a matter 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Lord Robert Cecil.
[7] Mr. Balfour.
[8] Mr. Wyndham.
THE DUNDEE ELECTION
KINNAIRD HALL, DUNDEE, _May 14, 1908_
A new Government has come into being under a Prime Minister who, like
his predecessor, is tied to Scotland by strong and intimate bonds.
Give him a fair chance. Give the Government which he has brought into
being the opportunity of handling the great machinery of State. Be
assured that, if you do, they will employ it for the greatest good of
the greatest number. I am well satisfied at what has taken place since
I have been in Dundee. I see a great concentration of forces
throughout the constituency. I see the opportunity of retrieving, and
more than retrieving, the injury which has been done to the cause of
progress and reform by elections in other parts of our island.
Ah, but, a very sad thing has happened; an awful thing has
happened--the Liberal Party has gone in for Home Rule. _The Scotsman_
is shocked, _The Times_ is speechless, and takes three columns to
express its speechlessness; _The Spectator_, that staid old weekly,
has wobbled back to where it never should have wobbled from; the
Ulster Unionists declare that the Government has forfeited all the
confidence that they never had in it, and thousands of people who
never under any circumstances voted Liberal before are saying that
under no circumstances will they ever vote Liberal again. And I am
supposed to be responsible for this revolution in our policy.
Why, the statements I have made on the Irish question are the logical
and inevitable consequence of the Resolution which was passed by the
House of Commons, in which every member of the Government voted, which
was carried by an enormous majority--more than 200--a month ago[9]--a
Resolution which, after explaining the plain and lamentable evils
which can be traced to the existing system of government in Ireland,
affirmed that the remedy for those evils would be found in a
representative body with an Executive responsible to it, subject to
the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament.
The Irish question at the present time occupies a vastly different
position to what it did in the year 1886. Ever since 1880 the
attention of Parliament has been devoted constantly to Ireland, and
the attention of Parliament, when devoted constantly to one object, is
rarely fruitless. The twenty-five years that have passed have seen
great changes in Ireland. We have seen a great scheme of local
government, which Lord Salisbury said would be more disastrous than
Home Rule itself, actually put into force. We have seen the scheme of
land purchase, which in the year 1886 did more to injure the Home Rule
Bill than anything else, actually carried, not indeed to a complete
conclusion, but carried into practical effect by a Unionist
Administration. These are great events; and their consequences, I
think, ought to encourage us to move forward, and not to move back.
They have produced results in Ireland which are beneficent, and the
Irish question no longer presents itself in the tragic guise of the
early eighties. They have produced an effect on Great Britain too. All
over our country people have seen Bills which they were told
beforehand would be ruinous to the unity and integrity of the United
Kingdom--Land Bills and Local Government Bills--passed into law; and
so far from the dire consequences which were apprehended from these
measures, they have found--you here have found--that great good has
resulted from that legislation. Many people are encouraged by what has
taken place to make a step forward in the future; and I think if we
need to look for any further encouragement, we should find it in the
great and undisputed triumph which, under the mercy of Heaven, has
attended our policy in South Africa, and has resulted in bringing into
the circle of the British Empire a strong and martial race, which
might easily have been estranged for ever.
The Irish polity finds its fellow nowhere in the world. It is a
Government responsible neither to King nor people. It is not a
democratic Government, nor an autocratic Government, nor even an
oligarchical Government. It is a Government hag-ridden by forty-one
administrative Boards, whose functions overlap one another and
sometimes conflict with one another. Some are fed with money from the
Consolidated Fund, some are supplied by vote of the House of Commons,
some are supplied from savings from the Irish Development grant. Some
of these Boards are under the Viceroy, some under the Chief Secretary,
some under Treasury control, and some are under no control at all. The
administration resulting from that system is costly, inefficient,
unhandy beyond all description: a mighty staff of officials and
police; a people desperately poor; taxation which rises automatically
with every increase in the expenditure of this vast and wealthy
island; and a population which dwindles tragically year by year. Add
to all this a loyalist caste, capable and well-organised, who are
taught generation after generation to look for support not to their
own countrymen, but to external force derived from across the sea.
There exists in effect in Ireland at the present time almost exactly
the same situation which would have grown up in South Africa, if we
had not had the wit and the nerve to prevent it. Take the whole of
this situation as I have described it, thrust it into the arena of
British politics to be the centre of contending factions, and the
panorama of Irish government is complete.
