MOTION FOR SECOND READING.— [First Day.]

HC Deb 27 February 1911 vol 22 cc45-153

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN Moved, as an Amendment, to leave out all the words after "That," and at the end of the Question to insert the words, "this House would welcome the introductin of a Bill to reform the composition of the House of Lords whilst maintaining its independence as a Second Chamber, but declines to proceed with a measure which places all effective legislative authority in the hands of a Single Chamber and offers no safeguard against the passage into law of grave changes without the consent and contrary to the will of the people."

4.0 P.M.

The House is invited by the Government to resume to-day the discussion of one of the gravest and most momentous questions with which it has ever been concerned. Hitherto we haved lived in this country under an unwritten and elastic Constitution which has grown with our growth, developed with our development, and adapted itself on the whole easily and smoothly to the changing needs of our advancing times. Now we are asked to substitute for that elastic growth, or at any rate for the portion with which it deals, a rigid formula, and with the rigidity comes brittleness. We are asked to write down a portion of the Constitution which has hitherto been unwritten, and to stereotype that portion for all time. If once we enter upon that course no man can say how far it will lead us, or what effect it will have upon the future fortunes of our country and our institutions. I confess that nothing has struck me more in the two days' Debates which have already been devoted to this subject than the levity with which a large portion of the House treats it, the thinness of the arguments with which hon. Members support the Bill, and the irrelevancy of most of what they say of the proposals which they make. They take refuge in the statement that the Government have a mandate for their Bill. The doctrine of the mandate received such caustic examination at the hands of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool (Mr. F. E. Smith) the other day that I am almost ashamed to recur to it. But since that is after all the staple of the speeches which have been made in support of the Bill, I must pause for a moment to ask the Government and their supporters how far they carry this doctrine of the mandate. How many mandates have they got? Why, Sir, they are as numerous in our Debates as the subjects with which these Debates deal. There is always a mandate, and always a mandate for something different. To-day it is a mandate to pass the Parliament Bill. The Government say it is for that the country put them back in office. It was my fortune a little more than a fortnight ago to move another Amendment dealing with the Preference question, and on that occasion, the spokesman chosen by the Labour party to represent their views—and we are told that they selected him beforehand as the hon. Member best fitted to represent their views—stated to the House in opposition to my argument that the Government were here wholly and solely to resist fiscal reform.

Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD

Indicated dissent.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

The hon. Member shakes his head, but he will forgive me for reminding him that that was what he said. If he will look at the OFFICIAL REPORT he will find himself thus reported:— Does not the hon. Member know that the Government is in power at this moment wholly and solely because the nation has told them that they are not to undertake any such fiscal work? A fortnight ago, when discussing the question of Preference, the mandate was for Free Trade. A day or two ago we were told that the mandate was neither for Preference nor Tariff Reform, but for the present fiscal system, and a few days ago an Irish representative, speaking on behalf of his friends, stated that the mandate was for Home Rule, and his reasons for supporting this Bill were, first and last, that it was a step towards Home Rule for Ireland. I ask how many mandates are there, and how do you distinguish between the weight and authority which is behind each of them? I confess when I listened to hon. Gentlemen laying down that the mandate was for this, that, and the other, I recalled a story recorded by Carlyle of a boy of thirteen who appeared at the Bar of the French Convention, and there announced that he spoke in the name of 3,000,000 men. It seems to me that a good many of the mandates we hear of in this House have no more authority, weight, or backing behind them than the assumed value claimed by that vigorous youth. We shall be told—indeed we have been told—at any rate that there is a majority in the House for this Bill of 120. [HON. MEMBERS: "One hundred and twenty-four."] The additional four no doubt give it peculiar weight. There is a majority in this House for the Bill of 124. They ask, Is not that mandate enough? Well, the advocates of Woman Suffrage claim that they also have a majority in this House—a majority much bigger than that of the Government for this Bill. Does the Prime Minister think that they, too, have a mandate from the country expressing the considered will of the country upon that question? No, Sir; all that is meant when we talk of mandates is that we have each in the course of our own election mentioned with more or less insistence the particular subject which is under discussion, and that because of, or in spite of, our views on that subject we have been returned to represent the electors in this House. We are not to be compelled to pass this Bill merely because it formed part of the election outfit of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and because with greater or less precision they put some account of it before the electors. We must look at the Bill itself, and the grievance it is sought to remedy. I listened to the major portion of the Debate which took place last week, and I have read a considerable portion of it since. Anybody who will take the trouble to do the same will see how very far are the arguments adduced in support of the Bill from being conclusive, or, indeed, from forming any case in its favour, and how very far is the case which is made against the House of Lords from forming a case in favour of this particular measure. What is it that the Government and their supporters complain of? We had a peculiarly interesting speech from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Churchill) at the close of last week's debate. A portion of his speech was a careful study of the Parliamentary and political tactics of our party as to whether they were of the kind most sure to lead to our early success. The right hon. Gentleman is never more interesting than when he talks on Parliamentary tactics, for there is no more profound student of them than himself, if I may say so. There is no one whose political conduct is more exclusively governed by them, and less hampered by any scruples about principles. The right hon. Gentleman invited us to consider whether the action of the House of Lords in amending or rejecting certain of the Government Bills did not in fact lead to the return of the Government to power. That is a very interesting speculation, and I am not at all inclined to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman when he says that he thinks it has. But what a curious confession for a member of the Ministry to make. He turns to us and says: "What fools you are not to restrain this unhappy zeal on the part of the House of Lords. Why, if you only had allowed us to pass our measures the country would have been sick of us long before this, and nothing but the fact that the House of Lords stood between the country and those measures which we tried to place upon the Statute Book in the country's name because we had a mandate from the country to do so—nothing but the action of the House of Lords in preventing these measures from becoming law has averted a great reaction against us and a great reaction in your favour." That is all very interesting, but what bearing has it on this Bill? Then the right hon. Gentleman assumed the role of a political Mr. Turveydrop, and lectured my right, hon Friend on political deportment. It appears that the Leader of the Opposition, after the defeat of his party in 1906, did not appear with an air of becoming humility. He still ventured not merely to hold, but to express his opinions, and even though his cause was for the moment defeated, he still thought it worth defence. What could be worse, says the Home Secretary. We could believe he would never be guilty of the same fault.

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Churchill)

I said he reappeared here as master of the situation, which controlled the Veto of the House of Lords.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Yes, I was going on to say that that was not the whole of the right hon. Gentleman's complaint. It appears that my right hon. Friend's eloquence was too persuasive, if not in this Chamber, in another place. My right hon. Friend exercised, through his gifts, too great an influence with the present House of Lords, and induced them to do things which were distasteful to His Majesty's Ministers, and, in their opinion, inimical to the interests of the country. Again, I say, assume that that is true—and I do not know why my right hon Friend should disclaim an influence which his opponents like to attribute to him—assume that every word is true, is that any justification for this Bill? It may be that the other House, as now constituted, is not fitted to exercise the power which it possesses. That is matter for argument. It may be that the use it makes of those powers is ill-judged, unreasonable, and reactionary. That, again, is matter for argument; and if you prove either of these cases you prove that that House should be reformed in its composition, so that it may be better fitted for the high task which it has to discharge. But what would be proved if you do prove that the present House of Lords misuses its power? You do not prove that you ought to establish a Chamber with no powers at all, and still less do you prove outside of looking glass land that the remedy for such a state of things is to take away all its power, but to leave the offenders exactly where they are, and leave the composition of the House exactly where they find it. I have not heard one word, I think I can say, in this Debate which is directed to show that, grant the evil to be such as you diagnose it, your Bill affords any remedy for it, or is the right method of treating it. On the contrary, making your case against the present constitution of the House of Lords, founding yourselves on the particular exercise of the power which that House so constituted makes, you leave the House exactly what it is, and you proceed to strike out all the powers.

Why do you take that step? Your own Bill begins with a solemn assurance that the reform of the House of Lords is part of your policy. Ministers themselves agree to the assurance, with more or less conviction, in the speeches which they make. The Prime Minister is in favour of a reformed Second Chamber. He disclaims the allegation that he is a Single-Chamber man. The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Haldane) who I think is going to follow me, and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Edward Grey) have been champions of a Double Chamber, and in language of very considerable warmth have explained that it would be fatal, not so much to the country, I think, as to the party which concerns them all to propose a Single Chamber. The necessity for a Second Chamber is admitted by all the Members of the Government, but we know not by how many of the Gentlemen sitting behind them. The reform of this Second Chamber is part of the mandate which they have got, if they have got any mandate at all. Yet they deliberately throw it to one side. They leave the work of construction untouched in order to devote themselves unchecked to the simpler and easier task of destruction. Why do they do it? We need not look outside this House to find a reason. The Labour party are avowedly Single-Chamber men. The Irish party do not care whether you have one Chamber or two, or, if you have two, what sort of a Second Chamber you have. They care only about having an interregnum between the death of the powers of the Upper Chamber and the constitution of a new Chamber with real powers in which they may secure Home Rule; and among your Members, who are more closely associated with Gentlemen on that bench, there are not a few who sympathise—how many I do not pretend to say—more or less openly with the desire to make an end once for all, of any independence in the Second Chamber, whatever that Second Chamber may be. I make an appeal to Gentlemen who honestly say that they are Second Chamber men, and who mean to have a real and effective Second Chamber, and I ask them, if you pass this Bill as it stands, do you believe that you will ever see that Second Chamber created by the party opposite? You will have parted with your power. I will not say that the front bench are fooling you, or that you and they are fooled together if you think that, having passed this Bill, you will ever be able with the parties with which you have to act to establish an effective Second Chamber. You know that in your hearts you will not. I see that an hon. Gentleman dissents. Would he take a warning from the speech of one of his own leaders, the Home Secretary? The Home Secretary's support of a Second Chamber is tepid: The most that he will say is that at some time, and in some future circumstances, the Government will unfold a proposal for a reformed Second House, if, and he emphasised the word, it be the general wish? I said that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Churchill) is a great student of party tactics: When he puts in an "if" like that, you may be pretty sure that he is preparing himself for what would be, I am certain, the invesitable result, for a refusal on the part of the majority, with which he is co-operating, to assist him in putting up any Second Chamber whatever. The arguments of the supporters of the Bill are in fact no arguments for the Bill itself, and point to a reform of the other House rather than to the destruction of its power. What are we to say of the arguments by which the Prime Minister attempts to allay the fears of those like myself, who think that the provisions of this Bill lead straight to Single-Chamber Government? The Prime Minister very fairly stated that the great objection on the part of the opponents of the Bill to this measure was, to use his own words, that "our proposals are intended, or at any rate will have the effect, of enabling a despotic Single Chamber to ride rough-shod over the electorate of the country." That is a very fair statement of our case, and I want to examine the arguments with which the Prime Minister attempted to allay our fears; but, let me say, though it is a very fair statement as far as it goes, it is not the whole of our statement. It is not merely a despotic majority in the House of Commons: it is a despotic Government controlling such a majority that we fear. The Home Secretary and other Members on that bench attempted to show that, as a Government rests on the will of the majority, is the creation, so to speak, of the majority, it could not enforce its will on an unwilling House of Commons, but must always be the servant, and never be the master of this body. Is that so? No doubt there is a limit to the strain which a Government can place upon its followers. But who that is old enough to remember the first Home Rule Bill, who that is old enough to remember the miraculous conversions, by squads and platoons, under the pressure of the party Whip and under the force of Mr. Gladstone's authority, in the Liberal party of that day, will say that Government does not exercise overwhelming power over the party which supports it. And bear in mind what the sanction to the power is. We are told in speech after speech by the Members of the Government that the present situation is intolerable because we have come to this, that the House of Lords can force a Dissolution upon this House. It is that very power, declared to be intolerable when exercised by the House of Lords, which enables the Government to hold this majority in the hollow of its hand. It is that very threat, which is held in terrorem over Members that, under such circumstances, a recalcitrant Member giving a vote which brings his party to defeat, and so causing a Dissolution, whatever be the chance of his party, has him- self very little chance of returning to this House. He has not, except in rare cases, the opportunity of securing the support of his previous opponents. He has quarrelled with his previous friends, and whatever be the decision of the country, whether for the Government or against it, in nine cases out of ten, his Parliamentary career is closed, at any rate for the time.

An HON. MEMBER

That applies to all Governments.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

It applies to all Governments. That is a tremendous weapon in the hands of Government, and I say all this, being a party man, having no quarrel with the party system, and believing that all history shows that it is only through the party system that democratic Government can work with success. I say in spite of that, that the tendency of our Government as it becomes more democratic, is to put ever greater power into the hands of Government, and if you have a Single and unchecked Chamber you are open to, and will be subject to the tyranny of a Government and of a party which has lost public confidence, which knows that on appeal to the country, it would not come back, and which, therefore, and for that very reason, defers the appeal, seeks to change the ground at issue, and find other questions, on which it can with greater hopes of success make a fresh election.

It is not, therefore, the fear of a Single Chamber but the fear of the despotic authority of the Government in that Chamber. What is the Prime Minister's answer? He says, in the first place, that though it is possible to conceive that the House of Commons at a particular moment, or on some particular issue, may misrepresent the opinion of the country, it is impossible that under such circumstances, and with the delay provided in this Bill, they should force their will upon the country against the people's wish. It is upon the two years' delay and the three passages of a contentious measure about which both Houses have disagreed, that the right hon. Gentleman rests his defence. I beg the House to consider for a moment what is the value of that delay, and what will be its effect in working. Take such a question as Home Rule. Let us go back in our minds to the year 1893, when the second Home Rule Bill was rejected in another place. What would have been our security under the Parliament Bill against the passage of that measure? It would have had to be repeated the next year in this House, but under what circumstances? If the country was in favour of the Bill, surely the moment to take their decision about it was when they were fully informed of its provisions by the discussions in Committee of this House and by the Debates in the two Chambers, in which a large part of it, not every portion of it, had been criticically examined day by day. Mr. Gladstone, who, whatever faults he may have had always had the courage of his convictions, was known to desire to take such a course. Why did the Government of the day not take it? Why did they over-rule Mr. Gladstone? Because they were afraid of the response which at that time an appeal would have met with in the country. What security would this two years' delay have been? Do you think that the party would have been dragooned into the lobbies in order to allow the Government to give time for its discussion all over again next year? They had tarred themselves with the Home Rule brush. They knew they were in danger of losing their seats because they were so tarred, and their one desire was to get on to other work, that would take the taste out of the people's mouths, and cause them to forget Home Rule before they went to their constituents again. They would have gone to the Government and said: "We will vote you the closure, the guillotine, as strict as you like, but one thing we will not do is to follow you round the lobbies day after day whilst your Bill is being riddled with argument, as it was a year ago. The more unpopular a Bill is the more hastily would the party seek to hide it out of the way. The less the country liked the measure, the less a discussion of it would be liked."

If that were true upon the second occasion, a fortiori, so it would be on the third time, and the Government would do their utmost with their party to get the Bill through with the least possible discussion, as a purely formal stage, like a resolution, and would then go on to draw other herrings across the path, to try to divert the attention of the people from what was unpopular by offering them some other great bribe which they thought would be popular. If that were true with regard to a measure of first-class importance, and especially a measure like Home Rule, which, when voted, cannot be recalled, this two years' delay is useless. I ask Gentlemen opposite to consider how the proposal is going to work in their favour. We are told that we spend a Session of Parliament in passing one of these great Bills, that it is rejected on the Second Reading in another place, and that we have to begin our work over again. The Government have a mandate, but it is of no use unless this House three times repeats its Bill. How long are you going to stand it? You invite the House of Lords—to use the argument of the Chief Secretary—by so defining their powers to exercise those powers by restricting their action at large, by limiting it to certain specific points—you invite them to exercise those powers within those limits on every possible occasion. The argument has really been stated better than I can put it by the Chief Secretary for Ireland in an illuminating passage. At the present time the House of Lords has large and undefined powers, but everybody knows that Members of the House of Lords, even if they be as keen Conservatives as Members sitting on these benches, do not exercise those powers exactly as they would exercise them if they were Members of the Opposition. They recognise that, strong as their powers are, and that strong as individual convictions may be, there are times when those powers must not be used, and must give way to the general feeling of the country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am glad of that cheer. I carry the whole House with me. But you deprive them of these large and undefined powers. You substitute in their place some narrow powers, specifically defined. They have no longer got to ask themselves, as Members of the Second Chamber, what is the wish of the country, how far the country will support them, or whether they, as Members of the Second Chamber, must or must not forego their individual convictions. The House of Commons puts into the Constitution such and such powers, and do you not think they will use them? Do you not think that if they get these restricted powers they will use them for what they are worth, far more frequently than they do their larger powers now, and that they will hold up for two years many a measure which under other circumstances they could pass through in one year.

There is a slight breach between the Labour party and the Liberal party. Labour Members, at any rate, agree with my diagnosis. I say that while this safeguard is useless from the point of view of fighting a great deal on principle, it would be irritating and intolerable to the supporters of the Government, hampered at every turn, checked at every moment, made to repeat twice every measure, before it becomes law. How long will such a system endure? I come back to the Prime Minister. His great safeguard is this delay. Poor as I believe it to be, how long would he or this House maintain it? What is to prevent a majority of this House from abandoning it the day after it is set up. The Prime Minister says that to call this Single-Chamber Government is one of the most unsubstantial nightmares that ever afflicted the imagination. I carry the House with me to this extent, that if the Single Chamber has power to do anything, then the country where that Single Chamber exists is under Single-Chamber Government. Nobody will deny that. Under this Bill, the Single Chamber has power to do anything. It has only got to have two years' delay, and it has only to repeat its measure three times, and if that prove too much, if they find that irritating and intolerable—as hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway already declare it will be—the first thing they have got to do is to repeal the restriction, so that instead of passing the Bill three times you would only have to pass it once. If this Bill passes, this House certainly will be supreme, and be alone in its supremacy. It, and it alone, can make and unmake at its will, can destroy every institution in the country, and alter every fundamental law. It will, if I read the signs of the times aright, among the first uses of its power, seek to perpetuate the existence of the present majority by jerrymandering the electoral law.

I say that the security on which the Prime Minister relies is a poor one. There is one last reason that he brings forward which he seems to think has overwhelming force. After all, he says, if the House of Commons is rash enough to pass legislation in defiance of the will of the country, another House of Commons can and will repeal it. Yes, that will be true of much legislation. For the ordered course of moderate reform you will substitute the quick advance and equally quick reaction. But there are some measures, and those which deserve the weightiest deliberation, for which that remedy is not available. You may repeal a Budget, if you like; you may repeal a scheme of fiscal reform, a Tariff system, although neither is done very easily. If it be the will of the people you can grant Home Rule, and establish a separate Parliament in Ireland under your Single Chamber system; but how can any other Chamber ever repeal it. Or, if you maintain a paper supremacy, you may assert your authority to veto, as you please, the laws which that new Parliament make, or cancel or to blot out its existence just as you called it into existence. These are fine boasts. Once you have established an Independent Parliament, with or without the will of the people, you never can recall the gift, fatal though it may be to both parties, except at the cost of civil war. You substitute the powers of revolution for the powers of reform, and you enter upon a course of violence from which our institutions have hitherto been happily safeguarded. The Prime Minister opened this Debate in a speech of moderate tone, and passages in which were not of an uncompromising or unfriendly nature. He has often referred to the work of what was called the Constitutional Conference. I agree that every member of that Conference, no matter with what reluctance he may have entered into it, showed that he was ready to the best of his ability to find a national solution for a great national question, and no one will think, and no one will affirm, that the members of that Conference passed hours in discussion, and months in thought, without having seen that on some points, at any rate, we were not parties as widely divided as might at first appear. I am sure that if that spirit, the spirit of the Conference, prevails, there is still room for a national settlement. We will co-operate with you if you will accept co-operation in the reform of the Second Chamber. We are not afraid of making it more popular or of recruiting it, in part, at any rate, direct from among the people. What we value are not the privileges of individual Members, but the independence of the body as a whole, and if, having so reformed that Chamber, you will go on to ask whether a better means cannot be found than we have hitherto enjoyed for harmonising divergent views expressed on the two sides of the Lobby, then I think that this House might find wide ground of agreement, at any rate among its more moderate sections. By the method of a Joint Session, rendered far easier by previous reform of the Constitution of the other House, and for which, indeed, that previous reform is a necessary foundation, by the method of a Joint Session in ordinary cases, by the method of direct appeal to the people—not excluded by the Prime Minister, though scoffed at by the Home Secre- tary, in certain grave cases, you might adjust, without all this irritating delay, without all this necessity for repeating over and over again, preconceived opinion on the part of this House, you might settle the major portion of our differences. On such lines I say, and if that is the spirit in which the Government approach this question, we may yet reach a national settlement. Nothing less than a national settlement will be permanent, but if the last word in the councils of the party rests, as the last word of the Debate last week did, with the Home Secretary, if there is to be no compromise, and if this Bill is flung on the Table of this House this year, as it was on the Table of another House last year, to be taken or left unaltered, unamended, unimproved, then no compromise is possible. No compromise is possible, and you will achieve no settlement. This Bill cannot pass if your last word is said by this Bill; you batter in vain against the walls of a Constitution which has grown with our growth, which has, with all its defects, brought to the service of the State every element of national greatness, and which has known how to preserve order in the midst of progress, and defend and reform against revolution.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The SECRETARY Of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane)

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman, there is one quality I think which we admire, and I think increasingly so. He speaks with force, with energy, and with conviction, and shows that the qualities of debate are sometimes, at all events, hereditary; and we seem to hear something of the force and the gifts which we used to admire, and admire sometimes most when we most profoundly differed from the arguments which the speech contained. But in some parts at any rate of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman I think his very qualities brought about certain defects. He began by speaking, I thought rather unconsideredly, of the introduction of modifications into unwritten Constitutions, as though that were something quite new. I agree with him in deprecating written amendments to unwritten Constitutions. It would be infinitely better if we could remain under an unwritten Constitution. I think that has always been the sense of the Nation, but there have been periods and crises when that was impossible, and the result has been whenever the liberties of this House have been infringed written amendments have been introduced. Surely the right hon. Gentleman recalls the Bill of Eights, the Act of Settlement, the Mutiny Act, and even, to take a comparatively recent and humdrum measure, the Exchequer and Audit Act. These are illustrations of the introduction of written amendments into an unwritten Constitution. The right hon. Gentleman passed from that to say that our mandate was obscure, an argument which he founded on certain chance utterances of various Members of this House who had referred to other questions than the Parliament Bill. Did he ever hear of a Parliament being returned without some mention of other questions? Did he ever hear of a Parliament with an emphasis so distinct and so unmistakeable on the presentation of a single issue to the country for acceptance, to carry into effect by the majority which would be returned. The right hon. Gentleman went on to compare this question to the question of Woman's Suffrage. He said there might be a majority for Woman's Suffrage, a question on which there has been so little putting of it before the country that the two Front Benches are so divided upon it that it cannot be put forward by one party more than the other, and must be left to be dealt with by the general sense of the House.

