house of commons, june 29, 1907

on june 24, sir henry campbell-bannerman had moved:

"that, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other house to alter or reject bills passed by this house should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single parliament the final decision of the commons shall prevail."

this was carried after three days' debate by 315 to 100.

i will not venture at any length into an abstract constitutional discussion upon this motion, because, after all, we have an extremely practical issue before us. it seems to me that this great question must be looked at from three points of view. there is the issue between the two houses; there is the issue between the two political parties; and then there is the national issue. the quarrel which is now open between the house of lords [125]and the house of commons arises from two events—the general election of 1906, and the rejection of the measures of the new liberal government, culminating in the destruction of the education bill by the house of lords at the end of that year. either of these events is memorable in itself, but placed in juxtaposition and considered together they have a multiplied significance. the general election of 1906 was the most vehement expression of public opinion which this generation has known; and that expression of public will was countered in the december of the same year by the most arbitrary and uncompromising assertion of aristocratic privilege upon record.

let the house think of it. the process of the election of members of parliament is extremely elaborate. the candidates go about the country for two or three weeks saying all they have to say for themselves in the different constituencies which they are contesting; at the end of that exhaustive discussion there is an elaborate process of voting; the returns are counted with the most scrupulous care; and as the result 670 members, representing 6,000,000 of voters and many more who take a deep interest in public affairs but have no votes, [126]are returned to the house of commons in the name of the people of great britain and ireland. the new parliament assembles. scarcely any question at the election had been more a test question, so far as the supporters of the government are concerned, than the question of the amendment of the education system of the country. a bill dealing with education is brought forward as the principal measure of the first session of the new parliament. weeks are occupied in its discussion. it represents the fulfilment of the election pledges of every member who supported it. the bill is passed by perhaps the largest majority that ever sent a bill from this house to another place.

nor was it a revolutionary bill, to turn the world upside down and inside out; on the contrary, it was a bill which, if vitiated in any respect, was vitiated by the element of compromise. immense concessions were made in it, and rightly, i think, to conscientious and agitated minorities. it was a bill which so moderate and consistent a statesman as the duke of devonshire, of whose ill-health the house learns with grave concern, urged the house of lords to pass into law.

sir, the leader of the opposition told [127]us the other day that it was the habit of his majesty's government to introduce bills which they did not mean to pass. no one—not even the right hon. gentleman himself—can say that the government have not earnestly desired to pass the education bill. every concession that could be conceived was made, but to what purpose? after the house of commons had humbled itself before the house of lords, after we had gone to the extreme limit of concession which self-respect, which a proper sense of the dignity of this house, and a due observance of the pledges of the liberal party permitted, the house of lords curtly, bluntly, uncharitably, and harshly flung the bill out in our faces mutilated and destroyed. i do not wish to import an element of heat into this discussion, but i respectfully submit to the conservative party that that act on the part of the house of lords places them in a new position—a new position in the sense that never before had their old position been taken up so nakedly, so brazenly, and so uncompromisingly.

it is true that we have an excuse put before us with much suavity of language in these debates—we are told that the house of lords seeks to interpret the will of [128]the people, and it is explained that by "the will of the people," what is meant is the persistent, sub-conscious will, as opposed to any articulate expression of it. the right hon. gentleman who leads the opposition told us that what he meant by the persistent will was the will of the people expressed continuously over a period of thirty years. that is what he called "democracy properly understood."

having regard to that part of the question which concerns the issue between the two houses, we repudiate emphatically the claim of the other house to what the french call faire l'ange—to "play the angel," to know better than the people themselves what the people want, to have a greater authority to speak in the name of the people than their representatives sent to parliament by the elaborate process i have described. to dispute the authority of a newly elected parliament is something very like an incitement to violence on the part of the other house. the noble lord[6] laughs; but we are anxious to convince him and his friends that we are in earnest. we go through all the processes which the constitution prescribes, we produce an [129]enormous majority, and we express the opinion of that majority, but still the noble lord and other noble lords, less intelligent, but more remote, tell us that they are not convinced. what steps do they suggest that we should take in order to bring home to them the earnestness of our plea? what steps do they suggest that the people should take in order to assert their wishes? i hold entirely by what i said that to dispute the authority of an elected body fresh from its constituents is a deliberate incitement to the adoption of lawless and unconstitutional methods. the assertion which the house of lords made at the end of last year is an intolerable assertion. i believe the country is altogether unprepared for it; and i wonder it was thought worth while to risk an institution which has lasted so many centuries, in the very skirmish line of party warfare.

