A THE BRITISH REVOLUTION SYDNEY BROOKS BOUT the time this article is published the controversy right idea of its scope and character one must hark back to the election of 1906 that returned the Liberals to power with an overwhelming majority after practically two decades of exclusion from office. Perhaps it would be truer to say that one ought to review the developments of British politics for the past five and twenty years in order to analyze the nature and causes of the present crisis; to trace in the Conservative party the growth of the spirit of imperialism and militarism, its subjection to what in America are called the "special interests," its reversion to Protection, its increasing tendency to buttress and consolidate "property" as the dominant fact in the social and political life of the country; to show how among the Liberals there had been a great widening and transformation of ideals under the pressure of searching criticisms of the existing industrial order, how they were coming more and more to concentrate upon the work of social and economic reconstruction, how what Carlyle called the "condition of England" question-the problems of poverty, invalidity, unemployment, a national minimum of subsistence, hygiene, and the care of old age-were more and more engrossing them, and how inevitable it thus was that so deep and absolute an opposition between the upholders and the attackers of monopolies and vested interests should sooner or later lead to a sharp collision. But for my present purpose it will be sufficient to date the beginnings of the British revolution from the victory of the Liberals in the election of 1906. It was foreseen that one result of their triumph would be to bring up again the question of the House of Lords, a question that during the long reign of the Conservatives had peacefully slumbered. The Lords were not long in showing that they had one form of treatment for Con . servative measures and another for Liberal measures. They rejected, or so mutilated that they had to be abandoned, four first-class Liberal bills dealing with education, with land valuation, with plural voting, and with licensing reform. Other and not less urgent problems the Liberals felt debarred from tackling, because they were aware beforehand that their solutions would be found unacceptable by the hereditary House. Finally in 1909 the Lords capped their destructive activities by throwing out Mr. Lloyd George's Budget. The issue was then sharply formed. Liberals woke once and for all to the fact that the task of political and constitutional amendment had not been finally completed by Mr. Gladstone, and that it was necessary to suspend their programme of social industrial reform and devote themselves to the single question of removing the handicap imposed on their parliamentary effectiveness by the presence of an Upper Chamber permanently controlled by their political opponents. The rejection of the Budget necessarily precipitated a general election. It took place in January of last year. The Liberals were again returned to power, though with a diminished majority, and one, moreover, that was united on little except the necessity of "doing something" with the House of Lords. Their policy eventually took shape in three resolutions which Mr. Asquith brought forward in the House of Commons in April, 1910, which were passed by majorities of over 100, and were embodied in a bill which received its first reading early in May. A week later, just when the contest seemed entering on its decisive phase, King Edward died. It was the unanimous feeling of the country that all political hostilities should be suspended and that an effort should be made to reach a settlement by conThe effort was made. Four leading Liberals and four leading Conservatives met in conference. They held twenty-one protracted meetings, extending over five months; it was not until November II that they definitely broke up, having utterly and abjectly failed to effect an agreement. Once more the question was handed over to the fury of a general election and the passions of party politics. Once more the country found itself engaged in the amazing attempt to evolve what was nothing less than a new Constitution out of the welter of electoral and parliamentary strife. The appeal to the country in December, 1910, resulted in leaving all parties pretty much as they were, the coalition of Liberals, Irish Nationalists and Labor men, which entered the campaign with a majority of 122, emerging from it with a majority of 126. Parliament met in February; the Government's bill for dealing with the House of Lords was at once reintroduced; after prolonged debates it passed its third reading on May 15; and it is now as I write being discussed and amended in the House of Lords. The bill, the provisions of which have thus been before the country for some sixteen months, is one of two clauses and a preamble. The first clause deprives the House of Lords of all power in matters of finance and makes it impossible for the Peers ever again to act as they acted in November, 1909. Henceforward a money bill which is certified by the Speaker to be nothing but a money bill-that is, to contain no provisions that are not purely financial-will become law within a month after it reaches the House of Lords, whether the Peers assent to it or not. What are the arguments for and against this proceeding? The arguments against it are, roughly, that no business handled by Parliament equals in importance its financial business; that the tendency is for finance to encroach more and more upon the domain of ordinary