The right hon. Gentleman went on to speak of the party which sits on this side of the House in a way which seemed to me to suggest that he knew a good deal more about it than we do ourselves. He said in one sentence that we could not possibly carry the Second Chamber reform, and on the other hand he went on to say that this was such a tyrannous and powerful Government that it could carry anything. Those two things cannot really be true. I come back to this, that the real argument of the right hon. Gentleman against the Bill is the same argument which was in the mind, and was expressed the other day by the Leader of the Opposition, an argument which, I think, rests upon a fallacy, and a fallacy which I shall try to describe and disentangle briefly. The right hon. Gentleman speaks as though this Bill was a Bill which contained the whole of the policy of the Government, and not merely a necessary and indispensable step, a step which is necessary and indispensable on account of the situation. It is not of our seeking this situation. Do you think that we should not have been content to go on with the House of Lords as it was if the House of Lords would have left us alone? Do you think that we wished really to raise these difficult, entangled, constitutional questions which we have to face? Why, Sir, this Bill is forced upon us as the instrument without which we cannot make any further progress, and the reason why the Government stands by it, and why the Government is willing to imperil its fortunes on this Bill, is because without this Bill we cannot make any step forward, either in the direction of settling the constitutional question or in the direction of those other reforms, reforms connected with Ireland, reforms connected with elections and redistribution, reforms connected with the congestion of the business of this House which has become a scandal. The reason for this Bill is that because without this Bill we cannot make any progress with the task which has been assigned to us by the Nation, and I believe that the reason why the Nation has somewhat emphatically said: "You shall have the powers contained in this Bill" is because the Nation realises the situation in which we have been placed to be a situation not of our seeking.

A new departure. It is a new departure to try to settle the relations between the two Houses of Parliament in a written form. I have already said I regret the necessity of that departure, but if you cannot any longer trust to the silken threads of unwritten usage, if you find the other Chamber confounding legal rights with constitutional rights, if you find that that Chamber breaks through those silken restrictions, and insists upon its legal pound of flesh, then I say that no Government that respects itself, no Government which is in earnest with its task, can do anything else than introduce a measure such as this which seeks to give a chance to the will of what is, after all, the directly representative House to prevail. The proper function of a Second Chamber is one to which we on this side of the House—most of us, I think probably a large majority of us—attach great value. A Second Chamber is, if not essential, at least desirable. My main fear of a Single Chamber is not the ordinary fear; it is not that I dread what it would do, but I think this practical and cautious Nation would make it so Conservative that we should probably make very little progress with it. I am strongly in favour of a Second Chamber, and I am strongly in favour of the Preamble of this Bill, because not only does it lead to a Second Chamber, but it points to some security against the repeal of the provisions of the measure with which we are dealing. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite announce not obscurely what their intentions are if we stand by this Bill and regard it as anything else than a stepping-stone to something beyond. I am strongly in favour of something beyond it. I should like to see that something beyond it aimed at in the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman concluded in that eloquent peroration in which he spoke of a National settlement. I should like to see a National settlement, but before we can get it we must be in a position to negotiate. I appeal to the sense of fairness of hon. Gentlemen opposite to realise what the situation is people are placed in who are forced to negotiate without any instrument in their hands. I remember as to Tariff Reform we heard a very great deal at one time of a "big revolver." I do not like revolvers; I am essentially a man of peace.

5.0 P.M.

But I do not want to go into negotiations of this magnitude without being in a position to negotiate on equal terms. The very essence of our case for this Bill is that without it we cannot negotiate on anything approaching equal terms. Speaking for myself, I am not quite sure that we shall be able to negotiate on equal terms even with this Bill, but our position will be better than it is to-day. This Bill is, therefore, an indispensable preliminary to our making any progress. Given a basis of anything like equality, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman there is a great deal to be said for the best men of the nation calmly considering the matter in common. A Second Chamber popularly constituted would be a sympathetic Second Chamber—a sympathetic Chamber which, like the perfect wife of the poet, would counsel, warn, and demand, but still not be in the position of the dominating authority. Such a partner would be sympathetic, and when a Bill was sent back for reconsideration, when suggestions for revision were made, when points were brought to notice which had been overlooked, we should always have the sense that the matter was being looked at in the light of general opinion, and not in the manner in which some policies have been looked at recently in another place. It is plain that we have reached a stage in which we cannot trust any longer to those silken threads of unwritten usage to which, like the right hon. Gentleman, I would much rather trust if it were possible. You have only to look not merely at recent history, but at past history, to see that. I am not going to argue the incidents between 1832, the date of the great Reform Bill, and 1906; nor am I going to recall the stories of what happened between 1906 and 1909; nor am I going to dwell upon the situation of 1909, when all the silken threads of unwritten usage were cast to the winds. They were fully before the electorate at the recent General Election, and I believe it was largely upon that history and largely upon the conviction which these illustrations inspired, that the verdict was given in so emphatic and definite a fashion by constituencies containing many shades of opinion, and returning Members pledged to various shades of policy.

One thing is satisfactory, and that is that there has been a general admission that a situation has arisen which requires dealing with on a very large scale. I do not think it is the case to say, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite did, that we Liberals picked a quarrel with the other Chamber in 1906. The right hon. Gentleman instanced the Education Bill of 1906. I do not think I was an ungenerous Member of the House about the Education Bill of 1902. I supported it as far as I could. I certainly did not vote against it. I was always very sympathetic in regard to it; but I said at the time what I felt very strongly, that the clergy got too much hold under that Bill, and that it gave a most legitimate grievance to the nonconformists. That was in 1902. When 1906 came, and we sought to put that right, we tried to put it right with a very large body of public opinion at our back, yet that measure was treated by the House of Lords in such a manner that they apparently did not care whether we had a mandate or not. It was they who picked a quarrel with us, and not we with them. But the Leader of the Opposition and the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken had not been niggardly in their admissions that, from whatever reason, a situation has arisen in which the position of the Second Chamber requires reconsideration. The right hon. Gentleman was careful in the extent to which he went in regard to the elimination of the hereditary element. He left a great deal open in the concluding words of his speech. I think it is very valuable that at all events we should have got so far as to be able to look at the matter to such an extent from a common point of view. If we agree that a Second Chamber is a very useful thing, that that Second Chamber should be sympathetic, that its powers should be confined to revision, suggestion, and delay, but not to over-riding the will of the electorate, then we have got a good way further on, and we have made great progress from those days when Mr. Disraeli, in, I think, one of those brilliant letters to "The Times," in 1836, declared that the House of Lords at that date compared very favourably with the representative institution, the House of Commons, which in his view represented only 300,000 electors, and he could not conceive that a time would come when the composition of the Second Chamber would be materially altered, as it was, in his view, really as representative as the other. Disraeli himself falsified his own prediction in 1867. Now we have reached a stage in which we recognise that the centre of gravity of the Constitution has altered, and the balance requires to be redressed.

The fact that the right hon. Gentleman should have proposed the Referendum shows the complete recognition of the necessity for a change in the situation which has taken place of late. We all agree, I think, that the change must be on a large scale, and it was in order to get that change that the action was taken at the last two elections that was taken. We on this side have no power to help ourselves. We cannot call the House of Lords to the bar of public opinion. We cannot by any process of General Election review the constitution of that House or change the composition of the Second Chamber as it stands at the present time. Therefore, we are powerless. You, on the other hand, have no difficulty with your Second Chamber, because it always has a large-majority in agreement with yourselves. That situation has become intolerable. It was to put an end to the deadlock that this Bill was virtually brought forward last April after a great deal of preliminary discussion on resolutions; it was again brought forward and made the issue at the General Election; almost the main issue at the election was the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.

I quite agree that when you come to discuss the purposes for which the Bill is to be used you are dealing with what ought to be one large scheme. There are a great many things in it. The condition of the Constitution has led to a break- down in this House. Our business is congested; the problem of Ireland remains unsolved; the problem of Reform has hardly been touched; and there are other questions which remain to be dealt with, and they can only be effectively dealt with when parties are put on something like a footing of equality. That is the purpose for which at two General Elections, not one, we have brought forward the principle that the Veto of the Second Chamber must be restricted. That was, after all, pretty distinctly before the country, even at the time of the Budget election. At the last election it was put forward in the very shape and form in which it is embodied in this Bill. Since the Reform Bill of 1832, which the right hon. Gentleman admitted was a good case of a Bill being definitely before the country, I do not recall any case in which the issue was so specifically submitted to the electors, and in which a majority, composed of men of different tendencies and of different frames of mind, converged so unmistakeably on the demand that a single measure should be passed into law. If this Bill is passed we have pledged ourselves not to treat it as a final step. On the contrary, we have pledged ourselves to look upon it as a stepping-stone to things beyond. We have pledged ourselves to use it as a stepping-stone to such reforms of the Constitution as I have been speaking about, and notably that great one which the Prime Minister said in March last would brook no delay—the establishment of a Second Chamber of a character and composition which at any rate should be very much more in accordance with the ideas I have put forward than anything that exists at the present time. In the light of that I say that the argument of the right hon. Gentleman really rests on a fallacy. This Bill is an indispensable preliminary. It is the instrument without which we cannot get any further. It is in that sense, and it is for that limited purpose alone, that we put it forward at this juncture in our history.

Now I come to the Bill itself. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has done sufficient justice to it. I do not think he said anything about a very important part of it. We recognise that when you are putting the Second Chamber in a position in which its powers are limited you ought to make as sure as you can that the First Chamber is responsible to the general will. For that purpose there is a limitation by two years of the duration of Parliament, which will virtually mean a review of the position of parties in the House of Commons after four years. If that is so, what serious risk is there of any House of Commons doing the terrible things of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke in such magniloquent and pictorial language? What chance is there of their carrying measures for which the electors have given no mandate? Do you suppose that Parliaments are really returned and Governments are composed in such a fashion that they will take up things which have not been discussed, and that, as their first business they will deal with matters for which they have no authority from the country in preference to matters which were discussed at the election and for which they have authority? If they confine themselves to things for which they have a mandate it is practically only in the first two years they can make the powers of this Bill effective. There is another aspect of the matter. A very important part of this Bill is that which provides for three rejections. I agree with the view that the necessity for three rejections may be a very serious matter. I do not think that this Bill is an ideal instrument to work with. I would very much rather have a sympathetic Second. Chamber where we could bring matters of deadlock to an issue much more quickly than we can by the machinery of this Bill, and, as we have indicated in the Preamble, we do not exclude the possibility of that in any settlement. But I do think it is a very great power to put in the hands of a Second Chamber that they should be able to reject a measure three times. It is only when a Bill has sufficient force of public opinion behind it that it can go forward four times that it will become law under the powers of this Bill.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

made a remark which was inaudible to the official reporter.

Mr. HALDANE

I agree; two rejections, and after the third it becomes law. Another provision which has been rendered necessary is that with regard to finance. I do not think enough has been made of the real reform which that provision makes. We should not have done our work unless we had tried to prevent a recurrence of the situation which occurred in 1909. It is perfectly plain, if you take the practical point of view, that Ministers, and particularly those at the head of the great spending Departments, cannot serve two sets of masters or two boards of directors. We pass our Estimates, and get authority to act by Resolutions of the House of Commons long before any Finance Bill becomes law, and in that way we are enabled to carry on the business of the country. But if there are two Chambers, each of equal authority on Finance; if there is another Chamber, which is bound to upset all our Resolutions, Resolutions embarked on, and on which we can act without waiting for the necessary Bills to confirm them; then it means that the country is plunged into the confusion which we witnessed last year. I cannot help thinking that the avoidance of this alone would justify this Bill. If the situation is one which renders a remedy necessary what other course is there than the course I have described? This will put an instrument into the hands of the Liberal party with which that party may proceed to the execution of those reforms of which I have spoken. What suggestion has the right hon. Gentleman opposite to make? He offers one alternative—the Referendum. He suggests that the Referendum will be the means by which the work, not adequately done by the Second Chamber, will be performed. I do not think that there has been nearly enough discussion on the proposal for the Referendum. For the very good reason that we do not know what it is. I have tried to think it out in detail. I have tried to think what substitute there is in it for the principle of the Bill which we are now discussing; what the alternative policy is that the right hon. Gentleman points out? I find the very greatest difficulty in making it out. Supposing the question of a Bill is to be sent down to the electors, now is it to be got before them? Is a circular to be sent to them by post? Are they to be asked to say, "Do you vote 'yes' or 'no' in favour of a Tariff Reform Bill, or whatever Bill it may be?" Are these Bills to be explained to them, and to be explained to them fully? If they are to be explained to them fully, then you will have all the cost, sacrifice, and disturbance of a General Election, with no certainty as to the issue, for voters will vote for their party and for a certain candidate and on other grounds than the one in the Bill before them. On the other hand, if you take the alternative course and simply send down the questions by post I can only say, speaking for my own constituency—a not unintelligent constituency, with which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition is acquainted—they will refuse to record their votes, because they will say they cannot conscientiously pronounce on a question which has never come adequately before them. There is only one way, and one way alone, in which to ascertain the general will of the country, that is through a representative institution. Representative institutions do not mean government by Referendum. They mean government by people who have been deliberately sent by the electors, after the electors have ascertained their views; people whom the electors trust to come to this House to discuss the details of that which cannot be gone into otherwise. It means that the Members must have the privilege of exercising their discretion on behalf of those who have returned them. The electors themselves would be the first to say that they have not the knowledge and the time to master these questions and to do justice to them off-hand. If you are going to break into that system, that historical and constitutional system of this country, then you are proposing a departure further reaching by far than any in this Bill, and consequently further than you apprehend. In human institutions nothing is perfect. Our representative institutions are no more free from their defects than any other. But I do think that it is not wise to try and tamper with what is working well. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen sitting opposite aspire to lead the democracy, and to lead it on the basis of guiding its counsels and trusting it. Surely your appeal to that democracy is one which would be best made by respecting the institutions which the democracy has inherited, and to which it has become accustomed, and which have made it a real democracy? This Bill is the first indispensable step to checking the retrograde movement which has been in operation during the last five years. I should have thought that to accept it frankly, to accept its principles frankly, was something which might have been expected from both parties. Whatever your view, we who sit on this side would be false to our mission and to our duty if we took any other course than risk, if necessary, our whole fortunes in the passage of this Bill into law.

Mr. TOBIN

Our objection to this measure is justified in the words of the Amendment proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) which reads that this Bill "offers no safeguard against the passage into law of grave changes without the consent and contrary to the will of the people." There is only one objection with which I propose to deal, quite concisely. I feel honestly and earnestly that the Clause in the proposed Bill is bad which says that any measure shall automatically pass into law after it is rejected by the House of Lords, provided that within twenty-four months of its first introduction into this House it shall pass this House three times, but always—this is the point of my remarks—in the same identical terms. I think that proposed clause is a clause that if passed into law will really and truly operate as an absolute bar against Members of this House turning out the best work of which they are capable. I am convinced of this, that a Government that wishes a measure to be forced into law after it has been twice rejected by the other House will be tempted to adhere closely—in fact they must adhere closely—and absolutely to the text of the Bill as at first passed if this automatic clause is to operate at all. They must have the whole old original Bill, and nothing but it. There must be no material alteration, no alteration in a single clause, line, or word, no matter how full the discussion may have been in this House during the intervening months, no matter how fully the matter may have been discussed in the other House, or by politicans of all parties out of doors, by wiseheads out of doors—who are untrammelled by party ties—no matter how all this discussion may have disclosed imperfections in the Bill; and that the Bill is capable of improvement. The Government, if it wants to force the Bill through, must give the go-by to all suggested improvements, and stereotype the text of the Bill as it originally left this House as the acme of human wisdom. It is for this reason that I protest against the clause which, in effect, aims at the dignity of the House, and is a blow to the efficiency with which we ought to turn out our work. To my mind that clause puts a premium upon obstinacy and blind adherence to the text of the original Bill, and to the first thoughts of the Government—and first thoughts are not always the wisest thoughts. There is one constant illustration from the political history of the past few years that will serve my argument. An Education Bill was introduced into this House in the spring of 1906, by the Government, which came into office in January of that year. That Education Bill passed this House by a huge majority. It was said that that Bill embodied the will of the people. That Bill imposed upon the public elementary schools a particular form of religion called Undenominationalism. It is certain that that Education Bill, said to represent the will of the people, pleased no section of educationalists whatever. The Roman Catholic Church would have none of it. Many members of the Church of England were bitterly opposed to it. Many eminent Nonconformists gave it the cold shoulder because it did not go far enough. Secularists were disappointed in it because it recognised a form of religious teaching in the schools. Is it not certain that that Education Bill did not really represent the will of the people? If it did, all I can say is that the will of the people wobbled, because there were three subsequent Education Bills introduced into this House contradictory to the first one, and contradictory to each other. None of these three ever got through this House. If this Parliament Bill, which we are debating to-night had been law in the spring of 1906, that first Education Bill would have become enforced law in the spring of 1908 against the wishes of a great majority of the electors of this country. The Government might retort to my argument, "Oh, well, we would not really be so obstinate as all that; we would really take into account that full discussion had revealed imperfections in the Bill as it left the House first, and had shown that there were improvements which might be introduced." That is all very well. But the Government would have no power to introduce improvements, or to leave out imperfections if they wished that Bill to become law. All they would be able to do would be to say: "We cannot embody these improvements ourselves in this Bill because it would destroy the identity of the Bill and then we could not force it into law. All that we can do (the Government would say) is to suggest to the House of Lords that they might perhaps introduce these wisers counsels by way of amendment." That is not an answer to my argument.

The position would be that this House would be passing for the third time a measure which by its own admission would be imperfect, and capable of improvement, and begging the House of Lords to introduce such improvements, and the House of Lords would be in this position of having rejected the Bill twice, because they thought it wrong in principle, and they would have rejected it a third time, be- cause it was still wrong in principle. Then you would have this monstrous result arising that that Bill could be forced into law by receiving the assent of the Crown despite the fact that the House of Commons had declared it imperfect, and the House of Lords has declared it wrong in principle. It seems to me that this is not real business, and to adopt the words of the Prime Minister in a Debate in this House the other day, "It would not be walking in the domain of reality or by the light of commonsense."

I cordially agree with the words of the Amendment, which say that we on this side of the House would heartily welcome a measure of reform of the present Constitution of the House of Lords. We recognise that this constitutional question is one big problem in two parts—one the reform of the Constitution of the House of Lords, and the other a definition of the relations between the two Houses. We want to tackle the big problem at once. The Government say they must tackle it piecemeal. We say that when you are rebuilding the Constitution the rebuilding should go on without interruption or interregnum until the coping stone is fixed. The Government have a big majority, why can they not do that. We would honestly welcome a measure of reform of the House of Lords. What we want to see is that that measure shall give equal treatment to men of all parties, and we are earnest and honest when we say that we want Radicals be have every bit as good opportunities in the House of Lords when they get a majority as the Tories. We want equal opportunities for all. Why does this Government, when its Members profess to want reform of the House of Lords, not press forward with that measure? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) pointed to the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, when winding up the Debate on the First Reading of this Bill the other night, the right hon. Gentleman was asked, when the Government proposed to introduce a measure for the reform of the House of Lords, and the only answer he gave on behalf of the Government was this: "When, and if there is a general desire that it should be done."

The Government know perfectly well that hon. Members from Ireland do not care a bit whether there is reform of the House of Lords or not. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the Labour party hate the very idea of a Second Chamber, and when, in the course of his speech, the hon. and learned Member for Walton (Mr. F. E. Smith) asked the Home Secretary when were the Government going to introduce this Bill for the reform of the House of Lords, the only reply the Home Secretary would give was this: "How I can I tell this House the intentions of the Government in answer to a chance question such as that." It was not a chance question. It is the question we have been putting to the Government for months and months, and to which we have got no answer, and we do not see any chance of getting an answer. Can anyone wonder that we should suspect the Government's intention in this matter. We suspect them on good ground. They will not state their case. They mean to postpone this question of the reform of the House of Lords indefinitely. It may be years and it may be for ever. We on this side of the House want this question settled now, we want the whole question settled, and the country wants the whole question settled, and settled in both its parts. The Government mean to put off the settlement, but we are determined to do what we can to effect a settlement of this question.

Mr. WILLIAM BRACE

May I be permitted first of all to explain to the right hon. Gentleman opposite that no one was more surprised than myself to hear of the statement in my speech, made upon the last occasion. It was so contrary to what was contained in my own election address that I am sure I need only state that argument, and the right hon. Gentleman will accept my assurance upon the point. It seems to me we are all reformers now and that both sides of the House are in active competition as to which shall display most enthusiasm in the policy of the Reformation of the House of Lords. If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am afraid he and his party rather suspect this business. They have had so many opportunities in the past. They have been in power for so many years. They have had the chance of carrying out their convictions, if they were sincere in them, upon so many occasions, that it makes one really doubt as to what policy they are pursuing at the present time in moving an Amendment calling for reformation of the House of Lords.

I notice in some of the speeches made on this question rather a tendency to classify Labour Members of this House, as if they only represented men who work and win their bread with their hands. As a matter of fact, we are a great cosmopolitan division of varying interests, and while we are constant, and, in the language of the right hon. Gentleman, avowedly in favour of Single Chamber Government, we come here to represent our Constituents, and, to the best of our abilities, we shall endeavour to make our speeches and to record our votes in accordance with the views of the electors who sent us here. What fear ought we to have of Single Chamber Government? It seems to me we need not go to the ends of the earth to find arguments in favour of the fairness and reasonableness of Single-Chamber Government. This country itself has had a very substantial period of Single-Chamber Government in the two Parliaments prior to the return of the Liberal Administration of 1906, when, to all intents and purposes, this country had Single-Chamber Government. Whatever the majority in this House did in those days, the Conservative majority in the House of Lords readily carried into law. It is quite true that the House of Lords were then in existence, but they were inactive, and when the supporters of the House of Lords today make claim that there is danger, unless there is such an institution as the House of Lords to act as a check upon hasty legislation, I would ask where was the House of Lords at the time when the Conservative Administration carried a measure for uprooting the School Board system in this country, though they were returned to power upon the single issue only of settling the war in South Africa. If the House of Lords acted up to its functions as being a check on legislation on which the will of the people was not taken, they assuredly never would have allowed such a measure as that to pass. I am well within the recollection of many Members of this House when I say that nothing was talked in the Election of 1900 about Education Reform, and no one ever heard during that election of a scheme for uprooting the School Board. An hon. Gentleman opposite seems to dissent, but he must have been living in an age other than what we were. Is he not aware that there are no School Boards at the present time. Is he not aware that the Conservative Government of that day were returned to power upon the single issue of settling the war in South Africa, and that one of the measures they introduced was a scheme to wipe out of existence the management of schools by School Boards? The House of Lords were inactive, and they laid aside the position now claimed for them, of acting as a check upon hasty legislation.

