of detail, or, more than is necessary, with matters of history, and I will not go back to the Report of this House in 1628 or to the Resolutions of 1671, 1678, and 1860. Those great Parlia- mentary Acts and Declarations, constitute the ground work of our financial autonomy. I will cite two or three dicta drawn from the lips of the greatest Parliamentary authorities both of the past and of the present. I will begin with the Great Commoner, a title willingly accorded to him by his fellow countrymen, the first William Pitt. In language which is now very familiar, but which will bear repetition, used in this House in 1766, he declared that:— Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power. Taxes are a voluntary gift, the grant of the Commons alone. In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike concerned, but the concurrence of the Crown and the peers to a tax is only necessary to clothe it with the form of law. It is the fashion on the benches opposite now, I will not say to decry, but at any rate to deride, what are called "musty constitutional antiquarianisms." Let us come down to the present day. I will content myself with citing the language of three persons, two of whom are still living, who have been my predecessors in the office which I have now the honour to hold. I will begin with Lord Rosebery. This is as late as 1894, in the House of Lords:— I do not think it is necessary (speaking of the Finance Bill) that your Lordships should make themselves masters of it, because I deprecate altogether the idea that the House of Lords has sir anything to do with Money Bills. I come to his successor, Lord Salisbury, speaking in the same House and at the same time, he says:— It is perfectly obvious that this House has not for many years interfered by amendment with the finance of the year. The reason why this House cannot do so is that it has not the power of changing the Executive Government, and to amend or reject the Finance Bill and leave the same Executive Government in its place is to create a deadlock from which there is no escape. More wisely prophetic words have rarely been spoken. Again, only a year later, Lord Salisbury used this language in the same place:— This House, by custom, takes no share whatever in the votes by which Governments are displaced or inaugurated. It takes no share whatever in that which is the most important part—the annual constitutional business of every legislative body—the provision of funds by which the public services are to be carried on, and the determination of the manner in which those services are to be carried out. In regard to those matters, it takes no part whatever. I finish my citations by quoting the authority of the right hon. Gentleman who sits opposite (Mr. Balfour). But there is a consentient and concurrent stream of authority in regard to this matter, or there was until last year. The right hon. Gentleman, in language which has often been cited, and which is still fresh and still true, less than three years ago in speaking on Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-man's Resolution in this House said:— We all know the power of the. House of Lords thus limited, and rightly limited, in the sphere of legislation is still further limited by the fact that it cannot touch Money Bills which, if it could deal with, no doubt, it could bring the whole executive machinery of the country to a standstill. Finally, a year later, and precisely in the same sense speaking in the country in October, 1908, the right hon. Gentleman declared:— '' It is the House of Commons and not the House of Lords which settles uncontrolled our financial system. In the face of those authorities and that practice I should hope that we may have a practically unanimous assent to the first of the three Resolutions. The action taken by the House of Lords in the autumn of last year shows unhappily that we can no longer rely on unwritten conventions, however well established or upon the dicta of the weightiest and most illustrious Parliamentary authorities. Statutory protection has become necessary if this House is to continue to enjoy and to exercise the privileges it has claimed and exercised undisputed for more than two centuries.

In regard to the precise form of our proposal I would only say this. We recognise, as everybody must, that if you are going to put into statutory shape the declaration and assertion of the financial autonomy of this House, you must make some adequate provision against the possibility of what is called tacking—tacking to Finance Bills proposals which are not germane or relevant to their subject matter. I am not aware of any instance in the past where any such practice has been resorted to, but as we are scrupulously anxious in defining the rights of the House of Commons to circumscribe them within the area in which they have hitherto been exercised, and as there might come a time when an imprudent and unscrupulous Minister might, by the aid of, perhaps, a precarious and subservient majority, seek to annex irrelevant and extraneous matter to a Finance Bill—I only regard that as in the dim and distant future and as a purely speculative possibility—but as that time might come, we think it is right to guard against such a contingency in advance and to trust the Speaker, who at present exercises a precisely analogous function in regard to all matters of privilege in Bills which come back to us from the House of Lords; we entrust to him the power and duty of determining whether or not a Bill is a Money Bill.

I should deprecate very much entrusting any such power to any of our courts of law. It is not that I have any want of respect for courts of law. I have spent the greater part of my life within their walls, and I have the highest possible reverence for the great judicial traditions there adopted. I should deprecate, not from any want of respect for courts of law, but from conservative adherence to the constitutional traditions of this House—I should deprecate introducing here what you have in America, wherever you have a Federal Constitution, the intervention of the courts of law to determine whether or not the legislature has acted intra or ultra vires, and the submitting a question which is not a question really appropriate for judicial determination to a body properly charged with other functions. You have here an impartial representative of all parties in this House who sits judicially in our Chair, a functionary who by tradition, by experience, and from the universal respect with which his decisions are regarded and observed, is, in our opinion, a far better tribunal to determine such matters than the courts of law.

I pass now to the second and third Resolutions which, in a sense, should be taken together; that is to say, the second Resolution without the third is not a Resolution which the Government would submit to the House. I will deal more particularly with the second. I admit at once that, unlike the first of our proposals, it is not a mere reaffirmation with new safeguards of an old constitutional understanding. On the contrary, it proposes to provide a new remedy for an evil which, so long as the House of Lords remains as it is, only comes into being when there is a Liberal or progressive majority in the House of Commons. I mean a deadlock between the two branches of the legislature. If the House will bear with me, before explaining and discussing our proposals, I should like to answer two preliminary questions.

4.0 P.M

The first question is, What are our existing constitutional resources for dealing with such a situation? The second is what, if any, are the practical alternative proposals to the scheme of the Government? What are our existing constitutional resources in this matter? A deadlock between the two Houses can of course always be got rid of for the time being by the exercise on the part of the Crown of the prerogative of dissolution. If that were the only way of escape we should have to admit that in existing constitutional circumstances the. House of Lords, itself indissoluble, can, whenever it pleases, call for a General Election. But our Constitution, though by no means perfect, is not so lopsided as that. The remedy by way of dissolution obviously does not apply to the House of Lords, but the Constitution has provided a means by which the House of Lords, stubbornly bent on refusing to give effect to the will of the people as declared by their representatives, can be brought to reason. That is the exercise by the Crown of another of its prerogatives, the creation of new Peers. It is a Prerogative I agree which has been rarely either exercised or threatened.

Lord HUGH CECIL

Would the right hon. Gentleman say when, it has been exercised?

The PRIME MINISTER

Perhaps the Noble Lord would restrain his impatience for a moment. It is a Prerogative which has been rarely exercised or threatened. Does he dispute that proposition?

Lord HUGH CECIL

It has never been exercised.

The PRIME MINISTER

It is a Prerogative which, I repeat for the third time, has been rarely exercised or even threatened, but it exists. That it is not dormant or obsolete is, I venture to say, the opinion of almost every one of our great constitutional authorities. I will cite one or two of them. They are people who are not partisans, and whose authority will command universal respect. I take first of all Sir Erskine May. In his "Constitutional History" he says:— It must not be forgotten that although Parliament is said to be dissolved, a dissolution in fact extends in fact no further than to the Commons. The Peers are not affected by it‥‥ So far, therefore, as the House of Lords is concerned, a creation of Peers by the Crown on extraordinary occasions is the only equivalent which the Constitution has provided for the change and renovation of the House of Commons by a dissolution. In no other way can the opinions of the House of Lords be brought into harmony with those of the people. I go on to cite another great living authority whose opinions will be received with the utmost respect by the party opposite, and who has provided them with a great deal of dialectical pabulum, I mean Professor Dicey, in his "Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution."

After speaking of the "understanding and habit" in accordance with which the House of Lords are expected, in every serious political controversy to give way at some point or other to the will of the House of Commons—I wish it were more "habit" —he goes on to speak of that "further custom which, though of comparatively recent growth, forms an essential article of constitutional ethics." Will the Noble Lord observe that—" modern constitutional ethics," by which "in case the Peers finally refuse to acquiesce in the decision of the Lower House, the Crown is expected"— expected—" to nullify the resistance of the House of Lords by the creation of new Peers." That is the opinion of Professor Dicey on this matter of modern constitutional ethics. Finally, I may cite a great authority who, though he is not a lawyer, is, as everybody admits, one of the most brilliant, far-seeing and illuminating writers on British politics known in our time—the late Mr. Bagehot. In his "English Constitution" he said:— The very nature, too, as has been seen, of the Lords in the English Constitution shows that it cannot stop revolution. The Constitution contains an exceptional provision to prevent it stopping it. The Executive, the appointee of the popular Chamber and the nation, can make new Peers, and so create a majority in the Peers; it can say to the Lords, ' Use the powers of your House as we like, or you shall not use them at all.' In face of those authorities it is very difficult to maintain that this is not an integral and essential part of our constitutional practice. Indeed, if it were not so, there would be absolutely no escape except by means of either force or revolution out of a constitutional impasse.

