by Roy Jenkins
This is not to deny, of course, that Asquith’s statement enabled him suddenly to become decisive about the Budget. The period of ‘wait and see’ was over. He moved a ‘timetable’ resolution on April 18 for the reintroduced Finance Bill and firmly declared that the fortunes of the Government and of the Liberal Party were bound up with the measure. A day and a half was to be devoted to the preliminary resolutions, two to second reading and one to third reading, while at the committee stage the only amendments permitted were to be those relating to changes which had been made in the bill since its previous passage through the Commons. The debates to which these various stages gave rise, and which began almost immediately after the ‘time-table’ resolution and followed each other in quick succession, necessarily involved the flogging of very old horses. The main point of interest was the attitude of the Irish members. The Independent Nationalists remained implacable in their opposition, and O’Brien, who on a different occasion in the same week had spoken in almost Tory terms of the Chancellor of the Exchequer having decided ‘that the Irish votes should be bargained for at the expense of the King rather than the Treasury’, moved the rejection of the second reading. Redmond, however, was firm in his support (one of his followers, Joseph Devlin, who spoke on third reading, reminding O’Brien that there were other people in Ireland besides landlords and distillers), and the motion to reject was defeated by 328 to 242, a majority only a little smaller than that which had been secured in the first division on the veto resolutions. Third reading was obtained on April 27 by 324 to 231.
On the next day the bill was taken into consideration in the Lords. Here the second reading debate lasted only three hours. Lord Lansdowne made a few old points about the national credit and negotiations with the Irish, and Lord Russell1 some new ones about motor cars; the Lord Chancellor replied for the Government; and that was about all. There was no division, and the remaining stages passed without debate. On this issue at least the Lords were prepared to accept the fact that they had been defeated in the appeal to the country which they had forced. It needed only another twenty-four hours to secure the Royal Assent, and the Finance Bill of 1909 therefore passed into law precisely a year after Lloyd George had opened the Budget upon which it was based.
During the difficult weeks at the end of March, Ministers had not only had the tasks of deciding upon the order in which they were going to proceed and of agreeing to the form of the veto resolutions. There had also to be produced an acceptable draft of the Parliament Bill. In substance it was the same as the resolutions. But this alone would not have satisfied Grey and the other advocates of reform, nor would it have left others like Asquith himself and Mr. Churchill, who were very willing to put the veto first but who none the less believed that reform was desirable and should not be lost sight of, entirely happy. The difficulty was solved by a preamble, which was an expression of the wishes of the Government, but which would, of course, if and when the bill passed into law, have no legal force.
‘Whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists,’ it ran, ‘a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such a substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation: And whereas provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber, but it is expedient to make such provision as in this Act appears for restricting the existing powers of the House of Lords.’
The suggestion that a reconstituted Upper House might be invested with greater powers than those which the bill would leave the House of Lords was a little sinister, but it was all so vague as not to cause great radical agitation.
In this form the bill was sent out to the King, who was at Biarritz. He acknowledged it in his own not over-literate hand. His letter, dated April 19, read as follows: ‘The King has received from the Prime Minister the draft of a Bill to make provision with respect to the powers of the House of Lords in relation to those of the House of Commons and to limit the duration of Parliament. The King notices that the date of this Bill is the first of this month.’k
The Government had at last made their intentions clear and thrown a difficult ball to the House of Lords. But when Parliament rose for a short spring recess on April 28, great difficulties still lay ahead for Asquith and his colleagues. Their trump card was the exercise of the prerogative, but this involved the King as well as themselves, and there was no doubt that he was distrustful of the whole constitutional policy of the Government and would approach such action with great distaste.
VIII The Reply of the Peers
In 1907, as was described in chapter 111, Lord Newton’s House of Lords Reform Bill was given modified support by the Unionist leaders and rendered temporarily innocuous by reference to a Select Committee. This committee deliberated for a year. Despite its strength—it had Rosebery as chairman, the Archbishop of Canterbury and an ex-Speaker1 among its independent members, and Lansdowne, Curzon, St. Aldwyn, and Midleton2 from the Opposition benches—it was not an entirely satisfactory body. Newton has made it clear how difficult it was to work with Rosebery.