We are in favour of Single-Chamber Government, because we fail to see any danger in it, and because we believe it is infinitely better to have short Parliaments in direct touch with the people, elected by the people, and answerable to the people, than any system such as that now in existence by which the House of Lords has power to defeat legislation carried by the people's representatives. Not only had we an example of Single-Chamber Government in the ten years previous to 1906, but have we not still Single-Chamber Government in connection with the finances of this country. The House of Lords, until the Budget of 1909, never assumed the right to interfere with the finances of the United Kingdom. The House of Commons was, and I think now is, granted to be supreme in connection with finance, and to all intents and purposes in connection with finance we have Single-Chamber Government. What more important department of State can there be than that of finance? Do not all schemes of social reform depend upon the state of the Exchequer? Before you can have any scheme of dealing with unemployment or assurance against sickness, or any scheme of social reform, you must have finance. Yet the House of Commons is the supreme authority in connection with finance. Assuredly if you can trust the House of Commons as a Single Chamber to deal with finance you can trust the House of Commons to deal with other matters under a Single Chamber system of Government. It is the House of Commons that has to find the money, and is the sole authority to set up national defence. The Army and the Navy depend for their supplies upon the Votes of the House of Commons, and the House of Commons alone. If the House of Commons can be trusted in connection with the Army and the Navy, surely there can be no danger in introducing the House of Commons as a Single Chamber in dealing with the whole of the affairs of State and other matters. But it is said, "Why not give the House of Lords a chance now, as they are ready to reform themselves?" I have looked through their schemes of reform. In the scheme of Lord Rosebery I notice that the principle of heredity is to be substantially recognised. I notice the same principle is to have a permanent place in connec- tion with the scheme of Lord Curzon. Even in the scheme suggested by the Leader of the Opposition the principle of heredity is to be recognised. I say that a nation has no right to have favourites either in men or institutions. I am not interested in arguing either the vices or the virtues of heredity. It is sufficient for me to point out that the hereditary principle, as embodied in the House of Lords, works to the disadvantage of the people and the democracy. Far be it from me to say that there are no brilliant men in the House of Lords, because there are. A distinguished Member of the House of Lords, Lord St. Aldwyn, has rendered most valuable services. What I say is that even if the personnel of the House of Lords was made up wholly of men of the standard of Lord St. Aldwyn my opposition to the continuation of that body would be exactly the same, because I stand for the right of people to control themselves. I believe in Single-Chamber Government, but rather than have a House of Lords as it is I welcome the Bill of the Government. If we are to have a Second Chamber, then let us have one that will be responsible to the people, as we are in this House. It is an insult to our intelligence after fighting an expensive Parliamentary election, running into hundreds and thousands of pounds, that we should come here and find ourselves vetoed out of existence by a Chamber responsible to nobody. If there is to be a Second Chamber then it ought to be representative of the nation as a whole. If the Established Church is to be represented in any future Second Chamber then the claims for the representation of Nonconformity is unanswerable; if capital is to be represented then the claim for the representation of the worker is unanswerable; and if the landowners are to have representation then I say that the claim of the landless to representation is also unanswerable. I noticed the other day that a Noble Lord, endeavouring to pay a sort of testimonial to the House of Lords, said that the Members of the Upper Chamber owned one-third of the land of the United Kingdom. If the Noble Lord who made that statement would only look at this question as I do then he would see that that is the one thing more than another which disqualifies them. Land is the basis of all human activity. The people must have land or they would perish. If you want a colliery, a factory, a railway, a dock, or land for the erection of houses for the working classes, you must have land. Our future necessi- ties demand that we must have much more land reform in the future than in the past. If we have to proceed by way of land legislation, what a delightfully partial Assembly the House of Lords would be. I have heard some talk about a class war. As a Labour leader I have never taken kindly to the doctrine of a class war. In the House of Lords you have class representation, which in any less enlightened Assembly would be called unfair. What seems to be quite proper and in order in the House of Lords would in a Labour gathering be looked upon as an offence against the community. The action of the House of Lords in connection with many of our Bills has been the action of a class. I hold strongly that it is not to the advantage of the commonwealth that there should be in authority a Chamber with a power—prejudiced as it certainly is, and as it has been proved to be—to veto the work accomplished by the representatives of the people of this House.

Hon. Gentlemen opposite say if you will in future leave the House of Lords alone there will be none of this trouble, because if there is any difficulty then the people should be referred to by the process of the Referendum. When I read about the Referendum I thought it was awfully clever and good electioneering capital I waited patiently to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) state whether the Referendum was only for the last election or for the future. The word referendum is a real good word, and it rolls well off the tongue. It can be made to mean so little and sound so much. In the arranging of a Referendum the all important question is the terms of reference. What is going to be referred? If we have a Referendum in the future will the House of Lords be the final authority to arrange the terms of reference? If so, what hope will the people of this country have of any reform in the future? If hon. Gentlemen opposite are seriously in earnest about making the Referendum part of the Constitution of this country, I myself have no objection. When I go into arbitration I am always in favour of it, but I am always very careful about the terms of reference, because that is the important part of it. I am also very careful as to the authority that is going to draw up the terms of reference, and I never go into arbitration and allow one side only to draw up the terms of reference. I say to those who stand by the Referendum join with us in putting the House of Lords out of the way as a final authority, make the Referendum a part of the Constitution, draw up carefully what is to be referred and you will find at least one member of the Labour party sympathetic towards the Referendum. The democracy of Great Britain are not quite so easily misled as they used to be in the old days. The right hon. Gentleman who moved this Amendment and hon. Gentlemen opposite fail to remember in dealing with the democracy of this country that we have had forty years of free education. [An HON. MEMBER: "Who gave it to them?"] I care not who gave it, but you cannot educate men and enslave them. As Labour leaders we have lived in vain if we have not advocated in connection with the legislative institutions of this country freedom and opportunity to work out that fuller destiny which is the inheritance of the labouring classes. You have taught our people to think in order to ascertain root causes, and we decline to be sidetracked by any talk of a Referendum. I am not in favour of the Preamble of this Bill, but I support it because it comes nearer to what I would like to have than the existing system. They say that the passing of this Bill will bring us a stage nearer Single-Chamber Government. I wish it would, but my belief is the direct contrary. If there is established in this country a Second Chamber constituted upon a basis which is not respresentative of the whole of the people; if there is established a Second Chamber over which the people have no control, then I am afraid there is no hope for Single-Chamber Government. I say frankly that I accept this Bill, not as meeting my idea of Single-Chamber Government, but as a concrete, practical proposal, taking away the Veto power of an unrepresentative House and giving to the people and to the democracy of this country that charter of freedom under which they will enter into a fuller manhood and womanhood than what they have hitherto enjoyed. It is too often thought that this country depends upon having a few privileged families with wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and privileged over and above all men. It is my profound conviction, speaking on behalf of the democracy, that in the great destiny of this Nation the determining factor will be found to be the standard of life in the cottage home. It is because I believe that the wiping away of the Veto will make possible the passing into law of great measures of reform that the Labour party has been sent to this House. For these reasons, on behalf of the Labour party, I oppose this Amendment and unreservedly support the Government.

Mr. REGINALD NEVILLE

When you were elected to the Chair, Mr. Speaker, not long ago, you claimed the indulgence of the House, and you stated that you had heard every other Member of the House make a simlar claim. I now claim that indulgence for myself. I do not propose to follow the hon. Member who has just sat down in what he has said. The view which he takes up is that of a person who desires to have Single-Chamber Government, and I can quite understand the views he has expressed are just what you would expect from men whose opinions are solely in favour of Single-Chamber Government. I agree with what the hon. Member said when he was discussing the composition of the Upper Chamber. He stated he hoped we should find in that Chamber a place for Members of all creeds and all classes in this country. I fully agree with the hon. Member's contention that a Second Chamber, in its reformed state, ought to find room for Labour Members. If it is to be a fair Chamber, and command the respect of the country, it seems to me that all classes ought to be represented therein, and not only all classes, but all creeds. Earlier in the Debate the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire offered the olive branch to hon. Members opposite, and he said what I think no one on this side of the House would deny or object to, that we on this side are quite prepared to co-operate with hon. Members opposite if they are willing to bring in concurrently with this Bill a measure for the purpose of reforming the constitution of the House of Lords.

6.0 P.M.

If right hon. and hon. Members on the opposite side are willing to accept that, they will then be masters of the situation, and consequently will be able, with our help and with the good-will of all the sections of the House, to pass a measure which will have some chance of meeting the general views of the country at large. This is not a party question; it is a national question. I observe that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Haldane), whom we were all on this side of the House very pleased to hear on this particular matter, stated that the Bill was for the purpose of checking a retrograde movement. I take it that means that the Bill is to prevent deadlocks which interfere with the passing of legislation which may be dear to hon. Members on the opposite side of the House, but which, perhaps, are not viewed so favourably on this side of the House. I should like to quote what the right hon. Gentleman himself said in 1907, in an earlier stage of his career, when this matter was not quite so urgent, and when perhaps his views may have been more unbiassed. The right hon. Gentleman said:— Whenever the nation has been in earnest with a measure the House of Lords has in the end been no permanent obstacle. May I also quote another statement made by a very well-known former Member of this House, who is now Ambassador at Washington? Mr. Bryce said in 1903:— It is said that two Chambers do not always work harmoniously together. My observation on that is that the object of having two Chambers is to secure not that, things shall always work smoothly together between them, but that they shall frequently differ and provide a means of correcting such errors as either may commit. The point, as I understand it, is this: There have been deadlocks, and most right hon. Gentlemen opposite, certainly the Prime Minister, and, I think, also the Secretary of State for War, have stated that the quarrel is not of their seeking, and is, in fact, due to the wilfulness of the Second Chamber, backed up by the Conservative party in this House. The Prime Minister referred to the action of the House of Lords as being guided by political blindness, and said their act in rejecting the Budget—or, as I should prefer to call it, referring the Budget to the people—was an act of political suicide. There have been instances given—instances upon which, perhaps, I am not competent to speak, not being in the House at the time, although I was trying to get in for a number of years—instances such as the Education Bill, the Licensing Bill, the Plural Voting Bill, and a variety of other Bills. I want, if I may, to point out what I conceive to be the system and policy of this country since there has been a due sense of law and justice. I take it the principle has always been that, if great public advantages are to be carried out, they should not be carried at the expense of individuals or of small classes; but that, if you want to have good legislation, which is likely to meet with the approval of the largest number of people in this country and want it to rest on the firmest basis, you must have compromise. The Education Bill of 1906, which has been mentioned by most hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House, was a Bill which pressed extremely hard upon the voluntary schools. The last speaker said that in the election of 1900 nothing was said about the voluntary schools I venture to differ with him. I myself, in my election address in 1900 and at every meeting I addressed, spoke at the greatest length in favour of the voluntary schools, and, so far as I was able to gauge the West Biding of Yorkshire and of Lancashire, the voluntary schools question was a very real question indeed at that time.

The Licensing Bill, again, was a measure which dealt with a very small number of people, and a public benefit was going to be obtained at the expense of a small class. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Are there many publicans in this country? Are there as many publicans as sinners? It is a curious fact that both those sections of the population—the Church and the licence holders—happen to be alleged to be the big supporters of the Conservative party. Another hon. Member alluded to the Trades Disputes Bill, and one right hon. Gentleman mentioned Sir John Lawson Walton, who was a friend of mine, a person for whom I had the greatest possible respect, and for whose memory I have the greatest possible regard. That was mentioned as being an instance of the way the House of Lords acted. There are other considerations which seem to me to arise on the Trades Disputes Bill. It was a Bill, I think, which many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the other side hoped would never be passed by the House of Lords. We know that they did not expect the House of Lords to pass it, because the Bill originally brought in by Sir John Lawson Walton was ruthlessly cut to ribbons. There were many on the other side of the House who hoped the House of Lords would hold the dagger of the assassin so that they might have the opportunity of blaming and reproaching them as murderers. We are told by an hon. Member from Wales that the House of Lords represents vested interests. I submit it represents legal interests and the interests of property, not only of landowners but of all classes. If there is going to be a public advantage it ought not to be at private expense. That applies just as much to the man who through a building society, gets a house which the municipality requires for the purpose of widening as to other things. If it is suggested that a man owning a cottage at the corner of a road which it is required to take over for public purposes is not to get compensation, then I quite agree no Second Chamber is in any sense necessary. Then we come to the Budget and also to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is what he said at the Paragon Music Hall:— Great expenditure was needed. How did we meet it? We met it by taxing great incomes, great fortunes, and the luxuries of all classes. That was our proposal. We sent it to the Lords. What did they demand? That great wealth should be spared— Is that true? that we should pass luxuries untaxed and untolled— Is that true? and the money squandered on luxuries also, and that we should impose a burden on the bread and meat of the people. (Cries of shame). Is that what the House of Lords suggested at the time? There is no one who dare get up in this House and say so. We said 'not an ounce would be taken out of the necessaries of the life of the people.' (Cheers). Of course, there would be cheers. Then the Lords said 'out with your Budget then.' (More cries of shame). And we have come here to ask you to help us to put them out. That is the tone and temper in which this question was introduced to the constituencies. He goes on:— This is how the conflict began. This election is going to make it impossible for an hereditary House ever to reject another. Yet this Government, which has been in office five or six years, have made forty-five peers in that time—one for every six weeks. The Budget was brought in, if I remember rightly, for the purpose of effecting what was proposed by those Bills which were rejected by the House of Lords and which hon. Members opposite, did not desire to submit at all events at that time to the judgment of the people. It was then we heard of swinging duties to be put upon the licence-holders, and of rats in the trap, which, if I may say so, let the cat out of the bag. After that statement about having got the rats in the trap, is it possible for any hon. Gentlemen on the the other side of the House to say that that quarrel was of our seeking. The fact is, the Chancellor of the Exchequer baited the trap, no doubt, as he thought, extremely ingeniously, and then after he had got them into the trap he accused them of having got there. The Prime Minister talked about political suicide, but it seems to me that statement is not one which ought to have been made by him. The Chancellor of the Duchy (Mr. Joseph Pease) quoted Mr. Gladstone's last word to this House before he left, words which many of us who respect Mr. Gladstone's memory regret that he should have made in this House. It was quite true, as was said, that he was an old man in a hurry, but that was no reason why he should have made use of those words. I think we must all agree he was the Hannibal of this business, and we have had a succession of Hannibals. We have had the policy of filling up the cup, of ploughing the sands, and of milking the he-goat. So far from this Bill being based on any suggestion that the quarrel is of our seeking, I think we may with justice say the boot is on the other leg. The next point made was that there have been three elections upon this question. I am quite aware that when you are dealing with mystic things, such as this, the mystic number three is of great advantage. Thrice the brindled eat hath mewed. Harpier cries, 'tis time,' tis time. When you come to consider the cries which were raised at those three elections. I think perhaps there is not so much justification for the statement that there has been three elections on this issue as hon. Members on the other side would suggest. The first cry chiefly was one of Chinese labour and Free Trade, and we had the edifying fact that the right hon. Gentleman who now holds the office of Home Secretary has since told us that that particular cry was terminologically inexact. The second cry was made up of offal and black bread, and it proved to be a very fine cry against the House of Lords. The fast cry was composed of an abuse of the aristocracy and of the hereditary principle. These three elections certainly do not seem to me, in the slightest degree, to bear out the fact of there having been any definite mandate on three occasions for the particular Bill which is now before this House. There may have been, and no doubt was, a mandate, so far as mandates go, for the Bill at the last election. Is not that good enough for right hon. Gentlemen opposite? Why must they go back a long series of years? It seems to me that they are gilding the lily and painting something that it is impossible to improve.

Let us look at the third election, which came upon us last December like a wolf on the fold; the Nationalists' cohorts were gleaming with gold. We had a statement that the Nationalists had been successful in America, and brought back a large sum of money to this country. I do not blame them for it. I find no fault with them on that account; it was only what one might have expected them to hope to do from their point of view. But having money in their pockets, having got the sinews of war behind them, they were ready for the fight. I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen opposite are equally ready for the fight, but let me allude for a moment to the circumstances which were then on the tapis. They wanted the fight; they would not wait. What happened? At the pschycological moment the Conference failed, and we were told that the Conference, having failed, it was necessary to go into the fight. It is always necessary to save one's face when one has to do something which he is not particularly anxious to do. At that moment, also, another thing occurred, which no doubt largely encouraged the Prime Minister, and that was the Walthamstow election, the result of which seemed to show, if it showed anything, that the country was so heartily with the right hon. Gentleman that not only would it come back as the result of another appeal in the same position as before, but that he would be able to repeat the success of 1906. Although that he prayed aloud for that with emphasis, I am not sure there was not another prayer which we did not hear, and that was that he might come back with such a majority as would make him independent of the nationalist party. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) did not on that occasion say "trust Asquith." I think the purport of his speech was that he would take good care there should be no chance of anything being done by the Government which would interfere with his plans. The case was rather that of the American shoemaker who put up an advertisement to the effect that his trust was in God, but that all the rest must pay cash. At any rate, the Prime Minister did not obtain that further emphasis which he desired, and he remains in exactly the same position as before—he has to do exactly what he is told—he has tried what the effect of the change would be and he now conceives with Charles Sedley:— Why should I then seek further store And still make love anew, When change itself can give no more, 'Tis easy to be true. I think we all read with considerable interest the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Mile End. The right hon. Gentleman on that occasion was in a most enthusiastic mood. He was speaking in a constituency in which there were very few Territorial magnates or Members of the House of Lords, and in a breezy way he divided the sheep from the goats, he divided the two sides in politics. He introduced a Member from Australia who cropped up suddenly from the other side of the world and took a lively interest in the politics of this country. He told us that it would be an improper thing for souls on one side to be ruined by what he was pleased to term clods on the other. It seems to me that any person, even the right hon. Gentleman who starts controversies of that sort by making such invidious distinctions between various people of this country and who arrogates to himself and to his side the right to be called souls while others are to be called clods, it seems to be that that is a kind of temper which is not calculated to produce anything for the good either of the country or of the nation. It may be that hon. Gentlemen opposite are all souls, it may be that we have a Cabinet of souls, it may be that Gentlemen on both sides of the House may be classified as souls of honour, but apparently the clods—the sodden clods—are bodies without souls, only bodies to be burned and souls, if at all, to be damned.

There has been no precedent whatever quoted as far as I am aware in this Debate where any civilised country, with a bicameral system has destroyed the Upper Chamber before substituting a new one except in the case of a revolution. It may be that right hon. Gentlemen opposite do not care for precedents, it may be that they think the gravity of the case is one which does not admit of precedent, but it is important to see that when they obtain a precedent on their own side, they are extremely astute and very eager to quote it. All along the charge made against the House of Lords has been that they have dealt with Bills sent up from this House in an unprecedented manner and in a way contrary to precedent. I submit that the present Bill brought in for the purpose of doing away with the powers of the Second Chamber before you have reformed the composition of that Chamber, can only be described as a method of barbarism. Most hon. Members of this House possess a watch. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] Then borrow one; Lent begins to-morrow. What are the principles of a watch? There are two. There is the mainspring and the escapement. The mainspring, I take it, may be likened to the House of Commons. It is wound up by the constituencies, and unless there be a proper escapement working out the value of the mainspring and enabling it to do its work, we cannot have what is the object of the watch—the ascertainment and registration of correct time. Suppose you remove the escapement of a watch, what is the result? It is that the spring goes off with a buzz; no time is recorded. I would suggest that if any hon. Gentleman finds anything goes wrong with the escapement of his watch he should go to a watchmaker and declare he will have nothing to do with the escapement, but will have a fresh one a month hence. If he waits for that, he will, of course, meantime be unable to know what the time is. In my view that is exactly the position of the Bill now before the House. We have, it is true, according to the Secretary for War, got a guarantee, but that guarantee is not backed up by any definite statement as to when it is to come into operation. Could they have such a definite statement, no doubt there are many hon. Members on both sides of the House who would be prepared to support the Government; but there are many hon. Members who will have nothing to do with the guarantee and also dislike the Preamble. The Secretary for War quoted a phrase from the "Perfect Lady." This Preamble seems to me like another phrase:— A dancing shape, an image gay. To haunt, to startle and waylay. I do not know whether there are not many hon. Members opposite who do not feel that they have been led away by this Preamble. Another thing is that the moderation of the proposals made by the Government is of a remarkable character, and I can only say that when there has been a protestation of moderation I, at all events, am inclined to suspect, just as I should suspect, that a lady flaunts her virtue. The Secretary for War asked what chance has Parliament of carrying into effect matters which had never been discussed before the country. I might remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that such a thing occurred in this country during the time of the Long Parliament. One of the first Bills passed by that Parliament provided that Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent. Another ordinance was that no Member should be allowed to go to the House unless he possessed a certificate, signed by the Council, that he was a fit and proper person to sit in the House, while a further ordinance was that a Member should be selected by Congregational ministers who were favourable to the country. If that is what could be done in the past it seems to me that there is very little in your Bill which would prevent it being done in the present. If this Bill passes, there is nothing to prevent this House, or the majority in the House, passing an Act of Parliament to the effect that it shall not be subject to dissolution, in which case there is nothing to prevent this House becoming perpetual. That seems to me to be a matter which ought to be guarded against in any proper Constitution of a country. That is a matter of which we have had a definite example in the history of this country.

Then I come last of all to a statement that was made by the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman, if I remember rightly, in the last words which he addressed to the House as he finished the First Reading Debate, said that he was prepared to use all measures for the carrying of the Bill and I should like to ask hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House, are they prepared to create 500 Peers? Are they prepared to create, or to ask the Sovereign to create, 500 Peers to carry this Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear hear."] Very well. I am quite aware that the Government may be put down as desperate gamblers and I suppose that they think they have got a royal straight flush in their hands. [An HON. MEMBER: "What is a royal straight flush? "] All the court cards, all the aces—the kings, the queens, and the knaves—and I suppose that under those circumstances they are prepared to put down a monkey of Peers and see them and raise them. I suppose that they will be able to find sufficient number of Members ready to ape nobility on the Benches behind them, and that they will be prepared to sacrifice themselves on the altar of that hereditary principle which this Bill has done nothing to abolish. Mr. Speaker. I have now done, and I only wish to say this, that Members on this side of the House who are elected by the people of this country have just as much right as have Members on the other side, representing as they do very nearly half of the electors of this country, to speak on this matter and oppose a measure which will alter the whole of its life and which may be fraught with great danger and great difficulty. I for one will so long as I have any power, and so long as I have any voice, do my best to prevent a measure such as this being brought in for the abolition of a Second Chamber, without substituting for it a proper reformed Second Chamber.

Mr. STEPHEN GWYNN

I am still somewhat a junior Member of this House, but I think I may congratulate the hon. Member who has just made his maiden speech on having arrived at the haven where he would be, and I fancy that in the future in this House the hon. Member for Shropshire will have to look to his laurels. To revert from the hon. Member's speech to the consideration of the Bill, after listening to the speeches which have been made here to-day, I realise how very much more conservative I am than those who sit upon those benches above the Gangway. I desire to speak here as one who has a great admiration for the English instincts of government and for Parliamentary institutions, and I understand this Bill to be one intended to clear and to strengthen the principle of representative government. There are two proposals, as far as I understand, before the country at the present time. In the first place there is the Government's proposal—the Bill which we have before us, the object of which is to establish by law what previously rested only upon custom and usage—the supremacy of this House, which is supreme because it is representative. In the second place, it seeks to limit and control the supremacy of this Assembly by making more frequent appeals to the ultimate sovereignty of the people. There is a rival proposal to that—namely, that put forward by the Opposition, which, I understand, will amount to this, that they will accept any kind of Second Chamber provided it has a veto upon the legislation on this House, and they propose to strengthen that Chamber by the institution of the Referendum. That means, to my mind, the limitation of the supremacy of this House and the limitation of the principle of representation by a plebiscitary arrangement. After repeated consideration of these proposals the objection I have to what is suggested in outline is that you will have apparently one of two difficulties. Either you must substitute for the House of Lords a strong and really representative Second Chamber which will certainly and inevitably challenge the supremacy of this House, with the result of setting up confusion of function, which I think is an undesirable thing. I am assuming a Second Chamber which would be strong enough not to have to resort perpetually to the Referendum. On the other hand, you may have a weak Second Chamber equipped with the Referendum, in which case you might as well have no Second Chamber at all, because once you adopt the Referendum the Second Chamber seems to me to be the fifth wheel of the coach. It will kill the idea of responsibility in the House which exercises it, and also in this House.