Reference is sometimes made—and I shall have to speak a little later on of that —to the old Royal Prerogative of Veto over legislation. That prerogative, of course, could not be continued side by side with the development of real representative Government, They are contradictory one to the other. On the other hand, such an artificial bicameral system as ours makes, the exercise of the prerogative of creation absolutely essential to the preservation of popular rights. Let me point out in this connection, and it cannot at this moment be too clearly borne in mind, that the Resolution passed the other day by the House of Lords to the effect that the possession of a peerage should not in itself give the right of sitting and voting in the House, deals a direct and fatal blow at this Royal Prerogative. If that Resolution were to be passed into law, if it were to acquire the power that can only be given to it by a statute, what would be the constitutional situation? The House of Lords would become, for the first time in our history, an autonomous and uncontrollable body beyond the reach of the Crown and its Ministers, and securely entrenched in a position of absolute and unassailable constitutional independence. That is as far as the House of Lords have yet gone. But both these prerogatives—the prerogative of dissolution which applies to this House and the prerogative of creation which applies to the other House—are, as everyone will admit, and no one more fully than I, grave and exceptional remedies, not to be resorted to except under the stress of urgent and extreme necessity. Nisi dignus tendice nodus. Neither of them is perfect, and neither of them is suitable for dealing with every day cases of difficulty and deadlock which, under our present system, occur from time to time between the two Houses when they are not of the same political complexion. So I come now to my second question. Apart from these prerogative powers, real, living, to be held in reserve, only to be exercised in case of need, but in case of need to be exercised without fear—apart from these prerogative powers standing in that position, what practical suggestions have been put forward other than the proposals which we we about to make, which are suitable to deal and appropriate to deal with what one may call the habitual and constantly occurring deadlock between the two Houses?

As far as I know there are only two. The first is what goes by the rather barbarous name of the Referendum. I admit that, speaking on Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Resolution three years ago, I coquetted with the Referendum, and I say quite distinctly that I reserve the question of the appropriateness and the practicability of what is called the Referendum as possibly the least objectionable means of untying the knot in some extreme and exceptional constitutional entanglement. But I am now speaking of the Referendum as a mode of escape from what I call the ordinary or everyday deadlocks of our present Parliamentary system, and as an expedient for dealing with that situation I confess I think it altogether inadequate. In the first place, the Referendum in practice as' it would be applied would be extremely uneven; if you are to have a Referendum when the two Houses differ what are you going to have when the two Houses agree? That is not such a foolish question as at first sight appears. That is what happened within our own experience. Supposing you have a House of Commons which, as the General Election shortly afterwards showed, completely perverted and misrepresented the mind of the nation; suppose you have that House passing by large majorities measures which have approved themselves to its Members for the time being, but which are condemned by the great bulk of the nation; suppose you have a sham or a dormant revising Chamber at the other end of the corridor, without demur and without reference to the people passing those measures sub-silentio; must you not give the great majority of the inhabitants of this country some power corresponding to the Referendum, some power of initiative, some power of submitting to the popular vote the question at issue? A Referendum which can only be exercised when the two Houses differ would be a very uneven constitutional system. The Referendum as a normal part of our constitutional machinery, in my opinion and that of my colleagues, and probably of the great majority of both sides of the House, would tend largely to undermine the independence and responsibility of this Chamber. So long as you have here the opinion of the vast majority of the constituencies, on their shoulders would rest the undivided responsibility for determining the policy of the Government, and saying what measures shall be put on the Statute Book. This House acts under a sense of restraint, but if the matter were left at large it could always be said, "It does not matter very much what we do, for, after all, it can always be referred to the people." In the interests of Parliamentary independence and responsibility the Referendum is not a normal part of our system. Let me point out one or two further considerations, if I am not taking the House too far into matters, because all these things really work into one another. It is said that by means of the Referendum, in case of a deadlock between the two Houses, you could do what you cannot do now when you have a General Election—you could disentangle and isolate the particular issue. I do not believe you could do anything of the kind; indeed, I am certain you could not. The Referendum might be nominally and ostensibly on some particular point, and everybody knows that the whole machinery of both parties in the State would be brought to bear on the determination of that issue. You would have the turmoil, the tumult, and a large part of the expense of a General Election, and, while I have the highest possible respect for the intelligence and political instinct of my fellow-countrymen, I do not believe it would be possible for them, under these conditions, completely to segregate the particular issue on which the Referendum took place, and entirely to ignore the whole of the rest of the field of politics. On these grounds, which might be elaborated, I should deprecate the adoption of that solution of our difficulty. Let me now come to the other, and the only other solution, which, so far as I know, has been suggested, and that is a joint Session between the two branches of the Legislature. That is the remedy which has been accepted by two of our greatest self-governing dominions. We find it in the Australian Constitution and in the South African Constitution, to which we assented a year ago. In France, although there is no constitutional provision on the subject, yet both Houses have, I believe, by rules which they have made for themselves, provided that in the event of a deadlock the matter should be determined and, if possible, settled by a conference between them. This scheme of a joint Session has, I think, a great many recommendations, and I desire to say most distinctly here and now that if you have two Legislative Chambers composed upon a democratic basis, and related to one another somewhat after the fashion I indicated earlier in my speech, with a proper numerical relation one to the other, I think there is a great deal to be said for settling differences that might arise between them by means of a joint Session. I do not in the least prejudge it, and when it arises I think the hands of Parliament ought to be perfectly free with regard to it.

But is it applicable, can it be made applicable to our existing Constitution? It is apparent that it could not. In the first place, the House of Lords consists at present, I believe, of over 600 Members, and we are 670 Members; so that in a joint Session of the two Houses, quite apart from the unwieldiness of the body and the mechanical difficulties that might arise, you would have the non-representative House in the proportion of something like 50 per cent, of the whole body. That in itself is a fatal objection to a joint Session. Apart from that, taking the House of Lords as it is, you have got a body which is a partisan body in the proportion of something like ten to one. Take the late House of Commons, which was a very good illustration. We had a majority larger than any Government has ever possessed in any House elected since the time of the Reform Act—a majority, I suppose, of over 300; yet, if we had gone into a joint Session with the House of Lords on a matter like the Education Bill or the Licensing Bill, it is at least extremely doubtful whether we could have carried either Bill. Of course, you may say it is the superior re presentative quality of the House of Lords. But assuming, as I am entitled to assume, for the purpose of my argument, that the House of Commons at that time represented the opinion of the country, and the House of Lords did not, it is perfectly clear that no way of escape from the deadlock would be found by a joint Session, Of course, you might attempt to solve the difficulty—I do not betray any secrets when I say that my colleagues and I in the days gone by thought of this, and entertained it, weighed it, and tried it—by a reduction of the panel, but then you get for a time an artificial combination. I do not believe, with the House of Lords as at present constituted, you could devise any method of joint-Session which would attain the result desired. I pass from those two alternative methods of dealing with the difficulty to the one which the Government are going to propose, namely, the limitation of the Veto. The proposal to convert the absolute Veto at present possessed by the House of Lords into a suspensory Veto, is not our proposal. It goes much further back. It is the proposal of the late Mr. John Bright. It was made by him in a more drastic form than we are now presenting it to Parliament, in a celebrated speech which he delivered on 4th August, 1884, at Bingley Hall, in Birmingham. I should like to call the attention of the House for a moment to that speech—I do not think it is irrelevant to the subject— and to the reception which it met with at the time in the country. Some people think that a novel and an evil practice has been introduced—I do not know whether by me, but certainly by some of my right hon. Friends—of using strong language about the House of Lords. I advise them to read Mr. Bright's speech at Birmingham in 1884. He made some very unpleasant quotations, which I do not venture to repeat, from the 73rd Psalm. He ventured on such language as this, speak-of the House of Lords:— Privilege everywhere tends to beget ignorance, selfishness, and arrogance. That is what is called setting class against class. But although the speech is very well worth perusal and study, it is more important to see the reception with which it met from those who were then, as now, the accredited organs of Conservative, I will not say of timid, but more or less Conservative, and certainly of intellectual opinion in this country—I mean "The Times" and the "Spectator." [An HON. MEMBER: "It was Liberal."] I do not remember whether "The Times" was Liberal or not then. "The Times"said:— Mr. Bright's name and authority will bespeak for this scheme attentive consideration. It goes on to say:— It is to be regretted that Mr. Chamberlain, at the same meeting, should have used language which anywhere but in Birmingham would certainly he regarded as somewhat vituperative. That is a sort of apostolic succession of the whipping boys of "The Times." It goes on to say:— The case against the House of Lords under the present Government is sufficiently strong in itself to render it quite unnecessary to indulge in unmeasured invective and extravagant abuse. Proceeding to deal with the suspensory Veto, it declared:— The question is rapidly coming within the range of practical politics. The suggestions are not very subversive, and on the whole are entitled to most respectful consideration, That was the opinion of "The Times." But I must do myself the pleasure of quoting the opinion of that great weekly organ the "Spectator." The complaint of the "Spectator" was that the Bright proposals were "much too conservative." They got rid of deadlocks between the two Houses only by "the most prodigal waste of the time of the House of Commons." But a still more serious objection was the temptation, to which the Peers might succumb, of applying the limited Veto with greater readiness than they had been in the habit of resorting to the absolute Veto. Therefore, that great organ of opinion, rejecting as being too Conservative and too timid this way of dealing with the situation, suggested the less Conservative method of restricting the number of Peers summoned to the House of Lords under a scheme which would secure that the Ministry of the day would have a majority in the Upper as well as in the Lower House. I thought it interesting to recall the earlier stages of this proposal. It was adopted and revived by the late Government under the leadership of my lamented predecessor in a much less drastic form, and we now, in the proposals we submit to the Committee, have still further modified and, I think, improved them. What are the changes we have made in the proposals put forward by the last Parliament? They are, in substance, two. The first is that we have enacted that there should be an interval of two years between the first introduction of a Bill and its final passing into law. The next is—and I think this is a very solid and substantial improvement— that we have provided that the three Sessions referred to shall not necessarily be Sessions in the same Parliament, and we couple with that the proposal that the duration of the House of Commons shall not be longer than five years.