i am aware there is a special reason for the temerity of the house of lords. it is not a very complimentary reason to the members or the leaders of the late government, but it is argued that the conservative party cannot be worse than they are. no matter what they do, nor how they are hated or reprobated by the country, the conservative [130]party cannot possibly occupy a more humiliating and unpleasant position than they did after the last two years of the late administration. consequently, having reached the low-water mark of political fortune, they think they can afford to be a little reckless, and that at the very worst they will be returned in their present numerical proportions.

that is a very natural explanation of their action; but if we for our part were to accept the assertion lately made by the house of lords—an assertion which is the furthest point to which aristocratic privilege has attained in modern times—that assertion itself would become only the starting-point for a whole new series of precedents and of constitutional retrogressions; and worse than that, if by any chance, having raised this issue, we were to be defeated upon it—if having placed this resolution on the records of the house we were to fail to give effect to it, or were to suffer an electoral reverse as the conclusion of it—then good-bye to the power of the house of commons. all that long process of advance in democratic institutions which has accompanied the growth of the power of the house of commons, and which has also been attended by an expansion of the circles of comfort and culture [131]among the people of this country—all that long process which has gone steadily onward for 200 years, and which has almost exclusively occupied the politics of the nineteenth century—will have reached its culmination. it will have come in contact with that barrier of which we have heard so much in this debate. the tide will have turned, and in the recoil of the waters they will gradually leave exposed again, altered no doubt by the conditions of the age, all the old assertions of aristocratic and plutocratic domination which we had fondly hoped had been engulfed for ever.

hon. gentlemen opposite would be well advised to treat this resolution seriously. this parliament is still young, but there are some things at which they have laughed which have already become accomplished facts, i could not have during the past eighteen months listened to their taunts about the permanence of chinese labour without reflecting now with satisfaction that chinese labour is going. yes, and other people may follow. we are only at the beginning of this struggle. we are not necessarily committed to every detail of the proposal; we are opening the first lines for a great siege, we have to sap up to the [132]advanced parallels, to establish our batteries, and at no distant date open our bombardment. it may be many months before we shall be able to discern where there is a practicable breach; but the assault will come in due time.

the right hon. gentleman opposite[7] said he welcomed this contest with great confidence. i wonder if the conservative party realise, to use an expressive vulgarism, what they are "letting themselves in for" when this question comes to be fought out on every platform in every constituency in the country? they will not have to defend an ideal second chamber; they will not be able to confine themselves to airy generalities about a bicameral system and its advantages; they will have to defend this second chamber as it is—one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee. they will have to defend it with all its anomalies, all its absurdities, and all its personal bias—with all its achievements that have darkened the pages of the history of england. and let me say that weighty constitutional authorities have not considered that the policy on which we have embarked in moving this resolution [133]is unreasonable. mr. bagehot says of the house of lords:

"it may lose its veto as the crown has lost its veto. if most of its members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of one class, and that not quite the best; if its doors are shut against genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not ￡5,000 a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so much kingly power is gone—no one knows how."

what is the position of the conservative party when they attempt to defend the house of lords? they are always telling us to imitate the colonies; they are always telling us that we ought to adopt the fiscal systems and other methods employed in the self-governing colonies; but what is their unprejudiced view of the relations which are held between the two chambers under the bicameral system in the colonies and as established by their own australian commonwealth act in the last parliament? by that act they have given power to the lower chamber to over-ride the upper chamber in certain circumstances. the commonwealth act says that when the chambers differ they shall meet together, and that the majority shall decide, measures being taken, however, [134]that the numbers of the upper chamber shall not be such as to swamp the opinion of the lower chamber. imitating them, and following in their footsteps, we have adopted such a plan in the transvaal and orange river colony constitutions.

the leader of the opposition asked us yesterday whether the people are not often wrong, and he proceeded characteristically to suggest that he always considered them wrong when they voted against him. i am not prepared to take such a rough-and-ready test of the opinion and of the mental processes of the british democracy as that. i should hesitate to say that when the people pronounce against a particular measure or party they have not pretty good reasons for doing so. i am not at all convinced that in 1900 the electors were wrong in saying that the war should be finished—by those who made it. even in the last election i could, i daresay, find some few reasons to justify the decision which the people then took; and if we should be so unfortunate in the future as to lose that measure of public confidence now abundantly given to us, then i shall not be too sure that it will not be our own fault. certain am i that we could not take any step more likely to forfeit the confidence [135]of the people of england, than to continue in office after we have lost the power to pass effective legislation.

i will retort the question of the leader of the opposition by another question. has the house of lords ever been right? has it ever been right in any of the great settled controversies which are now beyond the reach of party argument? was it right in delaying catholic emancipation and the removal of jewish disabilities? was it right in driving this country to the verge of revolution in its effort to defeat the passage of reform? was it right in resisting the ballot bill? was it right in the almost innumerable efforts it made to prevent this house dealing with the purity of its own electoral machinery? was it right in endeavouring to prevent the abolition of purchase in the army? was it right in 1880, when it rejected the compensation for disturbance bill? i defy the party opposite to produce a single instance of a settled controversy in which the house of lords was right.