That is my objection to the proposals that are put forward as an alternative. The proposals appear to me to involve a very great change in the traditional system of this country, and the Government's course appears to me to be essentially conservative, although they do contemplate the adoption of the principle of reform of the House of Lords. But what I want to put to the House is this, that it would do well to try what it can accomplish by carrying out the principles of representative government in a certain sense to reform the House of Commons before it proceds to any reform of the other Chamber. What are the vices which can be urged against this House of Commons—vices that we know to exist? There is partisan spirit. I think that partisan spirit, in so far as it is excessive, arises very largely from that sense of injustice and resentment which is the direct outcome of denying to one party in the State the opportunity which is given to the other. If you limit the evil you limit by that the extent of the disease. It is common ground, again, that the House of Commons is choked with business. It is like a machine that is fed too quickly with the stuff that it has to turn out. For that this Bill does not directly propose a remedy, but indirectly it leads up to the only remedy for that disease. This Bill is the first step towards a great devolutionary arrangement of your legislation. But there appears to me to be a vice in the composition and constitution of this House of Commons which lies far deeper than these questions, which are, after all, matters of machinery. The real and radical vice of the House of Commons is that it is not truly representative—that ever since the Act of Union you have had an element in this House which is not voluntary, but is an enforced and unwilling representation. The representation, which consists of the party to which I belong, is in this House an alien element, hostile to its spirit and hostile to its efficiency. That evil goes back to the Act of Union—to the covenant if you can call it a covenant which, as a Unionist writer has said, if it could have been taken into any Court of Law it must inevitably have been discarded and vitiated as tainted with fraud and with violence. A compact that was made in that spirit was one from which good could never be expected. Grattan prophesied evil of it, but he did not live to see all the evil of it and the evil accumulated during generations. Grattan tried to work the powers given in connection with the Act of Union. O'Connell tried to work them in the frank spirit of Parliamentary institutions, and they failed. They failed because the Parliament of England—the Parliament of Great Britain—was never prepared to adopt the same attitude towards Irish affairs as it adopted towards those of Great Britain itself. The reason why your Union has never worked—the reason why this Parliament has been tainted with this vice of forced and unwilling representation, has been that Ireland ever since the Union has been governed as a conquered country, and is governed as a conquered country held by force. If that fact needs any proof it would not want any beyond the "aye" and "nay" which is given when the Army Act is introduced by the Secretary of State for War, and which excludes Ireland. That shows that you dare not put arms into the hands of the people of Ireland.

Mr. SPEAKER

The hon. Member is far away from the Parliament Bill.

Mr. STEPHEN GWYNN

I am coming to the Parliament Bill, and my argument is that this question of Home Rule and this question of the House of Commons is all part and parcel of the constitutional difficulty. When we come to the action of Mr. Parnell I think we are clearly on ground that is connected with the difficulty that you have to-day. Mr. Parnell saw that you could never, by working the institutions of this House fairly, obtain justice for Ireland, and he deliberately forged a weapon to be used in this House. No man, I think, could compute the harm which was done to parliamentary institutions all the world over by the deliberate corruption of the spirit of parliamentary government here in the mother and model of parliamentary institutions. That is what the Irish party have been forced to do. It is the weapon they were forced to use. It has grown so old now that men are callous to it, as they might be to a sore or maim on themselves; but when it was new its very violence made for its remedy. A remedy was attempted in 1886 and in 1893. In 1893 a measure for Home Rule had been demanded by four-fifths of the Irish electorate, and obtained the consent of the majority of the electorate in these countries. It was carried through Parliament. In that case, if your Second Chamber had been a real revising Chamber it would have said that the majority for this Bill, though small, had more than its numerical value because of the inherent difficulty of popularising such a measure with the people of this country, and because of the great difficulty which had arisen after the Parnell split of that time. The House of Lords did not take that view; they made all the capital they could out of it. They chose that moment to represent themselves to the people of this country as the bulwark against Home Rule, and as the bulwark against Rome Rule. They chose their ground well. They knew they could count in this country upon the warping and blinding element of a religious difference. They knew well that in England the idea of Roman Catholicism is associated with the idea of foreign conquest, just as in Ireland the idea of Roman Catholicism is inextricably associated with the idea of freedom. They counted on that radical difference between the two countries, and it was then that they first began the period in their history which only terminated the other day in the rejection of the Budget.

When they rejected the Home Rule Bill they established, as they thought, a claim for themselves. On that basis of religious hatred they built high the bulwarks of the citadel of privilege. From that day onwards they had rejected, with increasing freedom, not only the measures which were demanded by the people of Ireland, but the measures which were demanded by the people of this country. To-day we are going to change all that. The disease has come to a head and again you are forced to seek a remedy for the same disease. You have to assert the freedom of this Chamber to deal with its own business, to be master in its own House and out of it, and until that is done no further step, as I hold, can be taken. But when that is done, when you have carried this Bill, you have carried the first step to enable you first of all to clear this assembly of the alien element. You will have no unwilling representation here after Home Rule is granted, and those who come from Ireland will come as the Scotch and Welsh come, to be a normal part of this Assembly, and I think, in addition to that, devolution will help you to rid yourselves of that accumulated mass of arrears which in itself is demoralising. When these things are done, when you have set this House in order, and not till then, will it be time for the people of this country to ask themselves what kind of revising Chamber will be best for their needs, and, for my part, I am not at all sure that the English people, whose genius has always lain not so much in logic as on a kind of instinct, will not be wise to adhere to an institution which has the advantage of tradition rather than to one which may have more theoretical perfections. That is a purely personal opinion, but once you limit and define the functions of a revising Chamber, once you make it clear that a revising Chamber should aim at having not absolute power, but influence and authority, I am very sure that a revising Chamber will be too wise to jeopardise its influence and its authority by an unduly Frequent use of this extreme power of delay given under the Bill. On the other hand, the power will exist, and I am sure the House of Commons will be slow to provoke a conflict. Hon. Members talk as if the power of delay for two years meant nothing. Do you think it means nothing in our apprehension of the chances for Home Rule? We know perfectly well all the dangers that it lays the measure open to. We recognise their greatness and we recognise the reality of the power given by this Bill to the revising Chamber. Whatever our revising Chamber may be, of this I am sure, that the first step to take is to establish your principle of representative Government and to strengthen it, to restore the challenged supremacy of the House of Commons, and, having restored it, to give the House of Commons full power to set itself in order before you go on to deal with the composition of the House of Lords.

Mr. J. CHAMBERS

It must have been very interesting for the House to listen to the criticism of the hon. Member (Mr. Gwynn), who says that he is here an enforced and unwilling representative in this House, and that he is a Member of the alien element in this House, and to hear him lecturing the House as to how it should reform its Constitution and how best it could remodel it in the interest of its own business—a gentleman of a party whose first object is to remove themselves entirely from this House and live under a different Constitution altogether—is cer- tainly a matter which to me at least appears to have an element of comedy in it. But while I have no doubt it is part of the policy of the representatives from Ireland below the Gangway to advise this House to delay for a time, at any rate, their policy of reforming the House of Lords, I stand here as the representative of people who are anxious that if the House of Lords is to be reformed, if there is to be a Second Chamber, as apparently is admitted by the majority of Members of the House, we in Ireland have a right to the consideration of our case by that reformed Chamber, and we protest in the strongest manner against the policy which appears to be so strongly advocated, that, while you withdraw the real effective power from the House of Lords as it exists at present, in the meantime, before you assimilate that Chamber or give an effective substitute for it, you carry measures which have neither a mandate from the people nor in any way represent their deliberate judgment with reference to it. The hon. Member (Mr. Gwynn) has told us that this policy is the first step to a Devolutionary rearrangement of your Constitution. That is precisely the position which I desire to discuss here, because it has been publicly announced that the first policy of the Government, after they have carried this measure, is to introduce a Home Rule Bill. Speaking on behalf of a large number of people in Ireland, we are as bitterly and as determinedly opposed to that policy as we ever were, and we say, and we will use our utmost endeavours to see it carried into effect, that a Bill of this kind cannot and shall not be smuggled through this House by the means by which it is intended. I am convinced that if you substitute for the House of Lords, reflecting as they do the considered opinion of the country in reference to this question, a strengthened Chamber, a Chamber which will be in touch with the people, and a Chamber which will represent to some extent its deliberate judgment upon the question of the day, they too, as the House of Lords, would in the same way reject that measure as being hostile, not only to the best interests of Ireland, but also to the best interests of England.

7.0 P.M.

What is the position apparently so far as this question is concerned? You have told us that the House of Lords has outlived its use so to speak. You say its use has passed, and that it has no right to continue as one of the institutions of the country, that it is out of touch with the people, and that it has no real efficacy and no real power, and you wish to sweep it away. But in the same breath Ministers have declared that a Second Chamber is essential to the Constitution. You say that an effective Second Chamber must take its place, but the policy is to delay it. As the hon. Member said, by and by will be time enough to reintroduce that necessary element when Home Rule is granted, and various other measures are passed, and the Irish Members will have gone away to another Constitution. But surely we have a right to say that if a Second Chamber is essential in the Constitution, it is desirable, in order that the best policy may be pursued in the country, that such an important matter as this, a matter which amounts, as was said by the Leader of the House, no doubt amid the plaudits of the House, many years ago, to the absolute dismemberment of the country, shall come before this new Second Chamber, strengthened and in touch with the will of the people, and we are entitled to complain that a measure of this gravity, and of this importance, which has never really been before the people, in respect of which there is no mandate, shall not be smuggled through in the way suggested, but that time shall be given for its consideration by this new Chamber, and that the whole benefit of the Constitution, as you desire it to be, shall be concentrated upon that measure as upon all other measures of the House. There is no mandate, and there can be none in respect of Home Rule. Twice that scheme has been before the country, and twice the country has rejected it. I say it is hypocrisy to announce, declare, or act upon the belief in this House that there is a mandate in respect of Home Rule. I have taken the trouble to verify the fact that, of 270 Liberal Members, only eighty-four mentioned Home Rule at all in their addresses, while 186 were absolutely silent with reference to that question. If it is a secondary part of your policy after carrying this Veto Bill, as doubtless you will, to introduce a Home Rule Bill and carry it, are we not right in saying that that is smuggling the measure behind the backs of the people, and trying to pass into law a measure for which you have no mandate and which has not even the concurrence of a very considerable number of hon. Members who sit on the opposite side of the House? Before the Government can say they have a mandate on this question, which is so vital to us, upon which our lives and liberties depend—we live in Ireland and know the conditions which exist—we have a right to speak on behalf of those who feel in a similar manner. When Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill he had the courage of his convictions. He brought in his Bill, and then went before the country and announced what the policy of the Bill was, and stated the terms of it; but this Government have never once ventured to enunciate the principle of their measure. They have dealt with the phrase Home Rule, which may mean anything, but as to the details, we know nothing, except from the announcements made by hon. Members for Ireland below the Gangway as to what they expect, and as to what measure of Home Rule will satisfy them. Never to this hour have the Government indicated what the terms of Home Rule are to be, what its policy will be, how it will be carried out, and what branches of local government are to be given over to the control of the new authority. To say that the Government have a mandate on this question is an abuse of language. It is misleading the public.

If a revised Chamber is a necessary element in the Constitution, why cannot you revise it now? What is the difficulty? You have the same information now as to the necessity for revising the Constitution that you will have at a later date. What is the reason that you do not introduce your proposal as to the revised Second Chamber at once? The reason is perfectly plain, having regard to the speeches made in this House. The Members of the Labour party have had the courage to stand up and declare that they are in favour of Single-Chamber Government alone. Therefore, the Ministry cannot rely upon them to assist in setting up a really useful Second Chamber. The Irish party care nothing for your Constitution. If the very Crown itself stood in the way of realising their ambitions they would hurl it from power. They cannot be relied upon to assist the Government in revising or reforming the Second Chamber. Any man who thinks for himself can see what is going on. We complain, and we will continue to complain of any measure of Home Rule being passed while you will not give us the benefit of the revised Chamber to consider it, but insist on smuggling it through in the way suggested. You will draw the teeth of the House of Lords and make the House absolutely ineffective. Having done that, and without substituting what you consider necessary, you will, as the price of the allegiance of the Irish party, grant them Home Rule. As the price of the allegiance of the Labour party you will also give them something. Though you say it is your intention to substitute a reformed and strengthened Second Chamber which will be brought into touch with the people, and have some respect for the will of the people, I ask you, can you really rely in future upon having support from the Irish party or the Labour party in this House? After Home Rule has been passed, the Irish representation will have gone completely, or, at any rate, in part, from this House. The Labour party are outspoken against anything in the nature of a reformed Second Chamber. Now is the time and opportunity for reforming the Second Chamber, and those who sit on this side of the House have got up and said that we are willing to assist you to amend the Constitution. Speaking on behalf of my own country and as an Irishman—for I dispute the right of Irish Members below the Gangway to speak as though they alone represented Ireland—I ask you to unite with hon. Members on this side of the House in having a scheme brought forward which will meet with national acceptance and put an end to a struggle which otherwise must be bitter and prolonged. Having a scheme drawn up which would strengthen the Constitution, then if, in spite of all our protests and arguments, the reformed Parliament were to say that they are in favour of Home Rule, I, for one, would say that we were being pushed out of the partnership against our will—a partnership in which we are anxious to remain. We would go, at least, with the feeling that the Parliament which Great Britain thought was good enough for itself had come to the conclusion that the policy of Home Rule was sound and beneficial. But, as an Irishman, I beg this House not to thrust us out of the partnership in the way proposed. Do not attempt to claim that you have a mandate for Home Rule in the face of the facts as they exist to-day. If we are to have Home Rule, let it be passed through the ordinary machinery of the Constitution. It was declared by a former Leader of the Liberal party—and I am sure the statement was received with much enthusiasm at the time—that the Irish representatives were marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire. I feel in connection with this question that the Government of the day are marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire. They are tearing down the Constitution with the assistance of the Irish party, and having done that, they are going to dismember the Empire and cast off those who have been loyal and true through difficulties and dangers that have been great. They are going to throw us over to the wolves. When Mr. Parnell was deserted by his-own party he asked that he should not be thrown to the British wolves. I ask you not to throw us to the wolves, but to give us an opportunity of having our case fairly considered. This Bill itself does not pretend to infallibility. What would happen in the case of a Home Rule Bill? It would have to pass through three Sessions. Assume that after it has passed the first time it comes back. Hon. Members may, after having visited their constituents, say that amendments here and there would be desirable. It cannot be amended, for if you touch a line in that Bill it is gone, and the whole of the previous year's work has been in vain. Is Ireland to be for ever the playground of politics? Again we are to be the experimenting material on which this policy will be tried. The Home Rule policy was rejected in the past, and it will be rejected again. Even hon. Members who feel that reform is necessary are debarred from the possibility of altering a line or introducing a single amendment because by so doing the work of one or two previous Sessions would go. I ask the House not to experiment upon Ireland in this way. The matter is too grave. It means our lives and liberties, though hon. Gentlemen opposite think little of the matter. I heard with pain the reference to Ulster as a miserable corner on the map. Irishmen of Ulster wish to remain under the British flag. We claim the benefit of that sense of fairplay and justice always characteristic of Britons. I do say that we have a right to complain when it is proposed that legislation in respect of such a serious and vital matter as Home Rule should pass through the House in the way I have indicated.

We in Ireland have to take what we can get. We have to go back there a miserable minority if you like, but we have to live there and spend our lives there. We have to go back under the policy of a Bill passed under conditions such as these. You are going to give, as you say, a Home Rule Bill. You are going to frame an Irish Constitution. What sort of a Second Chamber are you going to give Ireland? The hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Gwynn) in addressing you said, "Leave the House of Lords there as an ornament." You say a Second Chamber is useful. What sort of a Second Chamber are you going to give Ireland? Are you going to set Ireland up to carry on its work under this system that after the Second Chamber rejects the Bill three times that Bill becomes law? What a travesty upon justice and upon right. I daresay now is not the time to discuss the details of a Home Rule Bill, but these are the dangers lying upon the very surface of this question. You are creating a model which shall last you think and you hope for all time. You cannot improve upon that model so far as Ireland is concerned. Ireland would be satisfied with nothing less than what you consider good enough for yourselves. Just imagine a Parliament set up in Ireland with a Second Chamber, however elected or selected, and the House of Commons with an overwhelming majority of one kind, and the provision that whatever it passes three times is to become absolute and binding law. Great as have been the terrors of Home Rule to us who have lived there and know what they are and will be, they will become greater still if such a policy as this is to be pursued, and a change of that kind is to be established as an element in the Constitution of Ireland. I do appeal to the House in respect to this matter to carry a reform of the Second Chamber at the same time as they carry the Veto Bill, and let use see the two of them together. I respectfully urge that the claims of those whom I represent, which I have endeavoured I know imperfectly and feebly to put before you, will receive your most careful consideration.

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

The hon. Member who has just sat down has spent his whole time in discussing Home Rule for Ireland, and not only in discussing Home Rule for Ireland, but in discussing the Second Chamber to be set up under a Home Rule scheme. May I just say a word or two on the speech he has just delivered. I think he is quite mistaken on the question of mandate. He may have been attending to other matters in Ireland which occupied his attention fully, but all of us in England and Wales who have gone through the General Election know perfectly well that not once or twice, but repeatedly, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Liberal party, put forward most explicitly his intention to introduce Home Rule for Ireland in this Parliament. Upon that matter there can be no mistake and no controversy. The hon. Member, following the cue of those who have preceded him in the Debate to-night and also in the last Debate, appeared in what is quite a new role for the Conservative party. I sat on that side of the House for a number of years, and I never heard any Conservative on this side assist us, and when I am here I am a little suspicious of their offers of assistance. What are they going to assist us to do on this point? I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman who last addressed the House is still in it, but he said, "If you are going to introduce Home Rule, will you reform the House of Lords first?" Does he offer to assist us to get a Second Chamber, every Member of which will be directly elected by, and responsible to, the people? That is the real question.

Mr. LEE

Is that your policy?

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

I am asking a question. Hon. Members on the other side have been saying, "Look at these benches; look at the homogeneous body that sit upon them. On the other hand, look at the Liberal side and see how divided and distracted they are, with Home Rulers here, the Labour party there and Liberals beside them." Whatever distraction there is on this side there is a corresponding distraction on your side. If there are Home Rulers below the Gangway, there are Ulster men above the Gangway. The whole speech of the last Member who addressed the House was not so much against this Bill as against Home Rule for Ireland. If it is these ulterior motives that guide him in his opposition to this Parliament Bill, so it is with the Labour party, and so it is with the Welsh party. It is the same with all of us. If there is a Labour party on this side there is a Capitalist party of that side. If there is a Disestablishment party of this side, there is a Church of England party led by the Noble Lord (Lord Hugh Cecil) on the other side. All these parties on this side have their opposite parties on the other side. With regard to the present situation and what is called the reasoned Amendment moved by the hon. Member for East Worcestershire, it is some consolation to have the admission by the Conservative parties that something has got to be done. It seems to me that the time has now come when the Conservative party publicly proclaim that the situation as far as we are concerned has become in- tolerable. It is really a very irrelevant discussion to talk of who picked the quarrel. The quarrel is here? Somewhere or other each side is very anxious to put on the other side the responsibility of picking the quarrel. It really does not matter very much who picked it. The quarrel is here. What we have got to do is to dispose of it as best we may. But I really think it is absurd to suggest that we picked the quarrel with the House of Lords, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire suggested. It was proclaimed in the speeches of Mr. John Bright and of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Joseph Chamberlain), delivered many years ago when he belonged to this party, and which, if I may say so, were by far the best things ever said against the House of Lords in this country. Whoever picked the quarrel, here it is with us, and we have got to dispose of it. It seems to me that hon. Members opposite are blinding themselves to the real situation which confronts us. Lord Milner gave them certain advice with regard to the consequence. It would not be proper for me to repeat it, but he asked them to face the consequences. That is really what you have got to do.

You talk about a joint national settlement. One hon. Member on the other side said that this is not a party question, but made a very severe partisan speech himself. That is not the way to deal with this question. This question has been before the country for some time, and it has been certainly before the country at the last General Election. We have had a considerable majority, and the mistake the Conservatives made was this. At the last General Election they were not talking so much about reform as they are now. The matter has become much more urgent after the General Election than it was then. As regards the average British elector, not the man who is a partisan on one side or the other, what he disliked about the Conservative party was that they stood out for unfairness and injustice towards us in the House of Lords. The average British elector, after all, has a great idea of justice and fairplay. I think he hated this sort of bias and prejudice on the part of an assembly that is professedly unbiassed and unprejudiced, and he especially resented this sham quackery in the domain of constitutional reform. Really hon. Members opposite should take into consideration the fact that there has been a General Election, and that it means something. I understand that many hon. Members on the opposite side, and especially the Leader of the Opposition, doubt if it means anything. According to the last speaker it meant a great deal, because I must condole with him on having gone through 180 addresses and finding Home Rule mentioned in eight-four and not in the remainder. I belong to the remainder, because I had no address at all, at I was returned unopposed, and therefore he must take that into account. According to the Leader of the Opposition, as I understand him, his view is that a General Election does not mean anything except that a certain number of people are returned to the House of Commons. It is quite true that it does incidentally mean that he sits on the left-hand side and the Prime Minister sits on the right Apart from that he argues that there was really no mandate given by the people at all. I really think that that argument cannot be serious. It is a ridiculous argument. The General Election must mean something. I think it was Lord Curzon who said that a General Election was a detestable and odious thing. I can understand that according to Lord Curzon's view; to a man of his refinement it must be an odious thing to have a General Election. But we do not run up against these odious things without their having some result. The result is after all that upon the First Reading of this Bill we have had, rightly or wrongly, a majority of 124 in favour of this measure.

I am not going into an historical retrospect as far as this question is concerned, but I may remind the House that during the last twenty-five years the Conservative party have been in power for seventeen years and the Liberals for only eight years. During the whole seventeen years in which the Conservatives were in power, without one exception, the House of Lords has always been in obedience, has always been the willing and docile servant of the Conservative party in this House That is the history of seventeen years. What happened during the eight years in which the Liberals were in office? During that time the House of Lords were always in resistance, always in revolt, always the irreconcilable enemy of Liberal administration. No one can deny that. I put it to the right hon. Gentlemen opposite that it is asking too much of human nature that, after all this period of suffering at their hands, we should be expected the very first thing to join hands with the Conservatives opposition against the Nationalist and the Labour parties in order to save the situation at the present time. It may be a very ingenious suggestion, but I do not think it will be received with great enthusiasm by the Liberal party in this House. With regard to the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for East Worcestershire, first of all there is the reform part, which declares in favour of reform, and then the part which declares against our Bill. I have never been able to understand why the Conservative party want reform at all. I mean the House of Lords is such a perfect Assembly. You do not get perfect assemblies every day. Do you not think you are running unnecessary risk in substituting a new Assembly which may not be nearly as perfect as the old one? What becomes of its insight into the will of the people—that great instinct which it has to know what the people think and want? I really ask hon. Members opposite to be careful. They should not risk the great inheritance of the aristocracy of this country in having this power of discriminating the will of the people. The Noble Lord (Lord Hugh Cecil) opposite me put the question upon a higher ground. He said that if sanitation was looked after in this country, or if the dustbins were properly cared for, it was due in some part to the fact that the baby born a duke was also born a legislator. So far as legislation is concerned, you must be off with the old duke before you are on with the new. If the Noble Lord will allow me to say so very respectfully, I think it a pity to mention dukes and dustbins in the same breath. What would become of the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he had made that unfortunate remark. I presume that, as the Noble Lord belongs to that class, he can take greater liberties with them than an ordinary person can. With regard to this reform question, my complaint of them is that they do not bring an independent judgment to bear upon it.