I should like now to deal with a suggestion which goes to the very essence of the matter. I will not deal with the details of the proposals—which are Committee matters—but with the suggestion which I believe is seriously entertained, and which is certainly urgently put forward, that the adoption of the suspensory in lieu; of the absolute Veto, would bring us to the condition of a Single Chamber Government. I want to deal with this as a matter of principle.

We have in this country slowly but decisively adopted democracy as our form of Government. What is the essence of democratic Government? Surely it is, and here, I think, I shall carry with me universal assent, that the will of the people, by which we mean the will of the majority of the people for the time being, shall, both in legislation and policy, prevail. Further, we have come to the conclusion that, in common with all other democratic countries, the proper and only practical way of ascertaining that will and that opinion is by the process, the rude process, the imperfect process, in many ways-the very unsatisfactory process, of periodical popular election. I say rude and unsatisfactory for this reason: On the one-hand you have have growing constantly in number and complexity a mass of political questions which present themselves; at popular elections simultaneously for solution; and, on the other hand, unsatisfactory also because of the perfection to-which the science and art of electioneering has now been developed. For both those reasons it becomes more and more difficult to disentangle issues and assign, I will not say the relative predominance, but even the relative importance and influence to this or that issue in deciding the general verdict. The verdict of the country is pretty clearly, as a rule, though not always, in favour of one party as against another. The verdict of the country is pretty clearly, as a rule, in favour of one set of measures and one line of policy and against the other. But when it comes to a particular case, the case of a particular measure or particular question, it falls open to a variety of constructions. These are the inevitable defects of the system of popoular election, which we share and suffer from, in common with all other democratic countries. But it is the only practical way of ascertaining the national will.

What follows? If my premises are correct, there is at least a strong, nay, almost irresistible presumption, that a measure passed by a majority of the House of Commons still fresh, or relatively fresh, from the polls, is a measure which is approved in its main principles by the majority of the people, and which, therefore, in accordance with the principle of democratic government, ought to be allowed to pass into law. There are exceptions, I admit. It may be, as I have said, that representatives of the people in a particular case have mistaken the terms of their authority. It may, again, be that the majority by which a particular measure is passed through this House is so email, or so obviously casual and heterogeneous, that its verdict ought not to be treated as expressing the considered judgment of the nation. I admit these are both conceivable cases, and they show the possible uses of the Second Chamber, even such a Chamber as the House of Lords, and they suggest the wisdom of procuring delay, if that Second Chamber so desires, such as is procured by these Veto Resolutions. What is the object of delay? In the first place it affords an opportunity of consultation if it is a matter merely for revision. That is its real purpose. Still more it gives time and opportunity to the articulate expression of public opinion. Does any hon. or right hon. Gentleman suppose that a measure hurried through this House under closure or guillotine by what is called a scratch majority, could survive such an ordeal as that provided under this Resolution—the ordeal of having to be passed in three Sessions here, and having for two years to be submitted to the scrutiny and agitation of public opinion outside? Under this scheme in the first two years a fresh House of Commons will be constantly subject, and therefore legislation of the country would be subject to the operation of public opinion, and during the last two years the time of the House will not be, as it would have been under the Campbell-Bannerman Resolution, to a large extent sterilised. It may go on, and if they have passed their measure once, they may pass it again: a general election will intervene, and the people will have an opportunity of pronouncing an opinion before the final resistance of the House of Lords is over borne.

Taking the House of Lords as it is, taking the two Houses as they are, that limitation of Veto, coupled with the shortening of the duration of the House of Commons, is the best and most practical means by which, under existing conditions, we can secure that the popular will shall not be either frustrated or perverted, but shall, with due opportunities for consideration and revision, be promptly and effectually carried into law. Let me add, hat is often ignored, that nothing is more absurd than the notion that an Act of Parliament once put upon the Statute Book remains sacrosanct, and can never be touched. It is a ridiculous perversion of history. A large part of the time of the Parliaments since 1832 has been consumed in reversing the work of their predecessors. If a new Parliament, a new House of Commons thinks the work of the old House of Commons wrong, why cannot it undo it? We were engaged in the last Parliament during nearly two years to a large extent in trying to undo the work of our predecessors, and, but for the obstruction suffered from elsewhere, we should have undone it, and wiped out from the Statute Book two measures, the Education Act of 1902, and the Licensing Act of 1904, which, as we believe, ought never to have been put on the Statute Book.

I am sorry to have detained the House so long in dealing with the details of these Resolutions. We put them forward to deal with the emergency which confronts us, not as purporting to be a full or adequate solution of the whole problem, or, as exhausting the policy of the Government. We put them forward as the first and indispensable step to the emancipation of the House of Commons, and to rescue from something like paralysis the principles of popular government. Further, we put them forward as a demand, sanctioned as we believe by a large majority of the representatives of the people chosen at the recent General Election, themselves representing a large majority of the electorate. Fundamental changes in this country, as nothing illustrates more clearly than this controversy, are slow to bring into effect. There was a story current of the last Parliament, which in this connection bears repetition. It was told of a new Member of the then House of Commons that in J906 he witnessed for the first time the ceremony of opening Parliament. He saw gathered in the other Chamber at one end the King sitting on his throne, at the other end Mr. Speaker standing at the Bar. In between there was that scene of subdued but stately splendour, bringing and making alive to the eye and the imagination the unbroken course of centuries during which we alone here, of all the peoples of the world have been able to reconcile and harmonise the traditions of the past, the needs of the present, the hopes and aspirations of the future. He was a man of very advanced views, and as he gazed upon that unique and impressive spectacle, felt constrained to mutter to a neighbour, a man of like opinions with himself, "This will take a lot of abolishing." So it will. It was a very shrewd observation. But I am not sure that he had mastered the real lesson of the occasion. So far as outward vision goes, one would seem, no doubt, in the presence of such a ceremony as that, to be transplanted to the days of the Plantagenets. The framework is the same; the setting is almost the same. The very figures of the picture—King, Peers, Judges, Commons— are the same, at any rate, in name. But that external and superficial identity masks a series of the greatest transformations that have been recorded in the constitutional experience of mankind. The Sovereign sits there on the Throne of Queen Elizabeth, who, as history tells us, on one occasion, at the end of a single Session, opposed the Royal Veto to no less than forty-eight out of ninety-one Bills which had received the assent of both Houses of Parliament. That Royal Veto, then and for long afterwards, an active and potent enemy of popular rights, is literally as dead as Queen Anne. Yes, Sir; and has the Monarchy suffered? Has the Monarchy suffered? There is not a man among us, in whatever quarter of this House he sits, who does not know the Crown of this Realm, with its hereditary succession, its Prerogatives adjusted from generation to generation to the needs of the people and the calls of the Empire, is held by our Gracious Sovereign by a far securer tenure than ever fell to the lot of any of his Tudor or Stuart ancestors. The liberties again of the Commons, which you, Sir, only a month ago once more claimed and asserted at the same Bar, in time-honoured phrases which carry us back to the days when those liberties were in jeopardy from the Crown— the liberties of the Commons, slowly and patiently won, in these days newly threatened and invaded—not, indeed, through the Crown, but from another quarter—are only in danger if, unlike our forefathers here, we refuse to take the necessary steps to make them safe. But there is one factor in the Constitution which, while everything else has changed, remains, sterilised in its development, possessing and exercising power without authority, still a standing menace and obstacle to progressive legislation and popular government. The absolute Veto of the Lords must follow the Veto of the Crown before the road can be clear for the advent of full-grown and unfettered democracy.