[an honourable member: what about home rule?]

i expected that interruption. that is not a settled controversy. it is a matter [136]which lies in the future. the cases i have mentioned are cases where we have carried the law into effect and have seen the results, and found that they have been good.

let me remind the house that, but for a lucky accident, but for the fact that letters patent can be issued by the crown and do not require the statutory assent of parliament, it would very likely have been impossible for this government to have made the constitutional settlement in the transvaal and in the orange river colony, because the constitutions would probably have been mutilated or cast out by the house of lords, and the executive government would have found itself responsible for carrying out the government of colonies on lines of which it wholly disapproved, and after their own policy had been rejected.

i proceed to inquire on what principle the house of lords deals with liberal measures. the right hon. member for dover[8] by an imaginative effort assures us that they occupy the position of the umpire. are they even a sieve, a strainer, to stop legislation if it should reveal an undue or undesirable degree of radicalism or socialism? are [137]they the complementary critic—the critic who sees all the things which the ordinary man does not see? no one can maintain it. the attitude which the house of lords adopts towards liberal measures is purely tactical. when they returned to their "gilded chamber" after the general election they found on the woolsack and on the treasury bench a lord chancellor and a government with which they were not familiar. when their eyes fell upon those objects, there was a light in them which meant one thing—murder; murder tempered, no doubt, by those prudential considerations which always restrain persons from acts which are contrary to the general feeling of the society in which they live. but their attitude towards the present government has from the beginning been to select the best and most convenient opportunity of humiliating and discrediting them, and finally of banishing them from power.

examine, in contrast with that of the education bill, their treatment of the trades disputes bill. lord halsbury described that bill as outrageous and tyrannous, and said it contained a section more disgraceful than any that appeared in any english statute. on what ground then did they pass that [138]bill, if it was not the ground of political opportunism and partisanship? what safeguard can such a second chamber be to the commercial interests of this country? is it not clear that they are prepared to sacrifice, if necessary, what they consider to be the true interests of the country in order to secure an advantage for the political party whose obedient henchmen they are? the trades disputes bill was a very inconvenient measure for the conservative party to leave open, because so long as it was left open a great mass of democratic opinion was directed against them. and so it was passed. on the other hand, the education bill was very inconvenient for the liberal party to leave open, because they are supported by catholics and nonconformists, and to bring in an education bill to satisfy those two extremes is not to solve a problem, but to solve a double acrostic. so that bill was not passed. upon a measure which it would be inconvenient to the liberal party to leave open the house of lords rejected all compromise. upon a measure which it would be inconvenient for the conservative party to leave open, they submitted at once—their action being irrespective of merits in either case. [139]that, i suppose, is what the leader of the opposition called "an averaging machinery."

i press these points in order to justify me in making this statement, that the house of lords, as it at present exists and acts, is not a national institution, but a party dodge, an apparatus and instrument at the disposal of one political faction; and it is used in the most unscrupulous manner to injure and humiliate the opposite faction. when conservative members go about the country defending a second chamber, let them remember that this is the kind of second chamber they have to defend, and when they defend the veto let them remember that it is a veto used, not for national purposes, but for the grossest purposes of unscrupulous political partisanship.

i have dealt with the issues between houses, and i come to that between parties. great changes in a community are very often unperceived; the focus of reality moves from one institution in the state to another, and almost imperceptibly. sometimes the forms of institutions remain almost the same in all ceremonial aspects, and yet there will be one institution which under pretentious forms is only the husk of reality, and another which under a humble name is [140]in fact the operative pivot of the social system. constitutional writers have much to say about the estates of the realm, and a great deal to say about their relation to each other, and to the sovereign. all that is found to be treated upon at length. but they say very little about the party system. and, after all, the party system is the dominant fact in our experience. nothing is more striking in the last twenty-five years than the growth and expansion of party organisation, and the way in which millions of people and their votes have been woven into its scope.