Lord Lansdowne said that the Trades Disputes Bill would bring ruin to trade, bodily suffering to individuals, and mental anguish, with loss, danger and inconvenience to the community at large. That is a very remarkable definition of any Bill. If that was a correct description of it, why should not the Lords have thrown it out? That is unanswerable. It is quite true that Lord Lansdowne said they must choose more favourable ground—

Mr. HAROLD SMITH

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman quote the words of the late Attorney-General on that Bill?

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

I will quote quite enough before I have finished. The late Attorney-General, at the time of which I am dealing, was only a Member of the House of Commons. He had not that instinct of which we have been told. I was pointing out that Lord Lansdowne had this gift of insight, and he made the declaration to which I have referred about the Trades Disputes Bill, and then immediately voted for it.

Mr. HAROLD SMITH

I was endeavouring to suggest that the then Attorney-General took exactly the same view.

Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH

Has the hon. Member got the quotation from the Attorney-General? He cannot expect me to give a quotation which he has not got himself. I submit that the late Attorney-General did not say anything of that kind about the Bill. However, if he did, it does not affect my argument, because I am dealing with the superior wisdom of the Peers and not the ordinary intelligence of the House of Commons. With regard to this policy of reform, the point that impresses me most is the motive for it. I do not trust reform from people who do not genuinely and earnestly believe in it. The motive of this reform is very significant. The Leader of the Opposition said on this subject that they wanted not a better but a stronger House, but you must strengthen it not because it has done the wrong thing in the wrong way but to modify the kind of policy it has adopted hitherto, and to enable it to more effectually carry out its duties. And Lord Lansdowne said the duty of the new-constituted House would be "to carry on the work which they had so honourably done in the old and unreformed House." The work that they had so "honourably done!" That is the object of your so-called reform, to enable the new House to execute the kind of work it did in the old and unreformed House, and follow the same lines. What they did from 1906 to 1910 we know perfectly well. As a Welshman, I have a special grievance against the House of Lords. Between 1893 and 1897 they wantomly threw out five education schemes and the Secondary Education Act for Wales? What is this Reform? What says the party opposite—what do they believe in? It is quite true that the House of Commons were offered reform in 1869 and in 1884, it is quite true that they made claims as regards finance, but there was only one thing common to all the reforms suggested, and that was to stereotype once and for ever the constitution of the House of Lords, and establish its unassailable power. We may be simple-minded folk, but we are not going to be taken in by any scheme of reform which would convert the House of Lords into a citadel impervious to any attack.

There are two classes of people for whom I wish to put in a word. As a Welsh Member, I naturally think of the Bishops. What has become of the Bishops? They deserve well; they have taken a foremost place in co-operating with the party of reaction in everything that had to do with bigotry, class selfishness, and intolerance. What has become of the Bishops? That is a very serious question. I submit with respect to the Noble Lord (Lord Hugh Cecil), because if they were to be elected by their fellows there might be a difficulty, for they would have to be popular to be elected. Then there is a class of Peers whom I will not call "backwoodsmen," because the term has been objected to by the hon and learned Member for the Walton Division (Mr. F. E. Smith). I heard the hon. and learned Member administer a severe rebuke because that term had been used. Of course, one is always glad to be rebuked by him on all matters of personal and political courtesy, because we know he is the censor of political courtesy in this country, and he is the self-appointed guardian of political nomenclature. I do not call them "Backwoodsmen," I call them Back Bench Men. What has become of them? Are you sure that you have squared them Can anybody get up and say that these Back Bench Men will pass the Bill of reform. I doubt very much whether even Lord Lansdowne will speak for them, and until some one will speak for them, I do not think anyone can take upon himself to say that any reform of which they disapprove will pass through the House of Lords. The Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) gives a description of the Bill which in my view is inaccurate. It says the Bill is going to create a Single-Chamber system in this country. As a matter of fact the Conservative party live under the One-Chamber system when they wield power, and the reason they want two Chambers now is to have one party. The only way they can get one party in this country is to have two Chambers. When the Conservatives are in power here, they are Conservatives there, and when the Liberals are in power here they can undo the work of the House of Commons. I think it is a considerable safeguard to say that a measure shall be passed three times in three successive Sessions. The Secretary for War said there are only two effective Sessions in each Parliament. To those of us who are anxious for legislation that is a very important statement. Whether the safeguard is considerable or not, in the next Parliament, if the Conservatives were in power, they could undo in one Session what had been done in three. I believe it is quite true that there are some measures which could not be repealed, but that is what the party opposite could do. I think the Bill a moderate and reasonable attempt to cope with a very difficult situation. Even if the description were accurate, the real point in favour of this Bill is that the country has approved of it. That is good enough for us. The Prime Minister, speaking at Hull, said the proposals of the Government were before the country in black and white, and it is quite clear that the people have declared by an overwhelming majority in their favour. We are perfectly entitled, therefore, to use our party majority to pass the Bill through the House of Commons. As I understood the Leader of the Opposition, he said the House of Commons was not itself a representative Chamber. I quite admit that it is not so representative as we could wish it to be, but it does not lie in the mouths of hon. Gentlemen opposite to make that point, because whenever there has been an attempt at reform of this House we have always had to cope with their resistance. At any rate, at the General Election the Parliament Bill was specifically placed before the country, and we are perfectly entitled to pass it. It is said that the primary function of a Second Chamber is to check the hasty legislation of this House. I should think the primary work of that House would be to promote legislation and to speed overdue legislation. Lord Salisbury on one occasion said that legislation in this country is slower than in any country in Europe. That House stands in the way, and is an obstacle to Liberal reforms. The remedy for the situation in my view should be drastic, effectual, and final, and I think this Bill is after all a moderate way of approaching the difficulty with which Liberals have had to contend during the last twenty years. I admit quite frankly that this Bill is not to me an end in itself, but it is a means to other ends. That must be always so with the Liberal party. There is no resting-place and there are only stepping-stones. For my own part I look upon this Bill not only as important in itself, but as the condition of reform and progress. I believe in this Bill for what it is and what it is does, but I believe in it still more for what it makes possible in the future. I think it opens up a new era, and I hope the House of Commons will be enabled in the future to devote itself to its own work without wanton interference from the other House.

Mr. WILLIAM BOYLE

Representing as I do an agricultural constituency, I think it may pssibly be of some interest to the House to hear how the Bill is viewed by a number of people who are making their living in the greatest of all industries—agriculture. For that reason, if for no other, I desire to address the House for the first time since my election. Many of those who have been brought face to face with the hard realities of life owing to limited income derived from agriculture are not likely to come to any hasty conclusion. The agricultural labourer in the eastern counties is naturally very cautious, and possibly does not think as quickly as those who live in important centres. I do not know, however, that this is any drawback to his final judgment. The agriculturist inherits a desire to create and improve, and to make two blades of grass grow where one had grown before. The Bill we are discussing does the very opposite. At one fell swoop it practically destroys the constitution of the House of Lords. The Preamble of the Bill leaves very much in doubt, and only tells half the story. The great majority of the electors of this country are business men, who would desire, when discussing any question, or when their judgment is asked on any question, to have the whole facts put before them. I cannot help thinking that before the Government can possibly expect to carry their Bill through this House they will have to accept a great many amendments, not only from this side of the House, but also from their own supporters. I fail to understand how this House, or any Member of it, can possibly come to a final conclusion, or to any conclusion, until he really knows what the facts are. I am perfectly willing to allow that public opinion is ripe for a reform of the House of Lords, and that public opinion is much further advanced, much more progressive, and much more democratic than it was a few years ago. The Preamble of this Bill is so worded that no man can approach it without suspicion. I cannot help thinking that the electors who read the Bill must say that there is not one ring of honesty about it, and, in fact, any man, having read the Preamble of the Bill, cannot but feel that he is left with a very nasty taste in his mouth. A complete stranger, knowing nothing about the history of this country, and having this Bill placed in his hands, would, I think, immediately ask, what is it, and why it it that only half the story is told; and why is it that the Preamble does not convey the future intentions of the Government? On this side of the House we complain, and I think the country will complain, that the whole truth is not contained in the Bill.

If the Government were honest in their promise about on some future occasion reforming the House of Lords, then I can only ask what has been repeatedly asked on these benches since this Debate began, and that is, why on earth cannot it be done at the present time? The Government have repeatedly informed the House that they have no desire to introduce Single-Chamber legislation, yet the Bill which the Prime Minister has introduced, is a Bill which practically means Single-Chamber Government. If there is to be a final settlement, what better opportunity can there be than to discuss the matter now. The Government have got a majority at their back, and can any hon. Gentleman or any intelligent man, inside or outside this House, give us one good reason why the whole question should not be discussed at the present time. Time is running on, and we are none of us getting any younger. We have heard that the country is waiting for a great many of those social reforms which the Government have been discussing in the country for a long time, especially on the eve of the General Election. Surely, if we are going to have a repetition in the future of these Debates, when the promised Reform Bill comes in, it means that further long delays will take place, and that the social reforms that many of us desire to see carried out will be still further delayed. The Government claim that they have a mandate for this Hill. What proof have they that the country has given them a mandate to introduce this Bill. The first time the country heard of the Government's intentions of introducing legislation such as the Bill now before us, was in 1907, when the late Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, first introduced its famous Resolutions. Why were those Resolutions never followed up? Why was it that at that time the Government did not follow up the Resolutions which they were able to carry through this House? Was it because they were simply introduced as a sop to their Nonconformist supporters, who had returned the Government with a mandate. I will allow, for the purpose of amending the Education Bill of that day, or was it because, at that time, in 1907, the Government had a majority at their back independent of the Irish National party. I heave heard it stated outside this House that those Resolutions were introduced by the Government in order to teach the House of Lords, or to give the House of Lords a warning. I do not know if there is any truth in that. Certainly the Lords were not intimidated by that warning, because in 1908 they threw out the Licensing Bill of that year. Surely, if the Resolutions of 1907 were at any time to be put into practical effect, that was the time to have done it.

What happened then? In 1910 a General Election took place. That was the election at which the Government claimed to have received a mandate from the country to bring in the Bill we are now discussing. The result of that election was that the Government came back with 104 seats less than they had held previous to the appeal to the country. How can the Government claim to have received a mandate from the country when they lost 104 seats? Why was it that the Budget was not introduced immediately Parliament met in 1910. I think those who sat in the last Parliament know perfectly well that the Budget was not introduced because of a mandate from the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond), that before he would be prepared to vote for the Budget, and the only way that the Government could get the Budget through this House, was that they must first introduce their Resolutions embodying what was in the Bill now before us. I do not know myself whether the December election gave any further proof of the Government having a mandate. That General Election seemed to me to practically return all parties to the House in very much the same numbers as they went to the country. This much it did do. It helped to strengthen in the country that other great assembly, the House of Lords. On that occasion for the first time the Members of the House of Lords had the opportunity of going to the country and speaking from political platforms on their own account. Members of the House of Lords have been called "backwoodsmen." Why anyone who calls the Lords "backwoodsmen" has only got to read the Debates of the House of Lords on the Budget, and I think they will very soon come to a different conclusion, than to call them anything but great debaters and very highly educated men. Time alone will prove what is going to be the result of the present crisis, but so far as I represent the electors of the Mid-Norfolk Division, I shall certainly give the Amendment my support, and I shall oppose the Bill in every way I can.

Mr. PICKERSGILL

This Amendment declares that the Bill before the House places all effective legislative authority in the hands of a Single Chamber. The Mover of the Amendment repeated and elaborated that statement in the course of his speech, but that is not what the Leader of the Opposition says. The Leader of the Opposition said the other night:— The House of Lords, when this Bill is passed, will still have large powers of modifying the legislative action of this House. It is aid that Lord Melbourne once said to the Members of his Cabinet:— It does not matter much what we say, but let all of us say the same thing. It is evident that the Leaders of the Opposition do not think that it is necessary for them to comply with that salutary maxim. Having this admission made by the Leader of the Opposition, it is not necessary that I should develop in detail the proposition that this Bill does indeed leave the House with very large power. Under this Bill the House of Lords would be not merely a revising Chamber, but it would possess very considerable powers af amendment, subject only to this limitation, that it must not strike at the very principles of Bills passed by this House.

8.0 P.M.

This consideration leads me to the objection which has been raised again and again that this Bill is incomplete, that it is one-sided, that it will apply no check through the House of Lords when the Conservative party is in power in this House. That argument clearly rests on the assumption that after this change has been effected the temper and spirit of the House of Lords will remain the same as they are to- day. That assumption I directly traverse. It is the corrupting influence of exorbitant and irresponsible power which has brought the House of Lords to the present pass; and if, as by this Bill we shall do, we restrict the power of the House of Lords within reasonable limits, I for one believe that that House will then again become what once it was—a patriotic, national, and useful institution. Make the House of Lords a revising and modifying Chamber, and it is not too much to believe that it will exercise fairly and impartially the functions with which it will then be entrusted, whichever party in the State may be in power in this House. At all events, it is in that way, and in that way alone, that we shall reconcile the imputed desire of the majority of the people of this country to have two Chambers, with the necessary predominance of this House. The Leader of the Opposition told the Government the other night that they could not reconcile the necessary predominance of the House of Commons with a Second Chamber if that Chamber were elected. In my judgment the Leader of the Opposition is quite right; reason and experience alike point to the same conclusion. Therefore I regret more than I can express that this Bill has its Preamble.

The Home Secretary the other night asked, "Who spoke of compromise?" That rhetorical question coming from the Home Secretary was distinctly humorous, for this Bill is itself a compromise; it is a compromise made by the Prime Minister with the Whig section of his Cabinet. We know very well what hapened. We all remember the speech delivered by the Prime Minister at the Albert Hall in December, 1909, when he struck the keynote of the election which followed, when he spoke about the Veto, and about the Veto alone, and said not a word about altering the Constitution of the House of Lords. On that issue the election of January, 1910, was fought and won, and we were astounded to find in the King's speech of the last Parliament a proposal, not only to limit the powers of the House of Lords, but to alter the constitution of that Assembly. I for one made a public protest on the first available opportunity in the Debate on the Address, and I did not stand alone. The outcome of the matter was that a compromise was effected between the divergent elements in the Cabinet, and the project of reform was cut down to the Preamble which we have now in the Bill. For my part I cannot but think that after the Albert Hall speech and the election which followed, the Prime Minister came perilously near a breach of faith with his Radical supporters when he introduced that Preamble into the Bill. But the Preamble is there, the last election was fought upon the Bill with that Preamble, and to drop the Preamble now would be to break faith or to come very near breaking faith on the other side, with the Whig section. The other day the Leader of the Labour party indicated, as I thought, an intention to press the Government to drop the Preamble of the Bill. I will put it to my hon. Friends, whether they really wish that the Government should change its face once more. I dislike the Preamble as much as my hon. Friends below the Gangway, but might I respectfully suggest to them that they will do more harm from their own point of view by discrediting the Government if they succeed in inducing them to drop the Preamble now than they will do good by getting rid of it.

Another objection strongly urged by the Opposition and put with great force, eloquence, and energy by the hon. Member for South Belfast (Mr. Chambers), is that this Bill will enable Home Rule to be passed through Parliament. I was a Home Ruler before Mr. Gladstone, and I, at all events, am not open to the taunt of the hon. Member for South Belfast, because a paragraph with regard to Home Rule has formed part of every one of my election addresses, which now number eight. I was true to the cause when the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were coquetting with the Liberal League. But though I am myself a convinced and steadfast Home Ruler, I have always been able to put myself, to some extent at all events, in the position of those large sections of my fellow countrymen, for whom I have much respect, who regard Home Rule with aversion and alarm. I feel that it is an enormous change. I feel—and I think it would be uncandid not to admit it—that it is or may be a perilous experiment. Regarding it from that point of view, the party opposite say that it ought to be referred to the people. My answer is that it has already been before the people. It was most distinctly before the people at the last election, and the people have given a verdict which—I do not wish to press the point too hard—includes, at all events, acquiescence in a Home Rule Bill. Home Rule could not be put before the people more than it has been, except by one means, and that is by applying the principle of the Referendum, and the Referendum is far more revolutionary than Home Rule itself.

As to the plea that a complete scheme of Home Rule has not been put before the country, I say deliberately that that objection is sheer cant. It is impossible that the demand that a complete scheme of Home Rule should be put before the country could be sincerely made by any Parliamentarian of experience. It never has been done, and it could not be done without revolutionising alike the theory and practice of government in this country. The Leader of the Opposition, the other night, invoked the name of Burke—a name which no true Parliamentarian can ever pronounce, especially in this House which he once adorned, without reverence, merging in affection. But it seemed to me that the Leader of the Opposition made a paltry and superficial use of Burke. "King, Lords and Commons; Commons, Lords and King." The names remain, but those names to-day stand for things which are totally different from the things for which they stood in Burke's time. I wonder, by the way, how the right hon. Gentleman's proposal for a Referendum would have presented itself to the mind of Burke. The fact is, if an appeal is to be made to Burke, we must refer not to the views which Burke took as to the proper solution of the passing problems of the hour, but to the deeper things of that great humanist, who more perhaps than any other man who ever sat in this House ennobled politics by implicating them with literature and philosophy. It might be said of Burke what was said of a greater than Burke:— He was not of an age, but for all time. The fashion of his world has passed away, but the memory of the lessons which he taught, and of the spirit which informed him, is a possession for ever.

EARL Of RONALDSHAY

The fundamental objection which we on this side of the House entertain to this Bill, as is made quite clear by the Amendment moved this afternoon, is that if it passes into law it will deprive the people of this country of an effective Second Chamber. It is quite true, I know, that there is a Preamble to the Bill which expresses a belief in the desirability of retaining the Second Chamber, but we have it on the authority of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackfriars (Mr. Barnes) that that Preamble was inserted in the Bill in order to conciliate the weak section of the Cabinet. It does not seem very likely, therefore, that under the present régime that Preamble is likely to become anything more than it is at present—namely, a pious opinion. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down told us very frankly that he himself was most bitterly opposed to the Preamble of the Bill. He informed us that but for reasons which appeared to him to be sufficient he personally would have pressed for its eradication from the Bill under present conditions. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] Yes, but I am afraid the arguments of the hon. Gentleman may not appeal very forcibly to a large number of hon. Members on that side of the House who feel equally as strong as the hon. Gentleman himself does against the Preamble, and who appear quite determined, when they get an opportunity, of preventing the Preamble from ever fructifying or materialising. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackfriars, whom I referred to just now, is quite clear in his statement of the views of the Labour party upon this point. Let me remind the House of the actual words he used not very long since. Writing on 15th January last, in "Reynolds's Newspaper," he said:— The greatest danger which undoubtedly faces the Government in regard to the passing of the Parliament Bill is the foolish and unnecessary Preamble which it contains, and which, it is understood, was inserted to conciliate the weak section of the Cabinet. It is difficult to see how it can be carried by a majority in this House of Commons as the Labour Members would vote against it, as well as every Radical who was worth his salt. Another hon. Gentleman, the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Snowden) also an authoritative spokesman of the Labour party, writing in the "Christian Commonwealth," on 11th January last, said:— If the question of a new Second Chamber were definitely raised now it would rend the majority the Government now have in support of the temporary Veto proposals. Then let the Government drop all reference to future intentions. Sufficient unto the day is the Veto Bill. In these circumstances, and bearing in mind the capitulations of the Government to the insistent demands from the Labour party in the past we are not entitled to place very great hopes upon the Preamble of the Bill. It has sometimes been argued—in fact, one of the staples of the speeches of hon. Members opposite is—that the Bill will not, as we say it will, bring about what is in effect, if not in name, a state of Single-Chamber Government in this country. The simplest way of finding out what the effect of the Bill would be likely to be is to assume that the provisions of the Bill have been in operation in the past, and see how it would have worked. Let us assume, for instance, that the provisions of the Bill which is now under discussion, were enforced when the Radical party came into power in 1906. In that year the Government brought in an Education Bill which passed the House of Commons, and was amended in the House of Lords. The Amendment inserted by the House of Lords was not accepted by the House of Commons, and the Bill was dropped. On sober reflection, prompted largely no doubt by some very outspoken criticisms on the part of representatives of the community who had voted for the Government in the preceding election, the Government evidently came to the conclusion that their Education Bill was not the masterpiece which they had fondly imagined it to be. When they next introduced proposals on the Education question in this House they were of a very different character to those contained in the Bill introduced in the early part of the year 1906. Observe what would have happened if the provisions of this Parliament Bill had been enforced at that time! The Education Bill of 1906 having passed the House of Commons, having been amended by the House of Lords, and the Amendment of the House of Lords having been rejected by the House of Commons the Bill would have been passed pro forma a second and third time through the House of Commons, and would then have become law. It is quite obvious that any discussion upon the second and third passages of the Bill through the House of Commons would have been of a purely perfunctory character, and would, indeed, have been a pure farce, because under the provisions of the Parliament Bill it is not open to the Government in any way to alter their Bill if they desire it to become law after having passed through its three successive Sessions in the House of Commons. It would not have been open to them to accept any Amendment, and the Bill, with all its original faults, would now have been the law of the land. We can realise with what delight the country at large would have received this signal achievement on the Radical plan of Single-Chamber Government! If we look back we can refresh our minds on the expressions of opinion which were used by representatives, not only of the Church, but of the Nonconformists in regard to that Bill. It is ancient history, but it is quite well known to hon. Members that the Education Bill of 1906 had the supreme merit of displeasing Nonconformists only a degree less than it displeased members of the Church. That is a very good example of the way in which the provisions of this Bill would have worked. While I am referring to the particular provisions of the Bill I should like to say that for a long time I admired the originality of the unknown Member of the Cabinet who was responsible for that somewhat peculiar doctrine which may be described as the political rule of three. This asserts that if you say a thing three times you so increase its inherent excellence, its value, and its validity that it is then fit to pass into law, although it might not have been fit to pass into law if you had only said the same thing twice. I happened to come across quite recently some description of the way in which the legislative Chamber works in the two European States which at the present moment enjoy the blessings of Single-Chamber Government. I have come to the conclusion that I did the Government an injustice in accusing them of originality in regard to this matter. Obviously they have taken their idea from the Legislatures of Greece and of Norway. But I find that in a Greek Chamber every measure before being adopted must be discussed and voted, article by article, three times on three separate days. And in that case in the Norwegian Chamber we find that the Royal Veto may be exercised twice, but if the same Bill passes three times through Parliaments formed on separate and subsequent elections it becomes the law of the land without the assent of the Sovereign, so that the Government cannot even claim originality for their doctrine that if you repeat a particular measure three times you give to it a validity to which it is not entitled if you but repeat it once or twice. It must be quite clear, on due consideration of the provisions of this Bill, that if they are to-become the law of the land we shall be deprived of an effective Second Chamber. And for myself, I confess I find it impossible to disagree with the motion which was not long ago expressed by Lord Marchamley, who, it will be remembered, was at no very distant period Chief Whip of the Radical party in this House, when he stated, on 21st April, 1910, that if these provisions were made statutory you would practically abolish Two-Chamber Government and would decree the sole domination of the House of Commons. If the Government really wish to treat the Preamble seriously, there are two points on which they ought to give us some enlightenment. The Preamble certainly expresses the view that a Second Chamber is a desirable thing. But there are two questions which I would like to ask the Government upon that. The first is, what period of time is to elapse between the passing of this Bill, if it does pass, and the introduction of the measure foreshadowed in the Preamble? And the second question is this, what are to be the powers of the reconstructed Second Chamber foreshadowed in the Preamble. Are they to be the same as those to which the House of Lords is to be limited under this Bill?