Mr. A. J. BALFOUR

There were phrases in the peroration of the right hon. Gentleman which suggested that he had approached the great constitutional issue which he has raised by these Resolutions in the spirit of a constitutional Minister; but I confess that, neither in the proposals themselves nor in the arguments by which, in the main, he has supported them, do I see any of that wise power of adapting institutions to the changing needs of the community which has been the glory of this country in its great historical traditions, to which both parties in the House, I think, may justly lay claim, but which appear to have been abandoned by the present Government at the inspiration of new forces and new demands which certainly have nothing to do with democracy properly understood, and which suggest changes in the future to which true democratic opinion—by which I mean the settled opinion of this great community— will find itself wholly alien. The right hon. Gentleman, as I think was only proper, introduced his comments and explanations of the particular proposals which he means to bring before us by some observations upon Second Chambers in general and the position of the House of Lords in particular. On the position of Second Chambers in general I understand that there is not absolute unanimity either in the party which the right hon. Gentleman leads or in the Government of which he is a Member. He himself appears to have gone through a good many oscillations in connection with the matter, and finally to have settled down to a kind of moderate approval of a Second Chamber system provided the Second Chamber has no power. The Foreign Secretary, I think, takes a more violent view, for he made a speech the other day about Second Chambers in which he said that for the party of which he is a member to propose any constitutional system in which a Second Chamber did not play a part would mean disaster, death, and, I believe he added, to a less fastidious audience than this, damnation. The Home Secretary, who also has given a good deal of attention to this subject, thinks, on the other hand, that we should do extremely well without a Second Chamber, but on the whole he believes a Second Chamber would be more in accordance with the general sentiments of the country. I have not the least doubt that in a Cabinet so representative of the party opposite there are Gentlemen who think there ought to be no Second Chamber at all. I suppose it is owing to this extreme divergence of view as to what ought to be done in the way of reform or abolition, mending or ending the House of Lords—to use the classic phrase — that the Government have brought forward a proposal which neither mends nor ends. And yet it is surely absolutely inconsistent with the views expressed by the Prime Minister in his own speech. Did not the right hon. Gentleman tell us that even for the modified role which the House of Lords are henceforth, if these Resolutions become law, to be allowed to play in our Constitution, they were unfit; that to take even this modest share in our legislative efforts was a task for which their Constitution inherently unfitted them? Then, Sir, I should change them. I should begin by reforming them. Hon. Members below the Gangway opposite do not want them reformed; they want them abolished. But I am talking about the Government, the majority of the members of which apparently do not want to abolish them; and the question I ask is, How then can the Government come before this House and say, "There are two things which sound policy requires us to do with the Second Chamber: one is to limit its functions, and the other is to make it fit to perform its functions." Every rational man would begin by making it fit to perform its functions. Why the Government have shrunk from that it is very hard to say, if we consider only the logic of the case; but if we consider its practical necessities the thing is easier to explain. They can apparently agree upon the, as I think, perfectly ludicrous and absurd suggestions which I shall have the honour of examining in a moment or two, but they clearly cannot agree upon how they are to make the House of Lords fit to carry out even the modest functions they are going to leave them. They naturally, therefore, defer to a more convenient opportunity the things upon which they cannot agree, and proceed to try to carry through the things about which, at all events, a decent exterior agreement has been attained between them and their followers.

That being the explanation of the policy of the Government, I really do not think it is very necessary to examine at length all that the right hon. Gentleman said about the functions of a Second Chamber. But I must make one or two observations upon his historical comments. His whole speech was in the key of there having been a series of deadlocks between the two Houses, as if the British Constitution had now arrived at a point when an aggressive hereditary Assembly had made it impossible to carry on the legislation of the country. I think his phrase was "the ordinary daily deadlock." That did not agree with my own reminiscences of recent events, and I waited with interest and anxiety to hear what these deadlocks had been. I wanted to know what the particular crime of the House of Lords was which loomed most largely in the imagination of the Government and their friends, and which showed that nothing short of a constitutional revolution could relieve us from the intolerable strain of the existing situation. What was the example the right hon. Gentleman gave? Was it of a Bill which the House of Lords refused to pass? Was it of a Bill which is not now on the Statute Book? Not at all. The example given by the Prime Minister was the Trades Disputes Bill. Where was the deadlock? There was no deadlock. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] I am coming to why not. What was the charge against the House of Lords? It was not that they produced a deadlock, but that the Leader of that House (Lord Lansdowne) explained that the general feeling of the community was strongly in favour of the Bill, and that therefore the House of Lords should pass it. The right hon. Gentleman describes that as passing a Bill simply to save their skins. But that Bill had a history in this House. Perhaps the right hon. Gentle- man will allow me to remind him of what that history was? The Bill, which was ultimately passed in this House and by the House of Lords, who are accused of producing all these deadlocks, was directly in contradiction, first of all, with the professions of Members now sitting on the Treasury Bench, and, secondly, with the Bill brought in by their own Attorney-General. I have no doubt that the House of Lords would have preferred the Bill as originally brought in. So would the Government. In fact, I think the Government, the leaders of that triumphant majority of 300, who the right hon. Gentleman said must be taken always as representing the views of the people, would have preferred the Bill as brought in. But they gave it up. Why did they give it up? To save their skins. Even Ministers have skins as well as Peers, and, according to my observation, they are just as anxious to save them.

5.0 P.M

I should have thought that when Resolutions of this kind were brought in there would have been some great indictment of the system which, we are told, produces all these deadlocks. It produces no deadlocks. It produced none in the last Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman says when the Tories are in office the House of Lords is subservient, there are no deadlocks, and legislation passes through. I understand that the Government themselves think that there are occasions in which delay in legislation is desirable. Is it very paradoxical to say that that delay is likely to be more desirable when you have in office a party which avowedly describes itself as being the only people with the right to the title of the Progressive party; which some of their critics and most of their opponents would describe, not as progressive, but, in their more active elements at all events, as Revolutionary! Of course, if it is the business, as I conceive it to be, of a Second Chamber not to withstand the will of the people, but in certain cases to interpose delay—and that is admitted—is not that delay more likely to be frequently required when you have in office Gentlemen of the particular opinions of those below the Gangway and elsewhere, than when you have in office those who are, as I think, most unjustly accused of standing too much in the old ways and being too unwilling to make great changes in the legislation or Constitution of this country? The thing is ludicrous. And the only reason, of course —everybody knows it is why the majority of the House of Lords is so frequently thrown against modern Radicalism in comparison with the Radicalism of our forefathers—is that modern Radicalism has ideals and aims which certainly require that the people should be consulted before the great changes recommended are finally adopted as part of the Constitution of this country. As for a deadlock, a difficulty—all this talk about schemes being rejected !—there has been no deadlock! Why, the leaflets, speeches, and boasts of hon. Gentlemen opposite for the last four years on every platform in the country have been to proclaim in flaming characters the wonderful legislation which they have passed, not through the House of Commons, but through both Houses of the Legislature. The right hon. Gentleman went back—and I think it was a very instructive part of his speech—to a meeting in Bingley Hall in 1884, in which Mr. Bright denounced the House of Lords, and was supported, it appears, by "The Times "and "Spectator" of that day. If you had asked Mr. Bright, or those who took part in the Bingley Hall demonstration, or "The Times" or the "Spectator," nine years later, what they thought about the House of Lords, would they have given the same verdict? No; and why? Because in the interval it would have been shown that the House of Lords, and the House of Lords alone, had stood between the country and the great constitutional changes which at that time, to say nothing of the future, the country profoundly disapproved of.

Observe that in this respect you are avowedly going to destroy the power of the House of Lords ever to do again what it did in '93. It is because you are going to do that that you have the support of hon. Gentlemen from Ireland. They make no secret of it. That is their reason for giving a grudging support to the Government in other respects, because they hope to destroy the power of the House of Lords to prevent a violent change in the constitution without the people being consulted. Do let the House remember that in this respect we in this country stand alone, or almost alone, amongst great countries of the world. Every country, when it has got a written constitution, takes care to protect that constitution, and surrounds it with safeguards. We have not got a written Constitution. We have no safeguards. The changes which have taken place—the right hon. Gentleman has not exaggerated them—have been great and profound. They have been going on to the present time. The greatest of them has gone on without the sort of wretched legislation which you now propose. Those changes have been gradual in their growth, and we have hitherto not been threatened by those violent processes. We are threatened by them now.

Some of us desire these. Revolutions. Some of us fear them. I say, whether we desire them or whether we fear them, we are not doing our duty by the Constitution which we have inherited if we leave it to the power of the majority of this House, without the deliberate assent of the people to these changes, to carry them into effect over the heads of another place. That is a point in the Constitution of this country, and the necessity of providing some safeguards for it—surely that should have been the main part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. He talks about the House of Lords not performing their duty when a Tory Government is in office. Do we propose, have we proposed, revolutions in the Constitution? [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes."] I am now on the question of constitutional change, and no other. That is my point. Have we proposed changes in the Constitution? Everybody knows that is no part of our creed, no part of our function; that is not the way social development and evolution are to be effected. But if you are coming forward now, and axe going absolutely to destroy every legislative security for delay, even in regard to the most fundamental aspects of our inherited Constitution, I say you are acting in the spirit of the utmost disloyalty to posterity, with utter disregard of the responsibility which you have inherited, and to those who have created the Constitution which we enjoy.