legislation; that persecution in these days is fiscal and not physical; that Socialism itself is less a theory of society than a scheme of finance; that the finance of the future is the politics of the future; that it is possible to squeeze almost any resolution that commends itself to the majority of the House of Commons within the four corners of a money bill that, technically, is nothing but a money bill; that all the incomes from land, railroads, church property and liquor licenses could in this way be annexed to the State; and that it is madness therefore to deprive the House of Lords of a safeguard which, though it should be used sparingly and with the utmost caution, might one day prove the only barrier between the nation and a policy of predatory confiscation. As against this, the Liberals argue that if the right of the House of Lords to reject the Budget is once admitted, then the hereditary and indissoluble Upper Chamber has the power of compelling a dissolution; of bringing the machinery of government to a total stoppage, of nullifying the theory that Ministers are responsible to the House of Commons and hold office subject to its goodwill; of making it impossible for any Government to enjoy full security unless it commands a majority in both Houses; of transferring the power of the purse from the elected Commons, who can always be called to account for misusing it, to the nonelected Peers, who can never be called to account; of thus permanently thrusting the popular Chamber into a position of subordination; of inflicting a serious financial loss and confusion upon the country, and of changing the whole accepted distribution of power between the estates of the realm. It is clear that there is force, and very great force, in both these sets of arguments. I need only add that, in my judgment, the opinion of the country and of most moderate men favors the Liberal contention. Both the Peers and the Unionists in the House of Commons have, indeed, practically admitted that the popular Chamber must be supreme in all that appertains to finance. The point on which they have mainly concentrated their attack is the provision making the Speaker the sole judge of whether a given bill is or is not a money bill. They contend, and not unreasonably, but so far quite ineffectually, that to invest the Speaker with authority to decide matters that may be of vital party consequence is to run the risk of converting him into what he has never yet been in British history—a strict party man. The second clause in the Government's bill severely limits the powers of the House of Lords in dealing with ordinary, nonfinancial legislation. It lays down that any measure which passes the House of Commons in three consecutive sessions, and is rejected by the House of Lords in each of these sessions, shall become law on receiving the Royal assent, providing that two years have elapsed between its first introduction and its third and final passage through the House of Commons. It is round this proposal that the battle has chiefly raged; and to judge it fairly one must remember that the Liberals propose to restrict the duration of Parliament to five instead of seven yearswhich means, in practice, that in each Parliament there will be not more than four working sessions. But that, while it slightly minimizes, is very far from removing the fundamental objections to the Liberals' programme. The Lords under this scheme may debate, may criticise, may delay the passage of a bill for two years, may suggest amendments-and the amendments, if accepted by the Government, will be incorporated in the bill; but they may not throw it out or submit it to the judgment of the electorate; when the two years have expired, it becomes law whether they assent to it or not. The Conservatives maintain that this amounts to placing the nation on a Single-Chamber basis; that a Second Chamber deprived of the power of rejecting or referring to the people the measures sent up to it is a Second Chamber only in name; that any scheme, however revolutionary, would reach the Statute Book under the pressure of a determined Minister or of a determined faction, and in spite of the condemnation of the country; that what the Liberals are proposing is to abolish the House of Lords and therefore to abolish the effective rights of the British people; that the rigidity of the party system inside the House and the inability of opinion outside it make the suggested delay of two years little more than a meaningless formality; that there is no deadlock between the two Houses of a character to justify the Government's scheme, or, indeed, any deadlock at all that cannot be, and has not been, solved by the well-known rule of the Constitution-a rule exemplified by the passage in April, 1910, of the Budget rejected in November, 1909-that the House of Lords, after referring a bill to the judgment of the people, must bow to their verdict; and that the Liberals are attempting to overthrow the settled balance of the Constitution merely to gratify their party prejudices. To this the Liberals retort that when the Conservatives are in power the country, for all practical purposes, is on a Single-Chamber basis, since the Lords never amend or reject Conservative measures; that in the past few years the Liberals have seen bills, the principles of which had been emphatically endorsed by the electorate, either mutilated or rejected by the House of Lords; that in three or four vital directions the Liberals, no matter what majority they may command in the House of Commons, know that all advance is blocked by the House of Lords; that the |