Mr. LANSBURY

On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in these revolutionary times, I desire to call your attention to the fact that there are not forty Members present.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Emmott)

No count can be taken between 8.15 and 9.15.

Mr. LANSBURY

These are "revolutionary proceedings," we are told, and no one here to stop them. There is but one Member on the other side.

EARL of RONALDSHAY

I ask that the Government should give us some information as to the powers of the re-constructed Second Chamber which is contemplated by them in the Preamble of this Bill. Are the powers of the new Second Chamber to be restricted and curtailed in the same way as the powers of the House of Lords are to be restricted under this Bill. Because, if so, it seems a matter of supreme indifference as to when the Second Chamber is reconstructed, or whether it is to be reconstructed at all. It is quite obvious if you are merely going to have a kind of sham Second Chamber, it does not in the least matter whether that Chamber is founded upon hereditary basis, or founded upon an elective basis or nomination basis. I venture to hope that before the conclusion of the Debate on the Second Reading some Member of the Government will be able to give us information upon these two most important points. So much for the provisions of this Bill which deals with ordinary legislative measures. But that is not all.

Under the provisions of this Bill the Second Chamber is to be finally deprived of any right to have any say with regard to financial measures, and the Secretary of State for War, speaking this afternoon, expressed the opinion that the Bill was justified by this provision alone. Now, with very great respect, I beg leave to differ to the right hon. Gentleman upon that point. In my humble opinion the provision of the Bill which seeks to deprive the Second Chamber of any right to reject a Finance Bill is one of the most serious matters in the whole of the Government's proposals. I know I may be told that the House of Lords have themselves very recently passed a resolution to the same effect. That is quite true. But I am bound to say I deeply regret that they passed such a resolution. If I may say so with great respect, I think that in that very decision of theirs, Noble Lords did not display that profusion of wisdom which usually characterises their proceedings. Indeed, I am sometimes assailed by a sort of uneasy feeling that there are members of the so-called Conservative party who vie with the Leaders of the Radical party in their endeavour to drive the constitutional coach over the precipice. I think it is essential that any Second Chamber in this country should retain the power it undoubtedly now possesses of rejecting, upon rare occasions it may be, but still retain the power to reject a Finance Bill. In a country where democratic government is in full blast, and where the mere count of heads is the final factor in legislation, surely one of the most important functions is to guard against the evils and injustice which may arise from the practical disenfranchisement of certain classes of the community arising out of the fact that when a count of heads is taken this particular class of the community may perchance find itself in a permanent minority. Let me explain exactly what I mean. You may, I suppose, roughly speaking, divide the taxpayers in this country into two classes, namely, those taxpayers who pay direct taxes, and those taxpayers who pay indirect taxes. It is well known that those who pay indirect taxes are far more numerous than the taxpayers who pay direct taxes Of course, the payers of direct taxes pay indirect taxes also, but I leave that aside for the purposes of my present argument. It might come about that the payers of indirect taxes, being by-far the most numerous body, might eventually decide that all indirect taxes should be abolished, and that if a deficit comes in the revenue by the abolition of indirect taxes it should be made up by a further imposition upon the shoulders of the direct taxpayers of new and additional burdens. That meets with the assent of a consider- able number of Members opposite, I know, and the forecast is by no means an unlikely one. The First Lord of the Admiralty, for instance, is a respected Member of the present Government. I do not know whether he would be classed among the Whig section or not, but he is not supposed to hold the most extreme of socialistic views. But the First Lord, I believe, holds the view that the whole of the revenues of the country ought to be derived from direct taxation.

As to the Lord Advocate, hon. Members know very well what his views are upon this question of taxation. We had an example, not very long ago, of the distance in this direction in which the most strait-laced financier on the opposite side of the House will go under the pressure of party expediency. It will be within the recollection of all hon. Members that at a time when the Government which was in power from 1906 to 1910 was about to commit the country to a vast and indefinite new expenditure on account of old age pensions, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer—who is at present Prime Minister—when some difficulty was being found in securing a seat for the Home Secretary, and when a by-election was taking place, gave up some millions of revenue by reducing the existing Sugar Tax. That was a time when the Government were putting the country to an enormous additional expenditure on account of old age pensions. The forecast I have made is by no means an unlikely one. If the Second Chamber of the future is to have no power of interfering in any way with the Finance Bill, what is there to prevent the majority shifting the whole burden of taxation from their own shoulders and imposing it upon the shoulders of the few.

Mr. PRINGLE

Could the House of Lords prevent that?

EARL of RONALDSHAY

I will explain what it means to have a Second Chamber having the right to reject a Finance Bill. It is conceivable that if the majority of the nation want that change it might be brought about. Does the hon. Member opposite not see that a Second Chamber possessing the powers of rejecting a Finance Bill must have a moderating influence upon the Government of the day which might be inclined to bring in great financial changes of that kind.

Mr. PRINGLE

That is what we are complaining of.

EARL of RONALDSHAY

Supposing a state of affairs was brought about under which you had a majority of the electors paying no taxes, and the whole of the revenue being derived from a comparatively small section of the community what check would there be on the most extravagant scheme of legislation, and where would the size of the annual Budget come to an end? If you are not to indulge in an era of wild and extravagant finance it is obvious that you must maintain upon the shoulders of those who might otherwise be inclined to embark upon wild schemes involving great expenditure, the check which is provided by the wholesome knowledge on their part that whatever measures they bring forward, involving expenditure, they will have to pay their share towards that expenditure. That is one of my reasons for thinking than any Second Chamber ought to maintain the power of rejecting the Finance Bill. Surely upon this point the appeal to history and experience is a sound one. I would like to ask the hon. Members opposite whether they can tell me of a single first-class Power or one of our own great Colonies, which does not entrust to its Second Chamber the right and power of rejecting, and in many cases of amending, a Finance Bill? What we ask for in this country is that we should be allowed to retain a Second Chamber which, at least, has the powers of every other Second Chamber in every first-class Power and in every one of our Colonies throughout the world.

Mr. LEIF JONES

The Lords do not ask for that. They have already surrendered it.

EARL of RONALDSHAY

I know the Lords have already passed a resolution on this point.

Mr. LEIF JONES

To whom does the Noble Lord refer when he says: "We"?

EARL of RONALDSHAY

I am speaking for myself. The hon. Member refers to the point that the House of Lords have given up their right to reject the Finance Bill. He must know, if he has studied the proposals of the Opposition, that we want to see a reconstructed Second Chamber just as much as the weak section of the Cabinet wish to have the same thing; and it is not too much to ask, if we are going to reconstruct our Second Chamber, that we should have a body which will be effective and which shall possess some real power in order to carry out the duties which are, or ought to be, entrusted to them.

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel)

Does the right hon. Member mean power to reject a Finance Bill?

EARL of RONALDSHAY

Certainly the power of rejecting a Finance Bill. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to give me the name of any first-class Power in this world, or any of our great Colonies, which does not now entrust to its Second Chamber the right at least of rejecting a Finance Bill. In the case of many of the first class Powers, and some of our Colonies, they have the right of amending finance Bills. These are the powers granted by other countries to their Second Chambers, and surely my appeal to history and experience is sound upon that point. In an admirable speech which I listened to with very great interest—although I did not agree with much of it—on the first reading of the Bill, the Home Secretary said:— I do not think a bi-cameral system is necessary to the stability of the State. The right hon. Gentleman curiously enough went on to admit that he thought such a system was necessary for the passing of good laws. That is an admission of which I took particular notice. On what ground has the right hon. Gentleman come to the conclusion that the bi-cameral system is not necessary to the stability of the State. We have had some experience in this country of a unicameral system; but it did not last very long. I refer to the Long Parliament, and those conversant with history will hardly be disposed to maintain that the unicameral experiment in those days contributed to the stability of the State. I think it was very much the reverse. After some years of this unicameral expenditure a petition was drawn up by prominent citizens in this country known as the humble petition—presented to Cromwell, and the chief prayer in it was that,— Your Highness will for the future be pleased to call Parliament consisting of two Houses. Hon. Members will also remember how when Cromwell was trying to impress upon the Army—the Army at that period of our history being one of the chief factors—the necessity in future of retaining two Chambers, he used these words:— I tell you unless you have some such things as balances we cannot be safe. Nobody will deny those words were undoubtedly called for by the proceedings during the previous few years. That, so far as I know, is the only experience of unicameral government we have had in this country. It is true there are one or two other countries at the present time which are enjoying the blessings of Single-Chamber Government, but I cannot find that Single Chamber Government in those countries has contributed towards the stability of the State. I do not wish to enumerate all the countries which enjoy Single Chamber Government, but hon. Members wil probably remember that the two principal are Costa Rica and Salvador. With regard to Costa Rica, I find it is governed under a Constitution promulgated in 1870 and modified very frequently since that date. Practically there was no Constitution, but only a dictatorship between 1870 and 1882. It does not sound from that description of the Government of Costa Rica that the Single-Chamber experiment there has contributed very much to the stability of the State. Salvador, as hon. Members will admit, is purely a democratic country. The elections take place once every year, and the members of the Chamber of Representatives are elected by everyone in the country over a certain age. They have at any rate universal suffrage. The Constitution in that country was proclaimed in 1824, was modified in 1859, again modified in 1864, again in 1871, again in 1872, again in 1880, again in 1883, and again in 1886. I do not think from the example of either of those countries we have any reason to suppose a bi-cameral system is not necessary to the stability of the State. Indeed, all the inference which it is possible to draw from those countries which have in the past indulged in Single-Chamber Government, and from those countries which do at present indulge in Single-Chamber Government, is very much the reverse, and is, in fact, that Single-Chamber Government results in great instability in the State.

I have put before the House the main reasons why I am opposed to the provision of this particular Bill. I have appealed to the Postmaster-General, who for the time being represents the Government, to give us some information on two points of the utmost importance with regard to the Preamble; and I hope before we reach the conclusion of the Debate he will be able to give us the information for which I have asked. So long as this Bill is put before us for our consideration on its merits, as at the present moment, and so long as we are convinced, as I am convinced, that the passing of this Bill must inevitably result in depriving the people of this country of an effective Second Chamber, so long, at any rate, shall I offer to it my strongest and most sustained opposition.

Sir ALBERT SPICER

I will not attempt to deal with those questions which the Noble Lord has put to my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench, but I will try and deal in the course of my remarks with the picture he has given us of what he thinks this House will be and what he thinks the relations of this House to another House will be, because it seems to me that he and I, at any rate, have perfectly formed opinions as to what the practical working will be when the Parliament Bill is passed, as I believe it will be. We on this side have been charged with not having put before the country clearly the question of this Parliament Bill. I, at any rate, do not plead guilty to any such charge. The whole of my address was devoted to the subject of the Parliament Bill, and I dealt in that address with no other subject. With regard to ordinary subjects I said:— My opinions on political matters were expressed in my address of January this year and are the same today, and I pledge my adherence to them. I may say incidentally that Home Rule was in my programme, as expressed at the beginning of last year. I went on to say:— I feel, however, that until the relations between the two Houses are settled on a fair basis it is in vain for the Liberal Party to attempt to deal with the many problems which so urgently need solution. For these reasons I confine this address to the one subject, and I ask You, in what I believe to be the best interests of this country, to express your emphatic approval of the Parliament Bill. I do not think anyone can say that I, at any rate, was not perfectly straightforward in the way in which I put this question before the electors of Central Hackney. We are twitted with the fact that we are not dealing with the Preamble. Of course, one was asked questions in the course of one's contest with regard to that. I always said in reply:— First things first: what we have to do at the present time is to pass this Parliament Bill by way of opening the pathway to other reforms. It is said, "Yes, but you will only succeed in passing this measure because of the group system. Each group has different interests, and a Bill will be passed that will enable some of these interests to be cared for against the will of a large number of the electors." I admit it is perfectly true that we have in connection with the supporters of this Parliament Bill various groups. The Noble Lord with myself represents a London constituency. I admit that at any rate the Londoners I represent have special interests which they want to see looked after in this House. There is the London Elections Bill which the other House rejected. Why they rejected it I cannot for the life of me understand, unless it be out of pure spite. There were 40,000 voters shut out. It was only asking that London should be treated on an equality with out great provincial cities like Manchester, Glasgow, and Birmingham, andyet that injustice was perpetrated upon the people of London. My Constituents want to see plural voting got rid of, because we know that would make a great difference in the result of many of the London elections. We want to see our Registration laws altered; we want to see the time come when, as soon as a man gets on to the rating list, he shall also get on to the register. It is only fair, if he is called upon to bear the burdens of the community, that he should also have the privileges. We want to see—and I think the Noble Lord will sympathise with me in this—a larger share of the local burdens, which are really national burdens, paid at any rate from the Imperial Exchequer. Some of us have long wanted to see some of the local rates instead of being borne entirely by the value of the buildings, borne at the expense of the land. So much for London. Then there are our friends from Ireland. They join with us because they want Home Rule. Our Welsh friends want Disestablishment, and our Scotch friends want Land Reform, as well as other reforms specially applicable to Scotland. I admit that we come together as a party of groups, but when this Bill is passed, when the Government comes to propose legislation, then you have the greatest safeguards against the two extremes of legislation in this fact of groups. Take, for instance, Home Rule. I am a Free Churchman. I have been a Home Ruler since 1886. I have suffered in my pocket for being a Home Ruler. I was offered a position, which was not an honorary position, some years ago (as late as 1886), but afterwards I was refused that position because I was known to be a Home Ruler. I am a Home Ruler, and at the same time a Free Churchman. I know that many of my Free Church friends in Ireland, and in this country, too, are still a little suspicious of the great influence the Romish Church may have under a Home Rule Government. I have heard official assurances given on this subject by the Leader of the Nationalist party, and I believe in his assurances. I venture to say that Free Churchmen in Ireland, and Free Churchmen here, will, when the Home Rule Bill is introduced into this House, look very closely to see that those assurances are provided for in any legislative proposals that may be considered. Therefore in this very group system you have a great safeguard The same consideration will apply to Welsh Disestablishment and Scotch land reforms. Therefore, the system of groups will, I repeat, be the greatest safeguard in regard to any legislation that may be proposed.

9.0 P.M.

The next charge made against this Bill is that it will bring about Single-Chamber Government. I will not enlarge on the argument with regard to the system under which we lived from 1895–1905. The fact is I cannot help thinking this is one of the many exaggerations which our friends the Unionist party have indulged in ever since 1903. In that year they were using exaggerated terms with regard to the commercial position of the country and almost every other subject that they touched. Let us put ourselves into the position of the next House of Commons, after the Parliament Bill has passed. We will presume the Home Rule Bill has been introduced, and after five months of discussion has gone up to the House of Lords. During the discussion on that Bill it will have had to go through the gauntlet of Debate, and the discussion will have created certain impressions in the country, either for or against. During those five months there will have been a few by-elections which will have indicated the opinion of the country. I presume that the Bill will pass this House and go up to the House of Lords, and I take it for granted that on the first occasion the Bill will be rejected. That will be at the end of July, and the Bill cannot be introduced again till the month of March next. In the meantime we shall have had another series of by-elections. Do you mean to tell me, if the larger part of those elections go against us, the Government will have the moral force behind them to get that Bill through the House of Commons again?

EARL Of RONALDSHAY

Does the hon. Gentleman include the Licensing Bill in the same category?

Sir ALBERT SPICER

I know it is said sometimes that bye-elections mean very little, but take them in the aggregate, I venture to say they do show the trend of public opinion at the time. I have taken the trouble to get out the results of the bye-elections for the last ten years.; During that period there have been 130 bye-elections, and I think it will be found I they reflect very accurately the general public opinion of the time. I start with 1901, just after the Conservative Government had come back to power. There were eight bye-elections, the result being that the Unionist party were two better than at the previous elections for the same Constituencies. I am comparing like with like. In 1902, there were eleven bye-elections and there was a Liberal gain of two. In 1903 there were fifteen bye-elections; there was a Liberal gain of five. In 1904 there were seventeen bye-elections; there was a Liberal gain of seven. In 1905 there were sixteen bye-elections, and a Liberal gain of seven. In 1906, after the General Election, there were nine bye-elections; the result was the same. In 1907 there were thirteen bye-elections; the result being the same. In 1908, the year which the Noble Lord referred to, there were nineteen bye-elections and there were seven Conservative gains, while in 1909 there were fifteen bye-elections and there were four Conservative gains. Then we come to 1910, after the Lords had done their worst, and the parties remained the same. I think if those figures are looked at and the political history of the different years considered, you will find that those bye-elections reflect very accurately the general trend of opinion at that time.

This is no question of creating a Single Chamber. It must also be recollected that there are movements going on in the constituencies, and on both sides we are made to feel in our different constituencies what those constituencies are thinking about. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that with every contest—and I have now fought on eight different occasions—the constituencies are growing more intelligent every time. There will be under this Parliament Bill, I believe, the amplest opportunity for criticism and for delaying measures, but if legislation commends itself to this House and to the constituencies as we think, there will at any rate be a prospect of finality and of obtaining legislation that we believe we are sent here to pass. I cannot help thinking that the more one I reads the speeches of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite the more one sees that they fail to appreciate the feeling of injustice under which we live at the present time arising from the ability and from the action of the other House in stopping reforms which we know are desired by the country and which we are sent here that we might pass. The Noble Lord has referred to the question of education. You may, perhaps, level criticism with regard to that Bill, but if the measure of 1906 had been accepted—it might not have been all some of us wanted—and it would have been accepted if the Lords had allowed it to go through, and had that been the case you would not be as you are now, allowing a great injustice to rest upon hundreds, and I suppose thousands, of men in this country who are doing good work for the country, but who this week will allow themselves for the twenty-eighth time to go through the humiliating process of being summoned before a Court of Justice. They do not do this, and I have not done it, for the love of it. I have done it simply because I want to stand in, because I want to be true to my principles, and because I do not want the little men all over the country who are suffering to feel that nobody stands by them who has any responsible position.

As I say, I do not think hon. and right hon. Gentlemen realise the injustice under which we feel we are living at the present time through the action of the other House in years gone by. It is all very well for you to say now that you are anxious to see a restricted House of Lords that shall be fair to both parties. It is all very well to say that now, but why have you not said it a good deal earlier and why have you not said it before you have been beaten three tims at the polls. It is all very well to say that you represent nearly half the electors. Nearly half the electors is defeat, but we have had victory three times running, and we should think a good deal more of your proposal for the reform of the House of Lords if it had come a little earlier in the day and if you had been willing to recognise the injustice under which we have been suffering for so long. May I go from a great subject to a small one. Does anybody ever go by those great Embankment tramways without realising the immense and frightful blunder that the Lords made when they derided and would not allow the trams to go along the Embankment. It would have made no difference to the Noble Lords. There would have been plenty of room for their carriages as well as the tramways, and yet they refused these tramways to-many thousands of their poor neighbours on the other side of London. No one can watch those trams without feeling that they point out to the House on the other side of the Lobby what a blunder they made and what an injustice they committed upon their poorer neighbours. We are told by the Opposition that if we pass this Bill now they will repeal it when they come in. But I confess that that threat does not frighten me. I recollect the great Budget of 1894, when Sir William Harcourt for the first time in connection with the Death Duties put the land of the country in the same position as personalty. I recollect only too well a great many of the strong speeches that were made with regard to repealing that measure when the Opposition came back to Parliament. I recollect one speech especially by the late Duke of Devonshire—one of the hardest-headed men then living, and a true Englishman, whom we all respected, whether we agreed with every one of his opinions or not, but we always liked to know what his opinions were. I recollect, in the course of these attacks, he made a very strong speech for him in the direction of possible repeal. But immediately that Bill was an Act I noticed that he went and made a speech down in a little schoolroom near his Derbyshire estates, evidently seizing the opportunity to proclaim to the British people that Act is an Act, and we have to obey it and carry it out. He sought that opportunity, and, indeed, made it, at some meeting in a little school in that district, so that he might, at any rate, cancel the effect of anything he might have said in the other direction. You said the same with regard to the Budget of 1909, but having had to face your constituencies twice since that Budget was brought in you know perfectly well that it was a popular Budget.

You will find it popular, and it is only reasonable that it should be popular—a Budget that raises nearly fifteen millions of money without putting another penny of taxation on actual necessaries, and food, and if any one did not smoke, and did not take alcohol he contributed nothing to this fifteen millions. When you thought this Increment Duty and taxes on unoccupied land were going to be unpopular, and that you would be able to make, through your land union and other means, a case against them you found the electors really knew a little more about the land system of the country than you gave them credit for.

I commenced my education in 1885 and at a Radical source. It was the result of that Housing Commission of which the late King was a member and the late Sir Charles Dilke was chairman, and when they had put on paper their recommendation, even accepted by one Noble Lord and one Bishop, and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Jesse Collings), that in future unoccupied land should be rated at 4 per cent., an education was commenced on this land question, which some of us have done our best to follow up, and the addresses at the last election of hon. Members opposite show that they have begun to appreciate that in the past a value had been created by the people and by the expenditure of public money, which landowners were allowed to sweep into their net, instead of paying back some of it in connection with the government of their localities and the Government of the country. They are beginning to understand that, and you have found it out, and you know perfectly well that there was not one of you who proposed to repeal the Budget in any of your election addresses. I have gone through over a hundred of the addresses of successful candidates and I find there is not one—I cannot find one—which undertook to go in for the repeal of the Budget as a whole, though there were a number of questions raised with regard to agricultural taxes and valuation. In spite of the sacrifice that the General Election has meant to a great many of us, I am beginning to be devoutly thankful to the House of Lords for having rejected the Budget, because in doing so they have enabled a long-drawn-out controversy to be brought to a definite issue, an issue which we have been able to place before the people so that they understand it. We have put this Parliament Bill before them. They have accepted it, and they have returned a majority in favour of it. The best thing we can do, I say it to my opponents as I say it to my own side, is the sooner we get this measure put on the Statute Book the better it will be for the interests of the country.