Before I come to the details, and say a few words about the Resolutions themselves, there is one other point, raised by the right hon. Gentleman, to which I must refer. He talked as if these deadlocks between the two Houses which, so far as I can see, are creatures of his own imagination—and the constitutional methods of dealing with them—and he actually put them in parallel columns, as it were—were of equal weight and corresponding importance, and did not differ in any essential particular. He said if there was a deadlock you might either dissolve Parliament or you might create peers. Is not that an utterly misleading way of putting the problem? Is there any parallelism what- ever between the two processes? When you dissolve Parliament you send it back to those who created it. According to the very creed of the right hon. Gentleman, you temper and attune it afresh to the moods and opinions of the democracy. You do not destroy, you improve it. The creation of peers, even on the modest scale on which alone it has ever been tried, was thought by those who tried it, just about two centuries ago, to have involved even then something very nearly approaching a revolution in the constitution of the House, and if tried now, according to the prescription suggested by the right hon. Gentleman, so far from merely doing for the House of Lords what a Dissolution does for the House of Commons, you entirely and utterly shatter it as an institution. It may be right and proper to shatter it as an institution. I am not arguing the point whether the creation of 500 peers would be an improvement to the Constitution of this country or whether it would not. I am not arguing whether to give a peerage to every gentleman whom the Lord Chancellor would not allow to have a magistracy, would or would not be an improvement to the smooth working of the Parliamentary machine; but I do say for the right hon. Gentleman to come forward and compare the two processes—the process of Dissolution and the process of creating 500 peers —is really to laugh at the common sense, the knowledge of history, and the constitutional learning of the Members of this House.

Let us turn from the more general observations of the right hon. Gentleman to this last recension of the proposals which were brought forward, I think, as far back as 1906. I believe this to be one of the most absurd experiments in Constitution making on which any Government has ever embarked. Let me take the first two proposals in turn. The first relates to finance. Here the right hen. Gentleman, I must say, played ducks and drakes with constitutional history in a manner which amazed me. He quoted a certain number of authorities, beginning, I think, with Lord Chatham, and ending, I believe, with myself, in order to show that, according to sound constitutional doctrine and practice the House of Lords had no power to reject Money Bills. I venture to say that that has not been the doctrine of any constitutional authority whatever, either before or after Lord Chatham. Certainly I have never intentionally expressed that opinion. I do not believe that Lord Chatham intended to express it. I may say incidentally that Lord Chatham, in the speech referred to, was discussing our right to tax the American colonies—a subject very alien to that which we are dealing with at present, but no authority has ever suggested that the House of Lords had not power to reject Money Bills. No such authority can seriously be quoted. For my own part, I believe that the whole doctrine of the matter was fairly stated by Resolutions passed in this House when the House of Lords rejected the repeal of the Paper Duty in 1860. Lord Palmerston, then the Leader of this House and the Leader of the Liberal party of that day, moved three Resolutions. I am not going to read them. They are at anybody's disposal, but they were passed after careful examination of precedents, and I believe they represent the real facts of the case, although not, perhaps, in the language that I myself should have chosen. At all events, what comes out of these Resolutions is quite clear—the House of Lords had the right to reject Money Bills; it has the right which should be most sparingly exercised, but it is a right which has existed, and, as I think, ought to be kept. Now I do not assert, of course nobody has ever asserted, that there is equality between the two Houses in finance. This House has absolutely uncontrolled power of initiation; it has uncontrolled power of settling what Votes should be asked for; it has uncontrolled power of devising its Budget. The House of Lords by tradition, if not by law, does not alter, and never did alter, a Budget—at any rate, for very many years—and the primacy of this House is uncontestable and is not contested, so far as I know, by any responsible politician or by any party in the State. But, Sir, for us to say that the House of Lords has not by constitution and tradition and usage got the power to reject money Bills is to violate the truth of history. And for us to say that that power ought to be removed from them is to show ourselves quite insensible of the possible danger that may lie before this country, or any other country, in the legislation of the future. Let me point out in that connection that the Government have made a provision for preventing "tacking." They have made Mr. Speaker into an arbiter of what is tacking and what is not. We shall have to argue that point when we come to the Committee stage. I will only say now that for the right hon. Gentleman to contend he "is not adding to the functions of Mr. Speaker is to mislead the House. For the first time it will rest with the Speaker of one House of Parliament not merely to say what the duties of that House are, but to say whether a particular Bill shall become law or shall not become law. He becomes not merely the guardian of our rights, but, in a certain sense, the author of our legislation. He is to say whether or not a certain Bill is one that this House can pass over the heads of another place. I do not know whether that is a wise addition to Mr. Speaker's powers.

I want the House now to come to a far more important point upon which Mr. Speaker's decision is not going to be asked under these Resolutions, and on which, indeed, it could not be asked. There is a kind of tacking which is not technically tacking, but is substantially tacking. In other words, we can do, and we have done what our forefathers did not dream of doing, namely, bringing forward Bills which are in form purely Money Bills for objects which are not purely money objects. In substance to do that is not to violate any rule against technical tacking, but it is tacking. It is to use the rights and the privileges of this House for raising money within the year for carrying on the Government of the Kingdom, and then using these rights for carrying out, it may be, some great social revolution. Social revolutions may be necessary, and they may be desirable, but it is absurd to tell me that social revolution carried out by a Finance Bill is not legislation upon which there ought to be some power of having the expression of the opinion of the constituencies of this country. It is absurd to tell me that. Of course, nobody denies or can deny that my statement of what purely financial measures in form can do and are intended to do, did do and were intended to do in the past, can do and are intended to do still more effectively in the future. I think it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, in one of those strange outbursts of oratory to which, I will not say we are getting accustomed, but which relieve the monotony of ordinary platform oratory from time to time, said that last year's Budget, or is it this year's Budget?—I do not know whether to call it last year's Budget or this year's Budget—but, at all events, the Budget we discussed last year, and which we apparently are not to be allowed to discuss now, went a good way towards taxing out of existence a certain class of the community. Is "taxing a class out of existence" purely a financial measure, that it can be carried out in a purely financial Bill, which technically is purely financial, and which Mr. Speaker, in the Chair, would be obliged to say was financial, is, of course, evident. But if you look below the form of the Constitution for the reality, if we ask ourselves for what does a Second Chamber exist, are we seriously going to say that that policy of taxing a particular class out of existence is one of the things in which it may be indecent to ask the general opinion of the community.

I said, therefore, it is madness for us to make a change in the Constitution which may entirely remove all the safeguards which the right hon. Gentleman himself thinks ought to exist as regards legislation in general—it is madness to remove them in regard to finance. I agree that their exercise ought to be rare; that they should be used with the utmost caution and circumspection; but that we should make it impossible that they should ever be used, and that we should petrify and make their use impossible by legislation seems to me to be the height of folly. And let me say that the opinion I venture to express upon this point is the opinion which, as far as I know, is held by all the free self-governing communities of the world. It is held by the United States of America; it is held by France; it is held by Germany; it is held by Italy; it is held by every one of our. Colonies as far as I know. It is carried out in the very Constitutions which you yourselves have authorised for South Africa; it is held under the recent Constitution we have given to the Commonwealth of Australia, that is, that they have the power not of initiating, but of rejecting such legislation, not of modifying but referring it to the people; and are we alone, upon whose example and pattern all these institutions have been framed, to deprive ourselves and our children of the safeguards which all these great democracies possess?

I do not dwell longer upon that point, but I venture to think a more absurd moment for saying that the House of Lords has gone beyond its duties in rejecting a Money Bill than the present can hardly be conceived, for everybody knows that whatever be the issue of the negotiations and the pourparlers which are going on, and of which I make no complaint, everybody knows that if this House voted upon the Budget and on the merits of the Budget alone without regard to ulterior, and perhaps in their opinion; more im- portant issues, everybody knows the Budget would be rejected. It is a matter of common knowledge that if the Budget is passed, it will be passed because one party in this House who do not like the Budget think that, on the whole, the interests of those they represent would be better served by passing the Budget which they hate than by endangering the existence of the Government from whose action they entertain, rightly or wrongly, great expectations. If I have rightly stated the case, and I have attempted to put it in moderation, and I do not think anyone will contradict me, it is really absurd to say that the House of Lords have in their recent action violated or misused the extremely delicate function, I admit, which the Constitution has entrusted to them with regard to Money Bills. These duties are rarely to be exercised, I agree, but no one can tell me that after what occurred at the last General Election that they ought not to be exercised.