there are two great characteristics about the party institutions of this country: the equipoise between them, and their almost incredible durability. we have only to look at the general elections of 1900 and 1906. i do not suppose any circumstances could be more depressing for a political party than the circumstances in which the liberal party fought the election in 1900, except the circumstances in which the conservative party fought the election of 1906. at those two elections, what was the salient fact? the great mass of the voters of each political party stood firm by the standard of their party, and although [141]there was an immense movement of public opinion, that movement was actually effected by the actual transference of a comparatively small number of votes.

when parties are thus evenly balanced, to place such a weapon as the house of lords in the hands of one of the parties is to doom the other to destruction. i do not speak only from the party point of view, although it explains the earnestness with which we approach this question. it is a matter of life and death to liberalism and radicalism. it is a question of our life or the abolition of the veto of the house of lords. but look at it from a national point of view. think of its injury to the smooth working of a liberal government. at the present time a liberal government, however powerful, cannot look far ahead, cannot impart design into its operations, because it knows that if at any moment its vigour falls below a certain point another body, over which it has no control, is ready to strike it a blow to its most serious injury.

it comes to this, that no matter how great the majority by which a liberal government is supported, it is unable to pass any legislation unless it can procure the agreement of its political opponents. observe [142]the position in which the present executive government is consequently placed. take only the question of passive resistance. the action of the house of lords at the present time forces the executive government to lock up in prison men with whose action they entirely sympathise and whose grievance they have faithfully promised to redress. such a position is intolerable. indeed, i am sure that if right hon. gentlemen opposite would only utilise that valuable gift of putting themselves in imagination in the position of others, they would see that no self-respecting men could continue to occupy such a position except with the object of putting an end to it for ever.

much might be said for and against the two-party system. but no one can doubt that it adds to the stability and cohesion of the state. the alternation of parties in power, like the rotation of crops, has beneficial results. each of the two parties has services to render in the development of the national life; and the succession of new and different points of view is a real benefit to the country. a choice between responsible ministries is a great strength to the crown. the advantage [143]of such a system cannot be denied. would not the ending of such a system involve a much greater disturbance than to amend the functions of the house of lords? is there not a much greater cataclysm involved in the breakdown of the constitutional organisation of democracy—for that is the issue which is placed before us—than would be involved in the mere curtailment of the legislative veto which has been given to another place?

i ask the house what does such a safeguard as the house of lords mean? is it a safeguard at all? enormous powers are already possessed by the house of commons. it has finance under its control, it has the executive government; the control of foreign affairs and the great patronage of the state are all in the power of the house of commons at the present time. and if you are to proceed on the basis that the people of this country will elect a mad house of commons, and that the mad house of commons will be represented by a mad executive, the house of lords is no guarantee against any excesses which such a house of commons or such an executive might have in contemplation. whatever you may wish or desire, you will be forced to trust the [144]people in all those vital and fundamental elements of government which in every state have always been held to involve the practical stability of the community.

is the house of lords even a security for property? why, the greatest weapon which a democracy possesses against property is the power of taxation, and the power of taxation is wholly under the control of this house. if this house chooses, for instance, to suspend payment to the sinking fund, and to utilise the money for any public purpose or for any social purpose, the house of lords could not interfere. if the house of commons chose to double taxation on the wealthy classes, the house of lords could not interfere in any respect. understand i am not advocating these measures; what i am endeavouring to show to the house is that there is no real safeguard in the house of lords even in regard to a movement against property.

but surely there are other securities upon which the stability of society depends. in the ever-increasing complexities of social problems, in the restrictions which are imposed from day to day with increasing force on the action of individuals, above all, in the dissemination of [145]property among many classes of the population, lie the real elements of stability on which our modern society depends. there are to-day, unlike in former ages, actually millions of people who possess not merely inert property, but who possess rent-earning, profit-bearing property; and the danger with which we are confronted now is not at all whether we shall go too fast. no, the danger is that about three-fourths of the people of this country should move on in a comfortable manner into an easy life, which, with all its ups and downs, is not uncheered by fortune, while the remainder of the people shall be left to rot and fester in the slums of our cities, or wither in the deserted and abandoned hamlets of our rural districts.

that is the danger with which we are confronted at the present moment, and it invests with a deep and real significance the issue which is drawn between the two parties to-night. it is quite true that there are rich members of the liberal party, and there are poor men who are supporters of the conservative party; but in the main the lines of difference between the two parties are social and economic—in the main the lines of difference are increasingly becoming the lines of cleavage between the rich and [146]the poor. let that reflection be with us in the struggle which we are now undertaking, and in which we shall without pause press forward, confident of this, that, if we persevere, we shall wrest from the hands of privilege and wealth the evil, ugly, and sinister weapon of the peers' veto, which they have used so ill so long.