Mr. G. J. SANDYS

I propose to deal not so much with the constitutional problem which necessarily arises upon the measure, as with what I can conceive will probably be its practical results should it unfortunately ever be carried into law. First of all I desire to emphasise this point, that, in spite of the very studied moderation with which this measure was introduced, and the same moderation has been reflected in many of the speeches of hon. Members opposite, it is perfectly clear that so far from being a question of constitutional reform it is in reality a case of constitutional revolution. I find a certain amount of satisfaction in this. As we all know, history is full of the records of revolution, but wherever these revolutions have been successsful they have always been carried into effect by men who were perfectly convinced, however violent their action was, that violent action was absolutely essential in order to preserve or to secure the liberty of the people. The revolution which we are considering in this Bill is a revolution of an entirely different character, because it is evidently intended not to preserve the liberty of the Nation, but to ensure the security of the Radical Government. That this is the case is openly acknowledged by responsible Ministers themselves. There is no Minister of the Crown to whose utterances more importance and more weight is attached than the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Edward Grey), and I should like to allude to the very remarkable and exceedingly valuable contribution to this particular controversy which he gave us in the shape of a speech delivered at the City Liberal Club last year, in the course of which he made use of the following very remarkable phrase:— As far as the House of Lords as at present constituted is concerned, I say no limitation of its powers can be too stringent for the need of Liberal policy. These are the words which I wish to emphasise, "for the need of Liberal policy." It is not the needs of the people; it is not the needs of the nation, far less the needs of the Empire. It is the needs of Liberal policy which we have to consider, according to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and necessarily that involves the needs of the Government who are responsible for that policy. That is exactly what we have always said. It appears to me on this occasion the right hon. Gentleman let the cat out of the bag. But I urge that this is not the spirit in which a great constitutional revolution can be carried out—in order to satisfy the needs of the policy of one party in the State. It may be interesting to examine what are the needs of Liberal policy. Unfortunately for the Radical Government, the needs of Liberal policy to-day are exactly the same as they were before the last General Election—that is to say to preserve their subservient majority in this House by retaining the support of the Irish party. From that I deduce that if we carry this measure into effect we are asked to sanction what is really a conspiracy in order to carry out two particular objects—first of all to prolong, possibly indefinitely, as one or two hon. Members on this side have suggested, the existence of the Radical Government, and, secondly, to secure the passing of a Home Rule Bill for Ireland. I have noticed in this Debate that hon. Members opposite have been exceedingly anxious to prove that the constitutional changes which we are asked to sanction have nothing to do with Home Rule, and that the two subjects ought to be kept entirely apart and separate. I am bound to confess that at the time of the last General Election they achieved a considerable amount of success in that policy of keeping the two questions entirely separate, and owing to the fact that that appeal to the country was so hurried, and that these exceedingly important matters had to be compressed into a discussion of less than three weeks, it was, I am well aware, quite impossible for Conservative candidates in a great many instances to lay fully and fairly before the electors that as a matter of fact the question of Home Rule was at issue. After the speeches in this Debate, however, we are perfectly justified in saying that, under cover of this measure, the Government do eventually intend to introduce a Bill giving Home Rule to Ireland. In fact the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) in the course of his speech in the recent Home Rule Debate told us that during the General Election a distinct question had been put to the Prime Minister himself, asking him whether, in the event of this Veto Bill passing into law, a Home Rule Bill would be introduced for Ireland. According to the hon. and learned Member, the answer of the Prime Minister was in the affirmative. I am inclined to think under these circumstances that it will be somewhat difficult for the Prime Minister to satisfy the scruples of the hon. Member for the St. Ives Division (Sir Clifford Cory), who stated that he would be unable to support this measure unless he had an assurance from the Government that it was not intended to cover a Home Rule Bill for Ireland. We are all perfectly well aware that in reality the Government do intend to pass a Home Rule Bill for Ireland without consulting the people, and, as a matter of fact, entirely against their wishes. We have heard a great deal in the course of this Debate about this Bill being introduced in order that the will of the people may prevail. But, as a matter of fact, it is quite evident that the Government intend to ride rough-shod over the will of the people in order that the will not of the people but of the Government may prevail. During the course of the recent appeal to the people there was one question which was continually put to candidates, and it was one which we had considerable difficulty in answering. We were asked: Why is this election taking place? We have the authority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on that matter. Speaking in the House of Commons on 21st November, just before the Dissolution, he said:— The country is being consulted about the proposals of the Government for settling questions of deadlock between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. That was the official view expressed in the House of Commons as to the reason for the General Election. That would have been a fairly adequate explanation if it had been entirely correct, but, as has been frequently emphasised during the course of this Debate, this is not really a final settlement of the question, but only a preliminary step. It is only, in the words of the Prime Minister:— A temporary expedient in order to meet a pressing emergency. Therefore the opinion of the people has been asked, not on a settlement, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated, but on a temporary expedient for a pressing emergency. What is that pressing emergency? Of course, it is exactly the same now as twelve months ago, namely, the uncompromising attitude of the Irish party. I am well aware that His Majesty's Ministers, with one exception to which I shall refer later, have never made any statement to the effect that they were not completely satisfied with the general election which took place in January last year. If they were satisfied with the election of January last year, I would like to ask what was the real object of having another election in December when, by their own acknowledgment, they were not in a position to lay a final settlement of this question before the people. The real reason for the general election of last December was that they were not as a matter of fact satisfied with the election which had taken place in the previous January, and they felt it was impossible or, at any rate, if not impossible, undesirable, to carry a constitutional change of this magnitude and of this great importance to the future history of the country with a majority of that heterogeneous character which they found behind them after the election of January last year. We have had the statement repeated on several occasions during the Debate that the will of the majority of the Members of this House invariably represents the settled wishes of the people of this country. But that I may point out is not the view of the Prime Minister, because speaking in this House on 29th March last, he said:— 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 the representatives of the people in a particular case have mistaken the terms of their authority. It may again, he that the majority by which a particular measure is passed through this House is so small, or so obviously casual and heterogeneous, that its verdict ought not to be treated as expressing the considered judgment of the nation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 29th March. 1910, col. 1179.] Therefore, of course, the real object of the General Election held last December was that the Government might have a majority of a more satisfactory character with which to carry out the constitutional changes which they contemplated. Hon. Members opposite may question that and say, "What is your authority for making such a statement?" I admit that responsible Members of the Government have been exceedingly cautious, but I would like to refer to the speech of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on that same occasion. He was not at all satisfied with the majority the Liberal party possessed after the election of 1910, and he used these words:— … because, remember the result of last election has not been very conclusive as regards future issues. It seems to me that is a most important admission. I would refer to the election address of the Prime Minister. These were the final words:— I ask you to repeat with still greater emphasis the approval which only eleven months ago yon gave to the proposals of His Majesty's Government. It may be said that an election address is a personal appeal to one's own particular constituents. If that was a personal appeal, at any rate in this particular case greater emphasis was not forthcoming, for I find that the right hon. Gentleman's majority in January, 1910, was 2,059, while in December last it was 1,799. But, as a matter of fact, I suppose it would be generally allowed that the Prime Minister's address is not so much to his own constituents as a general appeal to the country. The Prime Minister asked on behalf of the Government for a sign of approval from the country to be given with much greater emphasis than in the previous January. As everybody knows, that greater emphasis of approval was not forthcoming, and, therefore, I would argue that if the majority which the Liberal party possessed after the General Election of January, 1910, was not of a character to justify the Government in carrying through vast constitutional changes, so also the majority they have at the present time is equally unsatisfactory and equally does not justify them in carrying through a great constitutional revolution. The last election has been termed the "As-you-were-election." Personally, I think that is a particularly unsuitable phrase with which to describe it, because there is no question that that ineffective appeal to the country has not only not strengthened the position of the Government, but that it has morally weakened their position.

We heard a good deal in the course of the speech delivered by one of the hon. Members on the other side of the House about the statistics of the election. I must say that I was not able very closely to follow his argument, but after he had concluded I felt surprised to find that there were any Members of the Unionist party in the House at all. But I think it will be agreed that in any constitutional business, or in the affairs generally of the United Kingdom, this country, England, is the predominant partner. As was previously pointed out in the speech of the hon. Member for the Walton Division (Mr. F. E. Smith), so far as England is concerned, the Liberal party is represented by 226 Members, as against 239 representing the Conservative and constitutional party, and as, by the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, we are perfectly entitled to inquire into the character of a majority, I say it is impossible for any Government, however violent or unscrupulous its methods, to carry into effect any constitutional change which has against it the majority of the people of England. During the course of the speeches to which we have listened this afternoon, the charges have been repeated against the House of Lords upon which the supposed necessity for this measure is based. The speech of the Prime Minister told us that the authority of the House of Lords was merely nominal, and that their decisions could only be regarded as academical conclusions. I would urge in reply that, after all, that is not a very substantial reason for the violent agitation that has been taking place against the overwhelming influence of the Second Chamber. I can only suppose that it is in pursuance of the Scriptural authority, which says that from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Then we have the familiar argument which was epigramatically placed before the electors of Dundee in a celebrated manifesto issued by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary a year or so ago, in which he said that the House of Lords has always presented a blank wall of obstacle in the path of Liberal legislation. That argument has become a very familiar argument. It has been repeated time after time in the course of this Debate. To that familiar argument may I be allowed to give the equally familiar answer—how is such a statement consistent with the fact that during the last two elections Liberal platforms have rung with the record of Liberal legislation, passed for the benefit of the working classes of this country? I would like to refer to a Liberal leaflet issued during the last Election stating that since 1906 the Liberal Government have been in power with a Labour Member in the Cabinet, and pointing to their great record of legislation for the benefit of Labour "unequalled in the same length of time by any previous Government." Those two contentions are hopelessly inconsistent, and mutually destructive. The real position with regard to the House of Lords was summed up by the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Haldane) in a speech made in 1907, in which he said that whenever the nation had been in earnest with a measure the House of Lords had in the end been found no obstacle. Again, we have had repeated in several speeches the familiar argument that it was perfectly possible to retain a Double-Chamber system of government while at the same time taking away the Veto of the House of Lords. This particular mental feat, which has been performed on so many occasions during this Debate, has become, if I may say so, so familiar to us that it has ceased either to arouse our astonishment or to excite our admiration. The utter fallacy of this argument has been demonstrated time after time, and was most admirably summed up by the late Lord Salisbury in a speech made in 1894, in which he said:— Such an arrangement—the childish proposal that the Veto of the House of Lords should be taken away—while it still remains a legislative assembly, would be as much government by Single Chamber as if the Second Chamber were abolished. Supposing this measure were ever passed into law, what may we anticipate to be the probable course of future events? Of course, I do not know if the anticipations of hon. Members who sit below the Gangway, or of hon. Members who sit on the other side with regard to the Preamble are going to be realised; but if the Preamble is actually put into effect it may be interesting to try to see what is probably going to happen. There is one thing I suppose quite certain, and that is there is not going to be another General Election. I notice that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech which he made in December, 1910, at Bangor, used these words:— Yon may depend upon it if the Liberal party have an adequate majority there will be no other election on the House of Lords. If this is an adequate majority, I conclude that there will be no other election on the House of Lords. If this is an adequate majority, we must take this proposal on the Preamble absolutely seriously, and we can only suppose that the process is going to be completed under the powers which are now being given to this House with regard to the Second Chamber, and it is again interesting to refer to the very illuminative speech made by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for it throws a very interesting light on the future situation. He stated in the course of the same speech to which I have already alluded:— Democracy has made great progress in this country. It has still much to gain. But it has also a great deal to lose, and democracy now has an interest, provided its Second Chamber could only be placed on an elective and democratic basis, in seeing that such Second Chamber should exist, because democracy has so much to preserve which might be lost by a temporary rush of reaction giving a majority in the House of Commons. That is a very striking phrase—"temporary rush of reaction." The "temporary rush of reaction" means, of course, the return of a Conservative Government to power, and I take it therefore that the policy of the present Government, according to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, is to establish a Second Chamber of such a character and composition that it will be able to nullify the legislative action of a Conservative majority in this House. I have always understood that one of the principal objections to the House of Lords was that its majority did not necessarily coincide with the majority in the House of Commons. We on this side of the House have become somewhat acclimatised to the inconsistencies of Radical policy. We know quite well that the rules of the game are quite different for the good Liberals and for the wicked Tories, but at the same time that it should be actually contemplated to preserve for the benefit of Liberals the very anomaly which has been largely the basis of the agitation against the House of Lords is surely a complete demonstration of the absolute insincerity of its supporters. I would, therefore, seriously urge upon the consideration of the House that this Bill which we are now discussing if the ultimate intentions of the Government are realised, is one which will be practically irrevocable, and that it will inevitably, not only shake the foundation of our Empire, but, at the same time, endanger the real liberties of the people of this country, by destroying the Constitution under which we have lived and prospered for generations, and which has been for centuries the admiration of the civilised world.

Mr. LEIF JONES

The hon. Member who has just sat down, I think, really misconceives the position which we have reached in this controversy. He seems to imagine that he is called upon at this time of day to oppose revolution. If he had listened to these Debates at all he would have realised that we are all revolutionaries together at the present time. On that side of the House as well as on this it is recognised that there must be drastic changes in the constitution of the House of Lords as well as in the relations between the two Chambers. My hon. Friend the Member for South Glamorgan (Mr. Brace) was greeted with approving cheers by Members on the other side when he said that the Second Chamber, if there was to be one, should be a Chamber in which capital and labour were equally represented, and where Nonconformists were to be represented as well as the Bishops of the Church of England, the landless as well as the landlords. The hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Neville) said all classes and creeds ought to be represented in the new Second Chamber. But that is a greater revolution than anything which the Government are proposing. It makes a far greater change in the Constitution, a far greater breach with the past, to suggest the constitution of a Second Chamber, which, if it means anything, means that the hereditary principle has gone for ever, and that you are to have an elective representative Second Chamber with powers practically equal to those of this House. That is a far greater change, and far more of a revolution than anything proposed in the Parliament Bill which we are considering. I admit there has been one exception on the other side, in the Noble Lord the Member for Hornsey (Earl of Ronald-shay), who has stood alone in this House—alone physically, for the rest of Members on the opposition side were dining; they feared revolution so little that they left but one supporter to face the fierce ranks of the Government—in supporting the view that the House of Lords should retain its present powers, and the Constitution be carried on in its present form. It has been urged against the Government that the majority supporting the Bill is not a homogeneous majority, and that we are going to vote for the Second Reading of this measure for very different reasons. It is said that the Irish party are going to vote for the Parliament Bill because through that Bill they see their way to Home Rule. That has been said a good many times in the course of this Debate. A good deal of the opposition to the Bill appears to be based more on fear of Home Rule than on the Bill itself. It is said, again, that Labour Members are supporting the Parliament Bill because they see that many of the social reforms demanded by those whom they represent will be secured if the Parliament Bill is passed. It is also said that Nonconformists support the Bill because they see through it their way to religious equality. I do not deny that there is a certain element of truth in these statements. I think it is true that if it were not for the grievances which have been suffered by many sections of the community in having measures refused for which they have been working for many years, we might have waited a long time for the Parliament Bill of the present Government.

The truth is that if the House of Lords had been content to remain in the state of quiesence in which they practically were from 1840 to 1880, probably we should not to-night have been debating the Parliament Bill. But it is in the gradual increase of their claim to reject measures passed by great majorities in this House Session after Session, it is in their great assumption and arrogance that we find not only the justification but the absolute necessity of the Bill which the Government is to-day presenting to this country. Let me refer shortly to the question in which I have been peculiarly interested for five and twenty years—I mean the Temperance question. The Leader of the Opposition said of us and the Government that we were determined to pick a quarrel with the House of Lords. Speaking on behalf of Temperance Reformers I would say that nothing could be further from the truth so far as we are concerned. Temperance Reformers have for well nigh over a century specialised upon a particular social evil, recognised I think by all parties in the House to be grave, and which the Leader of the Opposition described a few years ago as the great and ever present trage of drink. Temperance reformers of this country were not troubling their heads about the House of Lords a few years ago; they were concerned about the House of Commons. For well they knew the difficulty of ripening public opinion upon this question, and of securing in this House a majority in favour of the reform which they advocated. It was upon the House of Commons, and not upon the House of Lords, the temperance reformers fixed their gaze. Let me recall to the House what happened on this question of Temperance reform and how it comes that Temperance reformers are supporting the Parliament Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire, in his Amendment, says that the proposals of the Government offer no safeguard against the passage into law of grave changes without the consent and contrary to the will of the people. Certainly the Constitution, as it is at present, offers no safeguard against grave constitutional changes made without the consent of the people of this country. When the Parliament of 1900 was returned, who ever dreamt that before a few years had gone by, Parliament would pass a measure which revolutionised the licensing system of this country and took from the justices powers which they had exercised for hundreds of years, and because those justices, under the pressure of public opinion, were gradually realising their responsibilities as the guardians of social order and responsible to the people, and because they began to exercise the powers conferred upon them by Parliament, a Bill was intro- duced in 1904 and passed through this Chamber which took away from the justices their powers and destroyed for ever the discretion which they were supposed to exercise on behalf of the people. That was a revolution carried without the consent of the people and in defiance of the wishes of the people.

10.0 P.M.

The by-elections which hon. Members cheered a while ago, showed, so far as they could, that public opinion was against the then Government in that respect, and I think it is not to be doubted that the country was not behind the Government in regard to that Licensing Act of 1904. The Bill went to the House of Lords, and there was the opportunity for that House to resist grave changes against the will of the people; there was the opportunity for them to show that they were not going to allow a chance majority derived from the issue of the Khaki election of 1900 to confer a vested interest on the licensee, and take away from the public the only protection they had against the liquor traffic. The Lords did not rise to the heights of that occasion, because there was a Conservative—I must withdraw that word—the Unionist party forfeited that title for ever when, at the bidding of the brewers, they passed that Act in 1904. The Lords did not prevent that revolution. The destruction of the School Boards without warning, without a word said at the General Election, was another most unjustifiable revolution, and any Second Chamber worthy of the name would have rejected the Education Bill, and referred it to the further consideration of the people and of this House. So that the House of Lords has no justification whatever to claim to be a Chamber which prevents revolutions from being carried through without warning to the people, and against their will. But if they did not do that they have very successfully served as an obstacle to prevent the redress of grievances when, after the people have been consulted, a Government has been returned to put those grievances right. We have heard much about mandates. I do not know if hon. Members opposite will dispute that the Education Bill of the Unionist Government between 1900 and 1905 played a great part in the return of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's majority in 1906. When the effort is made to carry out the policy of the electors the House of Lords will not allow it to be done, and in the same way when the Licensing Bill of 1908 was brought in, certainly in fulfilment of the pledges given at the election of 1906, the House of Lords also prevents the redress of that grievance. That action, too, mark you, is taken not merely on a great constitutional question, but on Bills referring to simple social questions on which the policy of the Government had been placed before the country at the General Election. Mr. Speaker, you once called me to order in this House for saying that I should neither forgive nor forget the conduct of the House of Lords in regard to the Licensing Bill of 1908. I think I was called to order not for the strength of the sentiment, but on account of the irrelevance of the occasion on which I made the remark. I can only say now I am thankful that the time has come round when I can say to the House and to the country that the temperance reformers of this country cannot forgive and cannot forget the action of the House of Lords in rejecting the Licensing Bill, on which so many hopes had been built by temperance reformers in this country. Let me carry the history one step further, because that will make the Opposition understand, as I want them to understand, the determination that is behind the Government to carry this Bill into law. Not only has the House of Lords allowed the Unionist Government to carry their revolutions, but they have refused to redress the grievances the present Government were ready to deal with. We have from the Government the promise that those grievances shall be redressed when the Parliament Bill has become the law of the land, and we temperance reformers have the clear promise from the Prime Minister that when the Parliament Bill has become law, and when the constitutional question has been settled by the people of this country being made masters in their own House, the Licensing Bill, or at least a Bill as strong, shall be placed on the Statute Book as one of the first fruits of the victory over the House of Lords. I say quite straightly to the Opposition that when temperance reformers have seen those wrongs done by the House of Lords, and when they have the promise from the Government that they will be righted, that they have been convinced that their only hope of a temperance measure lies in removing the Veto of the House of Lords, and they are therefore solidly behind the Government in the action they are now taking. I want to know if the Opposition will tell us how much of our grievance they admit. Do they admit we have any grievance at all? We heard hon. Members say to-day that they wished absolutely equal treatment between the two parties in this House. I do not think that anyone can say that we have had anything like equal treatment during the last thirty or forty years. I do not think that hon. Members can for a moment say that it has been as easy for Liberal Governments to place their measures on the Statute Book as for a Conservative or Unionist Government to do so. For my part I have heard very few speeches in this Debate except the remarkable speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Walton Division (Mr. F. E. Smith), which recognised our grievance, or showed any desire on the part of Members opposite to meet it. I know that on the part of the Leader of the Opposition there is no recognition of our grievance. There has been no desire to meet it, and indeed we have very good reason to suppose from speeches which he made that the Leader of the Opposition wishes to prolong a state of affairs which has conferred such undue advantage on his party. We have not forgotten the speech he made at Nottingham in 1906, at a time when his party was defeated at the polls and when he was himself a defeated candidate. He declared it to be— the bounden duty of each one of you in his separate sphere, and with such power and influence as he has been endowed with to do his best to see that the great Unionist Party shall still control, whether in power or in opposition the destiny of this great Empire. That is the claim which has been put forward by the Leader of the Opposition, and that claim has never been abandoned. I submit to fair-minded men it is an absolutely unreasonable claim for the leader of a defeated party to say that the interests which he supports and the principles which he believes are still to rule after a Government of different principles and of different ideas has taken office. Is that position abandoned? Are we to take it that it is now recognised as part of the Opposition policy that we are to have fair play for Liberal legislation in this House? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire has put down an Amendment on the Paper stating that they would welcome the introduction of a Bill to reform the composition of the House of Lords. What does he mean by those vague words?

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

What I said.

Mr. LEIF JONES

I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman always means what he says, but he said very little upon the point. I listened to his speech with the greatest interest, because this is the constructive part of his Resolution. He was very critical of the Government, because they had developed the negative side of their proposals and had declined to put forward the constructive side; in his own speech he developed the destructive side of his argument, but he altogether refrained from putting forward any full account of what the new Second Chamber was to be. I ask him, does he know now what proposals are to be advanced in the House of Lords when the House of Lords scheme is put forward? [An HON. MEMBER: "DO you know what the Preamble is?"] If right hon. Gentlemen opposite like to take refuge in that, they can; but I must point out that they are not in the same position as the Government. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman does not know what his Resolution means, and that he is waiting for to-morrow's meeting to decide how far it shall go. But perhaps I was wrong; perhaps right hon. Gentlemen opposite do not care what their followers on the benches behind them want. Are they sure when they have found their scheme that the Lords will accept it? In any case, judging by the schemes that have been put forward, I can only say that not one of them seems to me to recognise our grievance or to promise any remedy.

If hon. Members will look back on the political history of the last few years they will not be surprised that we are a little sceptical as to the real meaning of this sudden zeal for reform on the part of the party opposite, and if we doubt very much, in the face of speeches such as that of the right hon. Gentleman at Nottingham, whether there is any real desire on their part to meet the grievance of which we on this side complain. We have more than a suspicion that their desire is to delay the progress of this controversy, in the hope that something may turn up if only they can postpone the passing of the Parliament Bill. For my part, I can only express my great thanks to the Government for the promptness with which they are pressing on the policy which was presented to the country at the General Election. It has been represented from the other side that the Government are being spurred on by Irish and Labour Members, and that but for those parties they would not be proceeding as they are. I can only say in all sincerity that the great difficulty which I had with Liberal electors in my Division was a fear lest the Government should not go forward with the Parliament Bill, lest they should delay dealing with this matter. I am confident that the large measure of support which I received from the electors was due to the assurance which I was able to give that the Parliament Bill would be pressed forward by every means available to the Government. It is said that the Government are very autocratic; but, as the Home Secretary said, they are very sensitive to the feeling of this House, and if they did not press forward with the Bill they would be met with one universal "shrug" not only from the Irish Benches, but from the Liberal party, which would remove them from office. So long as they press on with the Bill they can rely on the heartiest support from the benches behind them.

We are told that the measure will be repealed as soon as the party opposite come into power. I am not much afraid of that threat. It has been made too frequently of late in regard to Liberal legislation, and the most recent incident of the Budget is too fresh in our minds, for that threat to carry any particular menace with it. I would put this further question to hon. Members opposite. Are they going to pass the Parliament Bill, or are they going to fight it to the bitter end, as the Duke of Bedford advised them the other day? Are they going to compel the Government to adopt the constitutional means which is open to them of making the necessary number of Peers to carry the Bill. The right hon. Member for East Worcestershire, in a speech outside the House, stated that the method of making Peers would be unconstitutional in this case. He did not repeat the statement in the House to-day, and I am not quite sure how far he stands to that proposition.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Absolutely.