I now pass to the second and more general of the two Resolutions of the right hon. Gentleman. I must say I do not think the full absurdity of these Resolutions can have occurred to those who framed them. What do they amount tot Parliament has now to last for five years— that is to say, five years is to be the limit of its legal existence. Presumably its existence will be about four years, judging by the past a margin will have to be allowed, and I suppose it will be four years or a little more than four years. That four years is to be divided constitutionally into two periods—a one-Chamber period and a two-Chamber period. During the first of these periods we shall be governed by Costa Rica, we shall have a single Chamber, and only a single Chamber. During the second of these periods we shall revert to the traditional practice sanctioned by centuries in the British Constitution and imitated in almost every civilised country in the world. Can anything be more grotesque than this double Constitution under which we shall henceforth live—like Harlequin, half will be black and half white? We are to have a single Chamber period and a two-Chamber period; a period in which the Government of the day having a majority in the House of Commons is to do exactly what it pleases, and a period in which there may be some chance in exceptional cases of the people having to be consulted before some momentous issue is finally decided. Is not that a grotesque alteration of the Constitution? All the ingenuity of the, Consti- tution mongers of the world has never devised in the past—I take it to be certain, though I do not pretend to be thoroughly master of the subject—have never devised anything like this. I believe it to be an entirely original view of the Government—that is this notion that for the first half of the existence of the House of Commons it may do anything without check, or the possibility of these delays of which occasionally the right hon. Gentleman speaks with respect, and at other times with violent invective, and then when these two years have elapsed, or, at all events, when the House of Commons is so near the end of its time that the conditions of the Resolution about two years or three Sessions cannot possibly have effect given to them, the House of Lords, which the right hon. Gentleman says is not fit even to do the work of the first two years, is to resume all its ancient privileges and prerogatives, and we should again revert to the constitutional position of our forefathers—the bicameral system—with the House of Lords in full possession of all the functions which by historical tradition it ever possessed.

I cannot imagine anything so absurd. I really cannot conceive why Costa Rica should be the model for the first two years of Parliament and the British Constitution in its integrity should be the model for the second two years. What is the theory that lies at the root of this extraordinary experiment in Constitution making? It is that for the first two years we are, as it were, to have some democratic inspiration which fails us in the: second two years. We come to this House, "trailing clouds of glory behind us," inspired by the democracy which authorised and created our existence. In that happy and youthful period we do not require the limitations and superannuated checks which may be necessary at another time. Then, at the end of two years comes—I still continue the quotation—" the common light of day." Then the whole thing changes, and we become ordinary citizens, doing in uninspired fashion our best for the country and for the constituencies, who have sent us here, but requiring the ancient constitutional co-operation of another place. That strikes me as rather silly. I think even in point of theory it is extremely absurd. Are we more influenced by our constituencies in the first two years of our existence than we are in the second two years? I have been a long time a Member of this House, and I con- fess that that is not the result of my own personal observation upon the action of hon. Members, either in their speeches Or in their votes. It is not the election that has just passed that influences us, but it is the election that is just coming. It is not the first two years, but the second two years, which ought to be regarded as inspired by the democracy.

With all respect, I will take the example of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford and his friends. At the last election I thought they were absolutely whole-hearted supporters of the party opposite. I understand by common rumour that there are doubts and hesitations now, though I do not know how far they have gone. It is not the last election which is producing those doubts and hesitations, but it is the next election, and so it is with hon. Gentlemen sitting in every part of the House. When is it that an hon. Member of this House begins anxiously to think how a speech of his will look when quoted by an opponent, or how a vote of his may be represented or misrepresented on a platform, or how this or that action of his leaders may come out in a leaflet? Is it in the first sacred and inspired two years of Parliament? Is it during this period of democratic enthusiasm that these fears and anxieties come to a Member of Parliament? Not at all. It is towards the end of their Parliamentary career that hon. Members so anxiously inquire what the various sections of their supporters in their constituency are thinking that they carry out that democratic ideal so dear to hon. Gentlemen sitting in all parts of this House. I suggest, therefore, if we are to live under the piebald harlequin constitution that you propose, if we are to oscillate between Costa Rica and Great Britain, you should invert the order, and, since the Lords are to lose their powers, it should be in the second two years, and not the first two years, for it is the second two years and not the first two years in which we look with the most critical anxiety to the shades of opinion which influence the choice of the constituencies of this country The whole plan of the Government is really grotesque, and it will have the worst effects, not merely upon the relations between the two Houses, but upon our legislation.

What is going to happen? There must be two years at least, and three Sessions at least, between the introduction of a Bill and the final quarrel between the two Houses. The Government of the day will endeavour to bring in their big measures instantly without that careful consideration and anxious discussion which should precede a great measure. The leisurely action of this Session will, of course, never be attempted again. I am sure the Government are filled with high thoughts and are carefully considering the provisions of great measures. So far they have introduced nothing — not even last year's Budget. This period of mature consideration never will recur. When once you pass this Resolution your anxiety will be to introduce your measure as soon as possible, in order to deal with any criticism or opposition in another place effectually before your two years or three Sessions come to an end. That will be the first consequence, but it will not be the only consequence. Closure will become an absolute necessity whenever a Bill is introduced again. Not only that, but you will never be able to improve your Bills. I do not know whether Governments in the future a/re going to be better than Governments in the past, but I notice that this Resolution has undergone a great many changes since it was first brought to our notice in the late Parliament by the late Prime Minister. Future Prime Ministers may be able to produce, even in haste, measures which axe incapable of improvement, but it would really be a sad thing to think that the masterpiece we are now discussing could never have been brought into existence under the new rules, and we should have had to content ourselves with the rough-and-ready sketch laid before us in 1906.

Of course, if you make the smallest change, it becomes a new Bill, or is Mr. Speaker going to decide whether it is to be a new Bill or not? Criticism—perhaps even criticism in another place—may disclose some fundamental weakness—I will not say fundamental, but some important weakness. Every man on both sides of the House may perhaps like to see some change introduced into a Bill, but can it be introduced? How can it be introduced? [An HON. MEMBER: "By agreement."] By agreement with whom? By agreement with another place? That interruption really amazes me. I thought we were dealing with deadlocks. I thought we were dealing with the continual pressure of irreconcilable differences between the two Houses, but now I understand the hypothesis I propose is to be solved by agreement between the two Houses. The right hon. Gentleman will see that his solution is impracticable. A Bill goes up to the House of Lords, and the House of Lords modifies it in a way not acceptable to this House. Then the Bill fails. Criticisms may be passed and the Bill is rejected. The Bill will have to be reintroduced as I understand it. The whole thing will have to be introduced again. It cannot be redrafted because it must be introduced in the form in which it was rejected, without alteration or Amendment, otherwise it becomes a new Bill. Two more Sessions have to pass or else the powers of that obstructive Chamber revive and those powers of obstruction revive with all their vigour. That is a most childish suggestion. You cut yourselves off from those possibilities of change and improvement which everybody knows are incident to the passage of measures through this House. You do not have the advantage of repeated discussion in this House; you pass your Bill without change, and without the alteration of a comma. You pass it in the next Session, and in the third Session. There may be discussion in the country, but there can be no further discussion in this House after the Bill has once left it and has gone to the House of Lords. I cannot imagine a worse system upon which to carry on the legislation of this country. If time allowed, and I thought it worth while, I might refer to a measure which has not been referred to by the right hon. Gentleman, that the only other measure on which there can be an attack on the House of Lords in regard to their interference with Government measures in this House, is the Education Bill. If you are going to go upon the principle suggested in this Resolution, you make it impossible to have sane or wise legislation on questions which bitterly divide great sections of opinion in this country.

The right hon. Gentleman occupied a great deal more of his time in dealing with the absurdities of other solutions of this imaginary difficulty between the two Houses than in showing how the absurdities of his own proposals might be dealt with. His own absurdities seem plain and palpable. It is impossible that a scheme so intrinsically and inherently absurd as this parti-coloured Constitution could survive, and the result is when you have passed the Resolutions and embodied them in a Bill; when you have embodied them in a Bill if they become law—if they ever do become law—it is impossible to imagine they can remain permanently upon the Statute Book of this country. What follows from that? This ill-thought out interference with our ancient Constitution, which has shown very great powers of modifying itself in obedience to the demand of public necessity and growing civilisation by these haphazard legislative proposals, will initiate in a period of constitutional controversy, which, I believe, to be utterly inconsistent with the genuine pursuit of social reform.