With these facts before us, upon the authority of men like Lord
Dunraven, Sir Joseph West-Ridgeway, Sir Antony MacDonnell, Lord
Dudley, and others who have served the Crown in Ireland--is it
wonderful that we should refuse to turn our eyes away from the vision
of that other Ireland, free to control her own destiny in all that
properly concerns herself, free to devote the native genius of her
people to the purposes of her own self-culture--the vision of that
other Ireland which Mr. Gladstone had reserved as the culminating
achievement of his long and glorious career? Is it wonderful that we
should refuse to turn our eyes away from that? No; I say that the
desire and the aim of making a national settlement with Ireland on
lines which would enable the people of that country to manage their
own purely local affairs, is not an aim that can be separated from the
general march of the Liberal army. If I come forward on your platform
here at Dundee it is on the clear understanding that I do not preclude
myself from trying to reconcile Ireland to England on a basis of
freedom and justice.
I said just now that this was an important election. Yes, the effect
upon his Majesty's Government and upon the Liberal Party for good or
ill from this election cannot fail to be far-reaching. There are
strong forces against us. Do not underrate the growing strength of the
Tory reaction now in progress in many of the constituencies in
England. I say it earnestly to those who are members of the Labour
Party here to-day--do not underrate the storm which is gathering over
your heads as well as ours. I am not afraid of the forces which are
against us. With your support we shall overwhelm them--with your
support we shall bear them down. Ah, but we must have that support.
It is not the enemy in front that I fear, but the division which too
often makes itself manifest in progressive ranks--it is that division,
that dispersion of forces, that internecine struggle in the moments of
great emergency, in the moments when the issue hangs in the
balance--it is that which, I fear, may weaken our efforts and may
perhaps deprive us of success otherwise within our grasp.
There are cross-currents in this election. You cannot be unconscious
of that. They flow this way and that way, and they disturb the clear
issue which we should like to establish between the general body of
those whose desire it is to move forward, and those who wish to revert
to the old and barbarous prejudices and contentions of the past--to
the fiscal systems and to the methods of government and
administration, and to the Jingo foreign policies across the seas,
from which we hoped we had shaken ourselves clear.
I want to-night to speak about these cross-currents; and let me first
say a word about Socialism. There are a great many Socialists whose
characters and whose views I have much respect for--men some of whom I
know well, and whose friendship I enjoy. A good many of those
gentlemen who have delightful, rosy views of a noble and brilliant
future for the world, are so remote from hard facts of daily life and
of ordinary politics that I am not very sure that they will bring any
useful or effective influence to bear upon the immediate course of
events. To the revolutionary Socialist, whether dreamer or politician,
I do not appeal as the Liberal candidate for Dundee. I recognise that
they are perfectly right in voting against me and voting against the
Liberals, because Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be.
There is a great gulf fixed. It is not only a gulf of method, it is a
gulf of principle. There are many steps we have to take which our
Socialist opponents or friends, whichever they like to call
themselves, will have to take with us; but there are immense
differences of principle and of political philosophy between our views
and their views.
Liberalism has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has
its own formulas and aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth;
Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private
interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way
in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by
reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise;
Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and
preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual;
Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a
minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism
exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks
monopoly.
These are the great distinctions which I draw, and which, I think, you
will agree I am right in drawing at this election between our
respective policies and moods. Don't think that Liberalism is a faith
that is played out; that it is a creed to which there is no expanding
future. As long as the world rolls round, Liberalism will have its
part to play--grand, beneficent, and ameliorating--in relation to men
and States.
The truth lies in these matters, as it always lies in difficult
matters, midway between extreme formulas. It is in the nice adjustment
of the respective ideas of collectivism and individualism that the
problem of the world and the solution of that problem lie in the years
to come. But I have no hesitation in saying that I am on the side of
those who think that a greater collective element should be introduced
into the State and municipalities. I should like to see the State
undertaking new functions, stepping forward into new spheres of
activity, particularly in services which are in the nature of
monopolies. There I see a wide field for State enterprise. But when we
are told to exalt and admire a philosophy which destroys individualism
and seeks to replace it absolutely by collectivism, I say that is a
monstrous and imbecile conception, which can find no real acceptance
in the brains and hearts--and the hearts are as trustworthy as the
brains--in the hearts of sensible people.