Mr. LEIF JONES

Then I can only say I do not know where the right hon. Gentleman finds that constitutional doctrine. Every constitutional authority that I have been able to consult recognises the right of making Peers as the one check which exists upon the action of the House of Lords when it is contrary to the declared will of the people. It is rather curious that in the course of the gradual aggression of the House of Lords upon the people of the country, in their gradual grasping of power, we have seen them set hands on every check that exists upon the working of the different parts of the Constitution. As Sir Erskine May says in his "Constitutional History":— There are three checks in the Constitution; the Commons may be overborne by a dissolution; the Lords by a threatened creation of peers; the Crown by a withholding of supplies. Every one of these constitutional checks, vested in different hands by the practice of the Constitution, has been grasped in recent years by the House of Lords. They have grasped at the Control of Supplies by their rejection of the Budget, thereby seizing into their own hands the one means of controlling the Crown. They have claimed again and again in the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite the right to dictate the moment of dissolution thereby infringing the prerogative of the Crown to set a check on the action of the House of Commons. They are now in the proposed limitation of numbers in their new constitutional scheme, and in the speeches of the right hon. Gentlemen and others, declaring it to be unconstitutional to use the ancient constitutional means of coercing the House of Lords by the creation of Peers. The right hon. Gentleman has repeated here what he said outside. May I read some words which were spoken by Lord Grey during the controversy over the Reform Bill in 1832? The quotation, which is very relevant to the present controversy, is from a speech made in the House of Lords on 17th May, 1832. Lord Grey, dealing with this very point which had been urged by the Duke of Wellington, that the occasion had not come' for the creation of Peers, said:— I ask what would be the consequence if we were to suppose that such a prerogative (that is the right to create peers) did not exist, or could not be constitutionally exercised. The Commons have control over the power of the Crown by the privilege, in extreme cases, of refusing supplies, and the Crown has by means of its power to dissolve the House of Commons a control upon any violent and rash proceeding on the part of the House of Commons. [Several HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Yes; but that is the power which the House of Lords has lately claimed out of the hands of the Crown. But if the majority of this House (that is, the House of Lords), are to have the power whenever they please of opposing the declared and decided wishes both of the Crown and of the people without there being any means of modifying that power, then this country is placed entirely under the influence of an uncontrollable oligarchy. I say, if a majority of this House should have the power of acting adversely to the Crown and the Commons, and was determined to exercise that power, without being liable to check or control, the Constitution is completely altered and the Government of this country is not a limited monarchy. It is no longer my Lords, Crown, Lords and Commons, but the House of Lords, a separate oligarchy governing absolutely the others. That is the position that I claim the House of Lords has taken up in recent controversies. It is to remedy that condition of things that the Government has introduced the Parliament Bill. I do not know whether hon. Members opposite are going to force the creation of peers. If they do—why, so much the better for us! I know that Lord Grey did not make a single peer in order to pass the Reform Bill. What he did was to get written authority from King William IV. to make a" many peers as might be required. That was sufficient for the House of Lords! Possibly to-day the knowledge that the Government has power, and will, if necessary, make the necessary number of peers, may be sufficient for the House of Lords. If not—so much the better! It will be much easier to carry a Home Rule Bill through a Liberal House of Lords than through the present one-sided House. It will be very much easier to carry an Education Bill and a Temperance Bill through such a House of Lords. [An HON. MEMBER: "SO long as it remained Liberal."] Well, of course, I am assuming that we are going to pass our measure through this House; if we cannot do that, there the matter ends. At any rate, in my judgment, if the Government are driven to take the extreme course, I hope they will be ready to do it. It will only make our task easier, and we shall the sooner carry the social and political reforms which have been thwarted so long by the Veto power of the House of Lords.

Mr. LEE

Those of us who have known the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down for some time in previous Parliaments must be excused feeling a certain amount of amusement at seeing him, possibly for the first time, in the rôle of the old Tory who is shocked at the revolutionary proposals which are being put forward in this Amendment. The hon. Gentleman spoke as a temperance reformer. As such he is apparently shocked at the intemperance of our proposals. He said that he had been called to order in some earlier Debate when dealing at length with the Licensing Bill on some occasion to which reference to it was inappropriate. I should regard a speech on the Licensing Bill as not entirely relevant to a Debate on the subject of the relations between the two Houses of Parliament. At any rate, I will only say this with regard to the Licensing Bill. The hon. Gentleman talks of the country being deprived of what it most earnestly desired in the Licensing Bill of 1908. I can only say that in the hon. Gentleman's own case the country showed its keen enthusiasm over the Licensing Bill by turning him out in the election of January, 1910. I go further in reference to what he said, and say this: that the Government know very well that if they dared reintroduce that Bill to the present House of Commons they also would be turned out by the votes of their allies below the Gangway. I will pass from that point, and come to the main issues which have been raised on the Amendment. It is very difficult for anyone who intervenes at this stage of this Debate to say anything which is new or illuminating in his speech. But I think it is just as well that we should concentrate upon the main issues which are raised by this Amendment. They are these: that, in the first place, we on this side object to the Government proposals because they introduce Single-Chamber Government; secondly, because they provide, and deliberately provide, an interregnum during which Home Rule and the greatest constitutional changes can be passed without any possible check upon them; and thirdly, because the Government's proposals provide for no genuine reform of the Chamber to which they have taken so much objection. Worse than all, they establish a sham Second Chamber which is calculated to give a sense of false security to the people of this country—and in fact a Second Chamber which may be condemned in the language of Lord Morley, speaking on this subject in the House of Commons in 1888, when he said erecting a parapet on the edge of a precipice is more dangerous than erecting no parapet at all. I am aware that, on the Front Bench at all events, and I am not sure that it is not only on the Front Bench, there has been a half-hearted denial of the Single Chamber proposals of His Majesty's Government. These denials deceive no one. There is a Preamble to the Bill which is not accepted by the Coalition Members of the party opposite below the Gangway. It may have been successful in deceiving the electorate at the last General Election, I think it probably was, but it is now recognised as a kind of perfunctory epitaph of the principles and professions of moderate Liberals which have been killed by expediency and have not even been decently interred. Yet we are asked by some to place reliance upon the principles and professions of the three vice-presidents of the Liberal Imperial League. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) in his speech this afternoon, seemed to me, if I may differ from him on a slight point, to be too optimistic about the opinion of these distinguished gentlemen. I do not know whether the Prime Minister still belongs to that distinguished body the Liberal Imperial League. I understand it does not still exist, and its principles also have apparently ceased to exist. But when we come to the Prime Minister himself, I am afraid I do not share the optimistic views of my right hon. Friend that he is at heart a Double Chamber man. I find from his utterances in the last few-years his remarks are very disquieting. I find him saying in the Debates on what are generally called the Campbell-Bannerman Resolutions of 1907:— When I look round the world apart from those countries where federal Governments prevail. I do not see many double chambers—I doubt if I see any—which are really justifying their existence. That view is very popular below the Gangway, and I think the right hon. Gentleman has shown by that language that his views upon Double-Chamber Government are very shaky. I notice the curious reservation with regard to systems of federal Governments. In this country, if and when we have Home Rule for Ireland, we would approach to a system of federal Government. He went further than that, for in the same speech he said he was doubtful whether the House of Lords was more dangerous when it abdicated or abused its functions. That expression of opinion seems to have duplicated the celebrated remark of the Abbé Sieyès when he said that a Second Chamber which dissented from the First Chamber was mischievous, but if it agreed with it it was superfluous. Then there is another vice-president, or late vice-president, of the Liberal League, the Secretary of State for War, and I hope he will forgive me when I say that the main impression left upon me by his speech was that he was a very half-hearted supporter of the proposals of the Government. He professed a sort of platonic attachment for Second Chamber Government. He said it was all very well if it was sympathetic, and he drew an analogy by referring to a sympathetic wife. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will excuse me if I do not take him as an authority on that particular subject. He said that the Second Chamber would be all very well if it would let us alone, or let the Government alone in this House, and allow them to do exactly what they pleased. That is his idea of a Second Chamber, and if that is his view, then there can be very little logic in having a Second Chamber at all. There is one thing clear to me from the speeches of the Secretary of State for War and the Prime Minister, and it is that in future we can place no reliance upon moderate Liberals. They may feel strongly—I have no means of judging that—but they no longer have any volition. They are in the position which has been described in a pregnant sentence by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford, they have got to "toe the line." I remember that the Prime Minister said a few years ago—he was very scornful of his allies, the Labour party and the Socialists, in those days—that he was not willing to waste his time going woolgathering with the Socialists. He is now willing to go vote-gathering and Constitution-wrecking with the Socialists. Then there is the other section of his allies—the Members of the Irish party. One of the most curious features of these Debates has been the profound and eloquent silence of the leader of the Irish party throughout this great discussion. After all, why should he speak? Why should he take any part in these Debates as long as his orders are being carried out? After all, there is no need for the operator of the marionettes to say anything. He merely pulls the strings. I think we are justified in pointing out the discordant elements which go to make up this coalition upon which the Government is relying to pass this Bill into law. The Home Secretary, in his interesting and eloquent speech the other night, claimed that the coalition possessed an imperturbable unity. I should be the last to deny that they are united about one thing, and one thing only, and that is in the common desire to destroy our ancient Constitution in order that afterwards they may be free to help themselves. We know very well that without the promise which the Government has given in advance to pass Home Rule as a result of this measure, if it is passed, that there would be no majority whatever in this House for the measure itself. The Home Secretary, in the speech to which I have alluded, explained all that by saying, at any rate, all the sections of the coalition have this one great thing in common, and that is the great Gladstonian tradition. That is a consoling thought. At the same time I may, in passing, be permitted to wonder what that great statesman, Mr. Gladstone, would have thought of the new Liberal party, of its performances during the last few years, and perhaps even of what he would have thought of the Home Secretary himself. At any rate, I am not prepared to accept the Home Secretary as the authoritative exponent of the Gladstonian position. Home Rule for Ireland was the crux there in his time as it is now. Where are we to find the Gladstonian tradition in its pure form, if not in the great Midlothian speeches of 1885? I do not wish to quote at any great length to the House, but I should like, in view of the fact that the Gladstonian tradition has been invoked, to ask the attention of the House for a few moments to what it really was. Here is an extract from the first Midlothian speech, 9th November, 1885. These are Mr. Gladstone's words:— I will now suppose that the Liberal party was called upon to deal with this great Constitutional question of the government of Ireland in a position where it was only a minority dependent upon the Irish vote for converting it into a majority. Now, gentlemen, I tell you seriously and solemnly that although I believe the Liberal party itself to be honourable, patriotic, sound, and trustworthy, yet in such a position as that it would not be trustworthy. In such a positional that it would not be safe for it to enter upon the consideration of the principles of a measure with respect to what at every stage of its progress it would be in the power of a party Coining from Ireland to say, 'unless you do this or unless you do that we turn you out to-morrow."' Here is another quotation from the fourth Midlothian speech:— Nothing. I think, could be more dangerous to the public weal than that this question should be handled in a Parliament where there was no party strong enough to direct its action according to judgment and conscience, without being liable to be seduced from the right path by the temptation which might be offered to it by the vote of the Irish members. That is not a state of affairs which we could accept as a party, but I go further and say it is not a state of things that would be safe or honourable to the country. There is one last quotation, from the fifth Midlothian speech:— You have got to decide whether you will take the precautions necessary to ensure that if great and Imperial topics shall be raised pertaining to the relations between England and Ireland, to the unity of the Empire, and to the content and prosperity of that distracted country, you are determined that those great issues shall be tried by men who have received your commission from a position of impartial security, and not from the slippery footing of a slavish dependence That is precisely the same position in connection with Home Rule, which the Liberal Government occupies to-day. Then there is, if the Prime Minister will excuse me, the Asquithian tradition also. The right hon. Gentleman, in East Fife, on 29th September, 1909, said:— If the Irish party is true and independent, so also, I. venture to claim, is the Liberal party I have for some time held the opinion, which I have expressed before now, that the Liberal party ought not to assume the duties and responsibilities of Government unless it can rely on an independent Liberal majority in the House of Commons. I really am surprised the right hon. Gentleman should cheer that, because he is not in a position of having an independent Liberal majority in the House of Commons. Yet, he is deliberately proposing to carry Home Rule through this House in the course, presumably, of the next Session of Parliament. What answer is there to this claim which has been put forward on behalf of the Gladstonian and Asquithian tradition? Surely, there can be no answer at all except possibly autres temps, autres mœurs, which, if I may freely translate, means that the principles of the Liberal party have gone to the bad since the passing away of that great statesman, who was practically the creator of that party, and whose tradition they now so inappropriately invoke. But apart from the argument that needs must when the devil drives, what intelligible excuse has been put forward by the Government for paralysing the Second Chamber and practically introducing Single-Chamber Government into this country? We have been asked whether we deny that there is a grievance on the Liberal side. I wish to be perfectly frank, and I admit that to a certain extent they have a grievance. But I think they put it a great deal too high. On the one hand we have the groanings of the Home Secretary who spoke about the humiliation of the Government, their impotence and martyrdom, and their tramping through the lobbies Session after Session, and the fact that they were unable to do anything. Against that we feel bound to put the boasts we hear on every Liberal platform at election times and in their Press about the bountiful and unparalleled harvest of legislation which this Government has managed to carry during its few years of office. Here is an extract from the "Daily Chronicle" at the end of the 1906 Parliament:— No Parliament in modern history has to its credit so wonderful a record of accomplished work as that whose career closed to-day. In spite of the House of Lords the Government has achieved wonderful things. How fruitful its labours are can only be realised when the harvested results of each successive session are called to mind. Then we have the other great Liberal organ, the "Daily News," which says:— It is not an exaggeration, but a statement of the plainest fact, to say that no corresponding period in the modem history of this country can be compared with the four years just passed in genuine, beneficent and enduring achievement. Then you have the impartial testimony of the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow (the then Leader of the Labour party, Mr. Barnes), who said:— There has been during the last five years more legislation passed directly benefiting the people of this country than Parliament has produced during forty or fifty years in any previous time of its history. If that is the case—and it is not for me to deny it—surely it is also the fact that every one of these beneficent measures has also been passed by the House of Lords. The Government cannot have it both ways. It does not matter upon which horse they choose to ride; they cannot possibly bestride both at the same time. I pass to a complaint which has recurred again and again in these Debates, that the House of Lords is always Tory in its composition, and hence while the Tories are in power we have practically Single-Chamber Government in this country. Apart from the absurdity of the Government position in seeking to perpetuate a form of Single-Chamber Government, which they describe as against the best interests of the country, there is this simple explanation: that the composition of the Upper Chamber is generally Conservative. All Second Chambers, so far as I know, in the civilised world are Conservative in that sense. [An Hoy. MEMBER: "How about Australia?"] They are Conservative in the sense of opposing a bar to rash and even premature innovations. Otherwise they are no use at all. Otherwise there is no object for them. I quite agree that whilst that may explain the situation it may not remove the sting for the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. The real difference with regard to the complaint which they put forward is this: When we are in power we do not go out of our way to seek conflicts with the Upper Chamber. Hon. Members think that is a most extraordinary attitude to take up with regard to the Second Chamber. We are entitled to frame legislation which has a fair chance of passing through both Houses of Parliament, but right hon. Gentlemen take exactly the opposite course. They deliberately went out of their way to provoke conflicts with the Second Chamber in order that they might finally succeed in engineering the particular crisis with which we are confronted today. They have gone out of their way for years in the policy of filling up the cup. The Secretary of State for War today said the Government had not sought this conflict, but what then becomes of the speeches of the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer when he says that they have been setting a trap, that he is glad personally to have had something to do with setting a trap for the House of Lords. The Prime Minister claims if his Bill is passed that he will succeed in establishing democratic government in this country, and he defined democratic government in March last as being:— 'The will of the majority of the people for the time being, shall both in legislation and policy prevail. He added that the will of the people meant the majority of the House of Commons, and he went further, and said that the majority of the House of Commons, as a whole, was elected by rude, imperfect, and very unsatisfactory processes. And yet, in spite of that, his policy is that a majority of the House of Commons, and a paid majority, if he has his way, shall have absolute power to do whatever it pleases with this country, the Empire, our Constitution, and ancient institutions, including even the Crown itself, and it really seems to me that the proposal is almost identical, if not absolutely identical with one which was passed by the "Rump" Parliament in January, 1649, Let me remind the House what that was:— Whatsoever is enacted and declared for law by the Commons in Parliament assembled, hath the force of a law, and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of the King or House of Peers be not had thereunto. That is the position which the Government is taking up. I hold strongly that this country and this Empire does not belong to us—to this generation or this Parliament—to do exactly with as we like. I believe that we are here as life tenants—that we are here as it were possessors of an entailed estate which we are in honour bound to hand on to our successors intact and unsquandered. No country, least of all our own, can afford to rest its fortunes upon a chance majority of log-rolling factions in a paid House of Commons Here is our last complaint. It is that the Government, whatever it may suggest in its Preamble, is not in earnest about this question of reform in the House of Lords. The Home Secretary, the other night, said that on the Government policy to reform the Upper Chamber, the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. F. E. Smith) interjected the very pertinent query. "When?" The Home Secretary was staggered. He had no answer at all. In fact, the whole question was so remote that it had evidently not been considered by the Cabinet, and yet the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Haldane) this afternoon said—I really could not understand his speech at the time—the Prime Minister had given pledges to the House, in the course of the Debates, of reform to which the Government would give effect, and that it was a question which brooked of no delay. That does not fit in with any of the speeches of the Prime Minister which I have heard. May I call his attention to one observation which he made on this very point. He said on the question of reform, on the original resolutions in June, 1907:— It will take time, years it may be, or the lifetime of a whole generation to bring it into effective use. The real fact is, of course, plain. If the Government succeed in passing this Parliament Bill with the help of the coalition, also by reason of the position of the coalition we shall hear no more of the project of reform as long as the present Government hold office. The Government are not in earnest about this matter. The difference between them and us is that we are in earnest. I am one of those who believe that we have got to have reform of the House of Lords, but that it has got to be thorough and drastic. It has got to be real and to be fair, and no reform will be satisfactory or lasting which maintains or stereotypes as a matter of course the permanent Tory majority in that House. At the same time we regard it as essential that the Second Chamber shall be representative of all the best elements in this country, and above all, that it shall have real power to refer back to the people, when necessary, fundamental changes about which they have not previously been consulted. Otherwise we shall have no real Second Chamber such as the country demands, and such as I believe it is determined to have. How are we going to get it? It is quite clear that we are not going to get it by the Bill which the Government are forcing through this House. We are embarking on an acute stage of a dangerous and embittering controversy, and what I feel is this, that the country, although it is awakening, perhaps for the first time, to the realities of the situation, does not really know at present what is the real extent of the difference between us, and what is the actual position of the controversy at the present moment. The Government profess that the Parliament Bill represents their minimum demand. Everyone knows, of course, that it does not. Everyone knows that it cannot possibly have been the attitude which was taken up by the Government at the Conference last year. [An HON. MEMBER: "Do you know? "] No, I do not know. I know nothing of what transpired at the Conference, therefore I am not able to violate any confidences, even if I wished to. But it does not need any special knowledge. It does not need anything more than the most elementary commonsense to know that if the only question before the Conference had been whether this Parliament Bill should be swallowed, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, the Conference would not have lasted beyond one sitting. Therefore, I do think that the real demand of the Government is something very different, and I think that at this stage the country will demand—and I think with some justice—that they shall know what common ground exists between the two great parties to this controversy before the Government seeks to force through the Parliament Bill by methods of unparalleled violence. Certainly, I think, they will demand to know that before the Government is allowed to use the Coronation as a weapon in a political controversy, and before they attempt to embroil the Crown in a party fight. I think the country will demand to know—and I think Parliament is entitled to know—what is the common ground, in view of the fact that the Home Secretary, speaking on behalf of the Government, has made it quite clear that the Government is not willing to embark in any further Conference on this question. I agree that there would be the greatest objection to any disclosure of the common ground if there was to be another Conference, but the Home Secretary the other night, not only poured scorn and contempt upon the idea that there should be another Conference, but he did so in the most offensive language, of which even he is a master, but he did so amid the resounding cheers of every section of the supporters of the Government. These cheers, no doubt, were listened to by the Government. They are the Parliamentary equivalent of the watch-dog's honest bark. The Government is not able to confer. The allies which support it would not allow it to enter into Conference again. But that does not exclude the possibility of compromise or settlement by consent. We all want to see this question settled. The Home Secretary claimed the other night that if the Bill was passed it would terminate a disastrous controversy. No one knows better than himself that it would not terminate it, but that it would only be the beginning of a prolonged and rancorous struggle. There can be no settlement at the point of the bayonet, such as the more headstrong of the supporters of the Government propose. There can only be one form of settlement which will last, and that is settlement by consent. It is because we on this side of the House earnestly desire a settlement which shall be stable and enduring, and that the work of Parliament shall not be paralysed or delayed by the recurring turmoil of constitutional upheavals, that we feel bound to offer a resistance which we believe will be successful in the end to the revolution which is attempted to be set up by this Bill.

Mr. BECK

It must be with great diffidence that a Member intervenes in this Debate, and it is only the position of the private Member as disclosed in recent Debates, that he, by being entirely free from contact with the Front Benches, has some reservoir of wisdom as yet untapped which enables me to sum up courage to take part in this Debate. One of the reasons that I do so is this. A special appeal has been made by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to those whom they describe as moderate Liberals. I do not know whether it was presumptuous of me to call myself a moderate Liberal. Certainly I was one of the party of men, that body which has been dragged into this Debate. I know not quite how, the Liberal League. I was one of the adherents who assisted at the death-bed of that body, and followed its highly respectable corpse to the grave. But if hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite think that we who call ourselves moderate men are in the least in sympathy with the House of Lords in their present predicament they are wrong. How do we look upon the present House of Lords? We look upon it as men so short-sighted, so lacking in political wisdom, that they have brought this country to the verge of revolution. We look back, even the youngest of us, to the days of 1905, when Gentlemen who sit opposite were governing the country, and were governing it in such a way that they had not a newspaper in the land which would support them in such a way that when the country came to give its decision it turned them out in the most ignominious and humiliating way in which any Government has been turned out. Then we look back and see this Government strong in power coming into office in 1906, and we say to ourselves, "What was the proper function of a Second Chamber?" The proper function of a Second Chamber was to say to itself, "We may have Conservative leanings, but there is obviously at the present moment only one Government possible in the country, and it is our duty, as a Second Chamber, with the power of conservation and delay in our hands, to give every possible support to that Government that has just come into power. Did they do that? No. The House of Lords is in its present predicament to-day because, instead of doing that, which I maintain, as a moderate man, was their bounden duty to do, they set to work from the first day that this Government was returned to power to trip, to hinder, to thwart, and, I say, to insult the Government which the country had just returned by a record majority, and it is for these reasons that we, who are moderate men, whatever other cause we we have of dispute with the Liberal Government—and I do not think we have many to-day—are heart and soul with them in the struggle they are making to settle the Constitutional crisis that has arisen, and we say that, to the best of our belief and as far as we can see, after thinking over the question to the best of our abilities, the present proposal of the Government is the only possible solution. We say that it is ridiculous and futile to suggest that the present House of Lords, as now constituted, is to be trusted with self-reformation. They have had opportunity after opportunity, not only when the party opposite were in power, but since this side came into power, to show a little statesmanship, a little grasp of affairs, and a little spirit of fair-play, and we, who are Liberals, feel that we would rather entrust our destinies to the most biassed body of ordinary citizens of the land than to the present House of Peers.

And it being Eleven o'clock, the Debate stood adjourned; to be resumed to-morrow (Tuesday).

Adjourned at Three minutes after Eleven o'clock.