It is the old failing of the party which the right hon. Gentleman leads to suppose that by upsetting something which exists you are going to reform some evil of which you disapprove. These constitutional wrangles do not end in social reform. They do not conduce to social reform or help it in the smallest degree. What they do do is to occupy the time of the House, to absorb the attention of the country, and to divert our thoughts from problems of excessive difficulty, for all these social problems are of excessive difficulty, although that is a truth not always realised by the ardent social reformers—the result is to divert our minds from all these things and to turn them to these barren controversies and to these old constitutional principles which we on the two sides of the House are going to fight over and carry on the sort of discussion initiated by the right hon. Gentleman to-night. I think from every point of view the Government are ill-advised in the course which they are taking. They are ill-advised, because, I think, their change of the Constitution, on their own showing, is not the one they ought to have begun. They ought, on their own showing, to have begun by reforming the House of Lords. It is ill-advised because the actual alterations in their functions proposed by these Resolutions are in themselves absurd and grotesque, arid because their absurdity and grotesqueness will have a most unhappy reaction on the legislation and debating in this House. Lastly, and, I think, more important than all, they are utterly objectionable, because they divert the political energies of this country into a channel which certainly will Dot fertilise or improve any social institution, which will do nothing to relieve poverty, to touch unemployment, to help commerce, to consolidate the Empire, to reform the Poor Law, or to do any of the great things which, at all events, my Friends and I think far more important than the barren Debates with which you are going to occupy our time. You are following a bad example too often set by your predecessors. I can only say, for my own part, that, both on the demerits of these proposals themselves, and on their indirect effects upon the legislation of this country, I shall offer them at every stage the strongest opposition which it is in my power to give.

Mr. JOHN REDMOND

If there is anyone within these walls, either a Member of this House or a member of the general public, who came down here with the expectation and hope of spending a pleasant and entertaining afternoon, I feel quite sure that after the speech we have just heard he must feel that he was eminently successful. Those of us who have sat in this House for many years have grown accustomed to the oratory of the right hon. Gentleman, but let me say, for one man at any rate, that we have never grown tired of it. There is a delicacy in his banter and raillery which is certainly very delightful, and there is an audacity in his arguments which is absolutely superb. Nobody could help being entertained and delighted by his speech, but I think nobody could really realise, in listening to it, that he was called upon as the head of a great party to make a serious contribution to one of the most serious constitutional questions that has engaged Parliament for centuries. The right hon. Gentleman spent a great deal of time in pointing out inconsistencies in the Resolutions as he read them, and in attempting to throw ridicule upon what he believed to be the working of other portions of them. He complained that no indictment had been made against the House of Lords; I think, before this Debate is over, he will hear plenty of indictments against the House of Lords, but I say of him that he has made no defence of the House of Lords, and that, from beginning to end, he never attempted to argue that the House of Lords, as at present constituted and with its present powers, should continue.

Naturally, I regard this question from the point of view of the democracy of Ireland, which is represented by my colleagues and friends upon these benches, and from that point of view I shall have something to say, but I hope it will not be regarded as impertinent on my part if, before doing so, I claim to regard this question for a few moments from the point of view of the British democracy as well, and for this reason: It is not realised by the masses of people in this country as fully as it ought to be that the cause of democracy in Ireland, by which I mean the cause of Home Rule, the cause of getting into our own control the management of our own email purely Irish affairs, without interference of your Empire, without interference, as we admitted in the Resolution passed two years ago in this House, with the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, is identical with the cause of democracy in this country. The foes of that cause are exactly the same as the foes of the cause of the democracy in England; the friends of that cause are precisely the same as the friends of the cause of the democracy in England. There is one consideration which cannot be left out of account, and it is that the British democracy has had centred amongst them, for causes which I need not go into at this moment, as part and parcel of their lives, an infusion of our Irish people who to-day are their fellow workers and fellow toilers, in this country, who share the lot and fate of the British democracy, who are loyal to Ireland and to the cause of Ireland, and who to-day are one of the greatest assets possessed by the Irish National party. Let me further recall this fact: that there has: been no measure produced in this generation for asserting the political rights of the people of this country, or for the purpose of ameliorating the social condition of the people of this country, which did not receive the most whole-hearted and steadfast support of the representatives in this House of the democracy of Ireland.

The truth is, Ireland has never had a quarrel with the democracy of Great Britain, and therefore I claim that I may be allowed to say I look at this question, not solely, although I do primarily, of course, from the point of view of the democracy of Ireland, but also from the point of view of the democracy of England. The right hon. Gentleman says that no indictment has been made against the House of Lords in the name of the democracy of England. It is not my business to make that indictment. It will be made by others, but how easy it would be for me, if I undertook the task, to point out the deadlocks, which he says do not exist, which have existed all through the century, and how, from the point of view of the democracy of England, the House of Lords has stood forward as the obstacle to the establishment of the ideas of religious toleration, of all religions alike, how they have stood as the great obstacle in the way of the extension of the franchise, of the ballot, of the extension of local govern- ment, of municipal reform, of social reform, and how the House of Lords has been the enemy of the democracy of England all through the century which has passed.

Let me briefly, because I will not trespass upon the indulgence of the House for long, recite the experience of Ireland. Do not let me be taken as saying, because I point out what the House of Lords has done against Ireland during the century, that I am satisfied with what the House of Commons has done. There was a large portion of the century when the House of Commons was as ignorant and as bigoted and as hostile to Ireland as the House of Lords, and even to this moment, when there is a majority in this House friendly, I believe, to Ireland and to her just rights, the House of Commons is, and must necessarily be so by the conditions of the case, largely ignorant of Irish affairs and of Irish wants and needs. Therefore, when I point out what the House of Lords has done, I am not acquitting the House of Commons of many injuries and crimes done against Ireland and her people. What has been the experience of Ireland at the hands of the House of Lords during the last century? Bad as the House of Lords has been for England, it necessarily has been worse for Ireland, because, after all, this is an English House of Lords in your own country, but for us it is not. Let me contrast for a moment the action of the Irish House of Lords sitting in Ireland with the action of the English House of Lords sitting in England. In 1792 or 1793 the Irish House of Lords passed almost unanimously great measures which were the commencement of Catholic emancipation. They threw the franchise open to Catholics, they admitted them to the Universities and to the professions, and they extended the rights of Catholics and commenced the work of emancipation. If they had been let alone a measure of Catholic emancipation would have been carried for Ireland in a very few years; but when the scene was changed and the Irish House of Lords ceased to exist and it became an English House of Lords sitting here, what was their attitude on Catholic emancipation? Why, again and again they rejected measures of emancipation sent up from this House, and all the promises that were held out at the time of the Union were for years rendered null and void by the action of the House of Lords. Emancipation was introduced three times and passed three times through the House of Commons, but it was rejected by the House of Lords, and how was it finally carried? Lord Macaulay, in 1829, said:— The concession which was refused to Justice was reluctantly, ungraciously, and under duress granted from the mere dread 'of civil war. Irishmen were taught that from England nothing was to be gained by reason, treaty, patience, and endurance, but everything by intimidation. That tardy repentance of the House of Lords deserved no gratitude and obtained none. Coming later down, the history of the Tithe War is in itself an awful indictment '.of the House of Lords. You know what 'it meant—practically civil war, bloodshed, and wholesale suffering and misery. This House interfered, and sent up no less than five Bills, I do not say they were perfect Bills; on the contrary, they were not.

6.0 P.M

This House time after time attempted to deal with the question of tithes in Ireland, and to meet this state of social and civil misery, but our Bills were rejected by the House of Lords, and so the Tithe War went on, and it was not until in the end, despairing of obtaining any measure of palliation whatever, when the Government of the day made large concessions to the House of Lords, largely destroying the value of the Bill, that in 1838 the House of Lords allowed any measure to pass which would put an end to the misery and civil war which was going on in Ireland at that, time.

Take the question of the franchise in Ireland. Our case is much worse than the case of England or of Great Britain. The Catholic Emancipation Bill, when it was passed, was passed on the condition—at least it was one of the conditions—that the whole class of what was known as the "forty-shilling freeholders" should be swept away. When the Reform Bill of 1832 came, it is true, the franchise in Ireland was somewhat reduced. But, as compared with what was done for England, it resulted in this way, that in 1839 only 5 per cent, of the adult males in Ireland were allowed to have a vote, whereas 19 per cent, of the adult males in England tad the vote under the Reform Bill of 1832. So that, even when you were engaged in extending rights and liberties— your own rights and liberties—even then the House of Lords insisted that you should not be allowed to make the same extension of rights to the people of Ireland. Repeatedly measures for the assimilation of the franchise in the two countries were wrecked in the House of Lords. Registration Bills introduced for the purpose of facilitating the working of the Franchise were wrecked again and again. The borough franchise, after years of agitation, was fixed in 1867 at a £4 rating instead of a household franchise, and the result was that in England one in every seven persons obtained votes in the boroughs, and only one in eighteen obtained votes in the Irish boroughs. The same right through the catalogue — the same with reference to municipal reform. In 1835 the House of Lords agreed that all the great corporation in this country should have reform; but immediately it was proposed, by the insertion of a clause, to extend that Bill to Ireland, the Bill was promptly rejected by the House of Lords. The same thing happened in the following year, 1836. The Bill was so mutilated that it had to be dropped, and again the same in 1837, 1838, 1839. It was not until 1840 that the measure was passed, and then a provision was put in that the municipal franchise in Ireland should be as high as £10, the result being that nine-tenths of the borough householders, outside Dublin, all through Ireland, were deprived of any voice whatever in the municipal affairs of their country.