‘It must be admitted, however,’ he wrote, ‘that Lord Rosebery was less successful as a chairman than might have been anticipated, for he allowed the members to stray from the point under discussion, frequently made discursive if entertaining speeches himself, and conveyed the impression that he was physically unequal to the moderate strain of work involved. He was also liable to fits of discouragement.…’a
Despite these handicaps, the committee eventually produced an agreed report. This adopted most of the proposals of the bill of 1907, notably those limiting and reducing the hereditary qualification. But it created little stir, and was not even debated in the House of Lords. Leisurely unconcern was the attitude of most of the Unionist peers. The result of the first 1910 election drastically changed this atmosphere. In the first place it made a Liberal attack upon either the powers or the composition of the House of Lords inevitable. In the second place it revealed the not very surprising fact that in the constituencies, and particularly in Scotland and the North of England, the hereditary principle, so far from being treated with reverence, was decidedly unpopular. Already by January 3, Lansdowne was writing to Balfour saying that he had ‘received several letters pressing us for a strong declaration as to House of Lords reform’, but adding that, in his view, ‘we ought not to allow ourselves to be rushed by Sir Reginald MacLeod1 or anyone else’.b Balfour was never inclined to rush anyone, and certainly not Lord Lansdowne on this occasion. Even when he had received word, in the interval between the end of the election and the beginning of the session, that proposals for reform might strengthen the hand of the King and of the ‘moderates in the Cabinet’, he remained unenthusiastic.
‘The only objections that I can see to this course,’ he wrote to Lansdowne on January 29, ‘are (1) that it a little savours of panic, and (2) that we may not find it easy to agree upon a scheme of reform which would be agreeable to the House of Lords, which would meet the views of the Unionist doctrinaires in the constituencies, and which would be workable. Still if the announcement that you mean to try your hand at the problem would strengthen the hands of the King and of the moderates within the Cabinet in resisting unconstitutional pressure by the extremists, I see no reason why it should not be made.…’c
Lansdowne himself was, if anything, still less enthusiastic, both because of his own predilections, and because, as leader of all the Unionist peers, he could hardly fail to be cautious of a scheme which, whatever its details, would inevitably deprive a substantial number of his followers of their right to sit and vote. Nevertheless in his speech in the debate on the Address he not only indicated his willingness to consider proposals for reform but went further, saying that if the Government refused its co-operation, the peers would bring forward proposals of their own.
This was an invitation which Rosebery, who was indefatigable in taking a
series of first steps towards reform, if in nothing else, was eager to accept. He quickly announced that he would move a resolution that the House of Lords should go into committee on the question of its own reform, and that if this were carried he would follow it up with three substantive resolutions in the following form:
‘(1) That a strong and efficient Second Chamber is not merely an integral part of the British Constitution, but is necessary to the well-being of the State, and to the balance of Parliament.
‘(2) That such a chamber can best be obtained by the reform and reconstitution of the House of Lords.
‘(3) That a necessary preliminary of such reform and reconstitution is the acceptance of the principle that the possession of a peerage should no longer of itself give the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords.’
The debate on these resolutions began on March 14. Rosebery himself led off with a speech of great oratorical distinction. He praised the House of Lords both because of its deliberative qualities and because it could claim to be the direct lineal descendant of the Witenagemot. But on the other hand there were the insuperable objections of Scotland and the North of England to the hereditary principle and a majority of 125 in the other place bent on the destruction of the existing chamber. The peers must act first, so that an Upper House able to see ‘that the voice of the people should be deliberate’ remained in being. He proposed that there should be an elected element in the new House, and that it should be chosen by corporations and county councils, existing members of the House being eligible for election. ‘I believe that at this critical moment,’ he concluded, ‘you have an opportunity of rendering your country a greater service than has fallen to any body of men since the Barons wrested the liberties of England from King John at Runnymede.… What is the alternative? The alternative is to cling with enfeebled grasp to privileges which have become unpopular, to powers which are verging on the obsolete, shrinking and shrinking until at last, under the unsparing hands of the advocates of single-Chamber Government, there may arise a demand for your own extinction, and the Second Chamber, the ancient House of Lords, may be found waiting in decrepitude for its doom.’d
Support for Rosebery, varying greatly both in its enthusiasm and in the assumptions on which the speakers were acting, came from Curzon, Salisbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Newton, Cawdor, Cromer, and Lansdowne. Curzon was probably the most enthusiastic, although he thought that Rosebery had over-stated the case against the hereditary principle and claimed that ‘in India the House of Lords was regarded with enormous veneration and respect, largely because its composition rested on a basis familiar throughout Indian society’. The Archbishop set the tone for a rather condescending speech by telling their lordships that his title to sit in the House was 600 years older than that of any hereditary peer. In the quarrel between the Lords and the Government there had been exaggeration on both sides. Rosebery’s proposals, ‘got into shape’, should produce the adjustment necessary to relieve the strain. The bishops were ready to help. It all sounded very easy.
Cawdor devoted most of his speech in favour of a new House of Lords to defending the existing one. On Home Rule, the Education Bill, the Licensing Bill, and the Budget it had represented the mind of the people far better than had the Commons. His conclusion did not seem to follow very obviously from his premises. Salisbury was another rather static reformer. The character and reputation of the House of Commons had declined, and so had the independence of its members. But in the House of Lords there was perfect independence (a perfection which was somewhat blemished, however, by Crewe’s reminder that the only Scottish representative peer1 who had voted for the Budget had been deprived of his seat). The hereditary principle had the merit of ‘trusting a man because of his sense of public duty; it meant that a man reverenced the example of his fathers and avoided prejudicing his son’s prospects’. But some reform appeared to be necessary and the best plan was the selection of representative peers and the nomination of some members by the Crown. Cromer interpreted the ‘silent voters’—ex hypothesi a safe body of men to whom to attribute views—as being frightened of single-chamber government, and insisted that a reformed House should have full powers over finance.
Lansdowne made the most important speech. He was in favour of going into committee, but reform must result in preserving the historic continuity of the House of Lords. He was not prepared to change its name, to renounce the hereditary principle, or greatly to reduce the number of hereditary peers. He was against election by the county councils or anyone else, but thought that a certain non-hereditary element might be secured by life peerages and by Government nominations for a substantial term. This speech greatly disappointed Rosebery.
‘I honestly think,’ he wrote to Lansdowne. ‘that if you cannot go beyond the limits you laid down last night, the House of Lords plan will be stillborn. The great mass of the Lords are not solicitous about reform at all; if they must have it, they will go for the minimum, and it is the minimum which their leader offers and declares to be sufficient.’e
Two members of the Government—Morley and Crewe—took part in the debate. They were even less enthusiastic than Lansdowne. Morley thought that the changes proposed would not free the House of Lords from the imputation of class prejudice, nor did they contain any provision for removing or diminishing deadlocks. Crewe, with his usual good sense, said that 'the Liberals in the House of Commons and the country would believe that the object of the reforming peers was to consolidate the power of the Unionist party and to increase it by limiting the prerogative of the Crown. The real point at issue was the deadlock between the two Houses, and any considerable reform must destroy or weaken the unwritten understanding between them.' This was the essence of the problem: a reformed House of Lords would inevitably destroy the constitutional safety-valve of large-scale creation, and the Unionist reformers, who from almost every other point of view were perfectly satisfied with the existing chamber, were urged forward by the knowledge that this would be so.
Crewe’s prescience, however, did not lead him to oppose Rosebery in the division lobby, either on the motion to go into committee or on the substantive resolutions. This task was left to Lord Halsbury, who could be depended upon, rather like a comedian achieving his laughs by the repetition of a well-known series of catch-phrases, to put up his standard performance of opposition to all change. ‘It was impossible to make an institution more practically useful for its purpose than the present House,’ he declared on this occasion. He was supported by one or two die-hard peers like Willoughby de Broke1 and Oranmore and Browne. But he divided only against the last resolution, and mustered a lobby of no more than fifteen. The Government peers voted with the majority.
Before the debate a private Unionist colloquy on the subject had been held at Lansdowne House, and Rosebery had stretched his cross-bench conscience to the extent of attending what was virtually a meeting of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet. Austen Chamberlain has left an account of what took place, which is notable chiefly for a statement of Balfour’s putting the opportunist Unionist case with such lucidity that the elegant cynicism of his words was not obscured by Austen’s rendering of them:
‘I agree with what I believe Austen thinks,’ the account characteristically opens. ‘I dislike the whole thing. I would like to leave things as they are if we could. I don’t believe you can make a better House. But that is not the question. The question is: can you make a Second Chamber strong enough to stand and resist assault? Can you make such changes as will enable our men (surely Austen’s phrase and not Balfour’s) to fight with success in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Scotland against single-chamber government? I don’t think you can in our democratic days unless you admit an elective element, and although at first I thought the elective and non-elective elements would at once clash, and the remaining hereditary element be thrust out, I have come to the conclusion on reflection that this danger is not as great as I at first thought, and that such a House as we are discussing migh
t stand at any rate for fifty years.’f
This suggests that Balfour had moved a little ahead of Lansdowne. And Austen Chamberlain, Walter Long, Curzon, and Akers-Douglas1 appear to have been with or in front of the leader of the party, with Salisbury, Midleton, and Lansdowne urging greater caution. In the event, however, these various currents of opinion became of little immediate importance. The spring recess, as we have seen, found the Commons with their veto resolutions complete and with the Parliament Bill given a first reading, but with no further progress made. Equally, it interrupted the Lords at a stage at which the Rosebery resolutions had been passed but when the moment had not arrived to give them more concrete shape. And before Parliament reassembled the whole political atmosphere had been transformed by the death of the King.
It was a comparatively sudden death, and for that reason it was all the more politically cataclysmic in its effects. On April 27, His Majesty had returned to London after spending most of the previous two months at Biarritz. After his return he had attended a performance of Rigoletto at Covent Garden, visited the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and spent a week-end at Sandringham. As late as May 5, he received the new Governor of New Zealand in audience. On that afternoon the first warning bulletin was issued. On the following morning he was up and transacting a little business. At 11.45 pm on that evening—May 6—he was dead.