When the right hon. Gentleman says we do not indict the House of Lords, what about the Irish Land Question? That is a question for which the House of Lords is primarily responsible. It is a question which affected them in their social position and in their pockets. How-did they treat it? Why, they maintained, up to the other day, a system which I heard the present Leader of the Opposition himself describe in this House as "a land system which had every evil of every land system that ever existed in the world." And that is the system that was maintained by the House of Lords in Ireland. Is not that an indictment of the House of Lords? He talks about "deadlocks." Why, Bills were sent up from this House by the score, and were mangled. They never passed one of them without mutilating it and taking all the value out of it, and in a great number of cases they rejected them altogether. Does the right hon. Gentleman remember the history of the late Mr. Forster's Compensation for Disturbance Bill—a Bill introduced by the Government of the day, a Liberal Government, which was not at that time in alliance with, but was rather in bitter hostility towards the Irish Nationalist party. It was introduced by Mr. Forster, as Chief Secretary, and he said it was not only just in itself, but it was necessary. As the Minister responsible for Ireland, he said, it was necessary to preserve the peace of the country. It was a small Bill, a simple Bill, to provide that where a. man was proved to be evicted for no fault of his own, but because of the act of God, or some other cause of that kind, he was unable to pay his rent, a certain small compensation should be given to him. The House of Lords rejected that Bill after a couple of hours' discussion, and rejected it with contempt. They made themselves, by that one act, directly responsible for the misery, crime, bloodshed and disorder that followed in the wake of the great semi-revolutionary land movement, which then and then only sprang into real life in Ireland.

The right hon. Gentleman asks for instances of "deadlocks." I point to the whole history of the Irish Land Question, during all these years, as providing deadlock after deadlock. He alluded also to the experience of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. He reminded the House that the Home Rule Bill of 1893, passed by this House, was rejected in another Chamber, and he said the next General Election completely vindicated their wisdom and that the result showed that they were in touch with the people upon this question. I respectfully beg to enter my protest. I think I have never varied in the view I have taken from that day to this. What happened was that when the House of Lords rejected the Home Rule Bill of 1893, Mr. Gladstone—and I say this on the authority of Lord Morley's "Life of Mr. Gladstone "—Mr. Gladstone wished, and advised his party to dissolve Parliament and go to the country against the House of Lords on the Home Rule Question. His view was overborne, and he shortly afterwards retired. The last speech he made in this House was a speech in which he denounced the House of Lords, and said that the democracy neither in England nor Ireland would ever be safe until their power was curbed. He retired and Lord Rosebery took his place, and then Lord Rosebery's first act was practically to drop Home Rule. The first speech he made as Prime Minister in the House of Lords was one practically dropping Home Rule. He then dragged along for a couple of years, and I say that when an election was forced upon him at the end of that time, the defeat he met with was not a defeat on Home Rule so much as it was a defeat on those tactics of clinging to office, of which the Leader of the Opposition knows something. And I am reminded also that in the election of 1895 one of the cries on which the Liberal Government was beaten was the cry of old age pensions. It was raised by Mr. Chamberlain, but when he and his friends got back into power they did not do much to carry their pledge into effect.

Therefore I say that the history of the election of 1895 and the Home Rule Bill of 1893 has been wrongly read and interpreted by the right hon. Gentleman. Let me pass away from that record about Ireland and just read a few lines which seem to sum up my whole case. They are from a very distinguished Member of this House, the late Mr. Roebuck, who was speaking in 1837, when the present indictment of the House of Lords had only half been created. He was speaking of and addressing the Government of that day. He said:— You have tried on your knees to obtain justice for Ireland, and what has been your reward? Contempt and scorn. Your enemies have trampled upon your measures. They have contemptuously delayed, changed, rejected them, as the humour of their insolence suggested. What ought you to have done? What you did not dare to do. You should have boldly told the people of both countries that justice would never be gained by either while an irresponsible body of hereditary legislators could at will dispose of the fortunes and "happiness of the people. We have laboured in order to relieve the miseries of Ireland and if possible to heal the wounds inflicted by many centuries of misery. We have not advanced one single step. Every year sees our labours rendered abortive by the headstrong proceedings of the House of Lords. That is my indictment from an Irish point of view. Let me congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the substance of his Resolutions. They are Resolutions I shall certainly—and I speak for my Friends—heartily support. I do not intend to enter into the details of these Resolutions. The proper time to do that will be when we get into Committee. I do not wish to bind myself to the position that there are no possible Amendments that can be made to these Resolutions. I will listen with the greatest possible care and attention to any suggested Amendments that may be made. Speaking now on the Second Reading of these Resolutions, I give them generally a hearty support. I am very glad the right hon. Gentleman has dropped out all reference to reform in these Resolutions. If he had proposed a scheme of reform, no matter how perfect it might look upon paper, I would not feel myself able to support him. I have never read any scheme of reform— I may come across one some day—but until now I have never read any scheme of reform that did not seem to me to tend towards the strengthening of the power of that Assembly, and I need not say that that is not my desire. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the Referendum. I was rather alarmed by what he said. Of course, he clearly indicated that as a solution of the difficulties the Referendum is out of the question; but he safeguarded himself by saying that some great special constitutional occasion may arise when he would think a Referendum would be a good way of dealing with the deadlock. I hope he is not reserving his opinion about the present deadlock with reference to the Referendum. If he were going to say that instead of going to the Throne for an assurance or guarantees that the prerogatives would be used, and instead of that he would propose a Referendum I certainly would oppose any such course, because, mark you, what it would mean. It would mean the postponement of this matter for a considerable time. You could not have a Referendum on any point without passing an Act of Parliament. You would have to introduce a Referendum Bill, and it would have to go through all its stages and be sent up to the House of Lords, and they would reject it, and it would come back, and you must come eventually to the question of the Royal Prerogative. Any words used by the right hon. Gentleman that would cast any doubt upon his clear determination to proceed to the Royal Prerogative immediately the Veto has been rejected by the House of Lords would be words that would be received with the greatest disappointment, I believe, not upon one side of the House only, but upon both sides of the House. It is interesting to note that just at this moment the House of Lords are engaged in what they call the work of reform, and, of all people in the world, who is the leader of the reform movement in the House of Lords? Lord Rosebery. As I said the other day in introducing his Resolutions, this great man paid me the great compliment of turning up an old speech of mine about eighteen years ago about the House of Lords. I need not say I was intensely flattered, and I am anxious now to return the compliment. In 1894 Lord Rosebery was talking about the House of Lords. Why, he was talking more vehemently than the Prime Minister at this moment. He was talking in the most vehement language, and he kept the greatest part of his vehemence for the denunciation of the idea of reform. He said in October, 1894:— The question of a Second Chamber insufficiently remote.…It is not at any rate present to our hand. What we have to deal with at present is not the formation or the reform of a Second Chamber, but the adjustment of the relations of the two Chambers which exist, so that the will of the popular Chamber shall be made plainly and manifestly predominant. He goes on:— We have nothing to do with the present constitution of the House of Lords. It has never entered into our heads to touch the constitution of the House of Lords. I say it confidently for every single Member of the Cabinet that no such act of insanity as our proposing a reform of the House of Lords ever occurred to us.…In our opinion the time has come when the right of the House of Lords to oppose an absolute veto to the wishes or the legislation of the House of Commons should for ever cease. To-day he is the leader of the reform movement in the House of Lords, and says that the policy of the Government in regard to its Veto is heresy and revolution and disloyalty, and I know not what; and he has himself denounced in these words in the year 1894 all idea of the reform of the House of Lords. Lord Rosebery, as I said, was very vehement in those days. I admire the speech of the Prime Minister very much; it was the kind of speech which a, man in his position ought to make—a very calm and logical and reasoned speech. He did not give way to the temptation to indulge in rhetoric or oratory or anything of that kind. I have no doubt as to its rhetoric the speech to-night was inferior to his Albert Hall speech, but it was a very fine speech. Let me read a few words from Lord Rosebery on the reform question:— You will remember, as I have told you before, that in this great contest there are behind you to inspire you all the great reforms, all the great aspirations, and all the great measures on which you have set your hearts. Before you are encamped all the forces of prejudice and privilege. Before you frown the sullen ramparts, behind which are concealed the enemies you long to fight and so long have fought, and I would ask you if you are prepared to go into this fight, to fight it as your old Puritan forefathers fought—fight with their stubborn, persistent, indomitable will—fight as those old Ironsides fought in Yorkshire, never knowing when they were beaten, and determined not to be beaten. Fight as they would have said themselves, not with the arm of the flesh, but with the arm of the spirit. Fight by educating your fellow men—not as to the object, for on that you are clear already, but as to the proper means for attaining that object. And if you believe that we, the Government, are in earnest in this matter, and capable of dealing in this matter, you will give us your support. We fling down the gauntlet. It is for you to back us up. The people did not believe the Government was in earnest, and after a very little experience his next act was