Читать книгу The King's Grace - John Buchan - Страница 12

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The Liberal Government in power was a remarkable assembly of varied talents. Its first head, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, was indeed a man of ordinary gifts, but he had great parliamentary skill and a profound knowledge of human nature. He had in full measure one half of the statesman's equipment, for if he was not always subtle enough to deal with things, he was simple enough to deal with men. His successor, Mr. Asquith, was the classic type of British statesman—an accomplished scholar, a successful lawyer, who brought a highly trained mind to the task of government. Mr. Morley at the India Office, Mr. Haldane at the War Office, Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office were also types which might be paralleled from many eras of our political history. But two ministers broke the traditional uniformity. Mr. Churchill was then only thirty-six, the heir to a famous parliamentary name, one who had already made his mark in soldiering and letters, and who sat a little loose from ordinary party interests, since his active mind was more concerned with fundamental problems than with party expertise. The other, Mr. Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a dozen years older, but had not lost the daring of youth. He was in touch, as no other Minister was, with the new currents of feeling in the British democracy, and his imagination and his instinct for what must come to be were drawing the Government into paths a little shocking to decorous Liberals.

Many causes had contributed to the Liberal victory of 1906—satiety with a party which had fought a costly and not very glorious war; fear of the new protectionist crusade and its effect on the cost of living; dislike of the Chinese labour experiment in South Africa. But one potent reason was that historic Liberalism, repressed since 1895, now for the last time mustered its forces. Its devotees, chiefly older men who had known Mr. Gladstone's spell, held their creed with an almost religious fervour. Its articles were the maintenance of free trade, disestablishment, free and non-sectarian education, Irish Home Rule, temperance, peace, and a modest social reform. To the advocacy of these large aims it brought a long tradition of expert electioneering. It was hostile especially to Mr. Balfour's Education Act of 1902, which permitted rate aid to denominational schools; a somewhat narrow margin of dispute which Mr. Balfour ironically described as an identification of "the frontier which eternally separates right and wrong with the transient line which technically distinguishes local from national taxation."

The new Government was not fortunate in meeting the wishes of its oldest and most loyal supporters. Chinese labour was indeed brought to an end, and this necessarily led Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to devise and carry through the greatest achievement of his career—the grant of self-government to the new South African colonies, which in 1909 was followed by an Act establishing the Union of South Africa. But the Education Bill to redress Mr. Balfour's wrongdoing was rejected by the Lords. A Plural Voting Bill was rejected by the Lords, a Licensing Bill was rejected, and other measures were cruelly emasculated. Only a Trade Disputes Bill, which restored peaceful picketing, safeguarded trade union funds, and took strikes out of the law of conspiracy, was permitted to pass by the Upper House on the not very defensible ground that it did not wish a quarrel with Labour. The Government with its huge majority was beginning to fall into discredit. Such a majority is apt to be a misfortune, for it is inclined to lead rather than to follow, and to keep it together means a strict attention to the prejudices of the often ignorant rank and file. It was necessary to win back respect by leaving the conventional rut—those ancient causes which woke enthusiasm only among elderly loyalists. Mr. Lloyd George came forward as the Great-heart to lead his party to the Promised Land. The reforms which he proposed could be embodied in a Budget, on which no House of Lords would dare to lay sacrilegious hands.

So in the Budget of 1908 a scheme of Old Age Pensions was included, and was duly passed into law. But in 1909 Mr. Lloyd George unmasked his full batteries. For his proposed system of sickness and unemployment insurance he needed money, and in his Budget of that year he proposed to raise the extra fourteen millions partly by an increase of the income tax, super-tax and death duties, and partly by taxes on undeveloped land and on land's unearned increment. The Conservative party were stirred to fury. They did not confine themselves to criticism of the dubious land taxes, but denounced the whole programme as a policy of spoliation and a class vendetta; its only logical justification, they said, was the anarchist maxim that all property was theft; it was a wicked attempt to rouse a class war. Mr. Lloyd George did not conciliate his opponents by his methods of defence, which were mainly picturesque vituperation of the "haves" on behalf of the "have nots." The serious argument for his policy—that the time had come when the State must concern itself more closely with the life of the citizen, and that the citizen must pay for it—a doctrine to which most thinking men consented—was scarcely heard in the hubbub; if it had been, it would have deeply disquieted many orthodox Liberals.

The House of Lords, after a good deal of heart-searching, rejected the Budget by a large majority, on the ground that it was not a measure to raise the necessary revenues for the year, but an attempt to work a revolution through a finance bill. The reason alleged by the Lords was intelligent enough, whatever may be thought of their tactical wisdom. Matters had now come to the point of crisis. The Upper House, so far from being an independent Second Chamber, was, it appeared, only an appanage of the Conservative party, which with its aid was always in power, whoever might be in office. It had already massacred a host of Liberal innocents, and now the cup of its iniquities was full. It had challenged the central and historic privilege of the House of Commons. An appeal to the country was necessary, and the Prime Minister made it clear that he asked from the electorate not only an approval of the Budget but a mandate to bring the Lords to reason. He carried a resolution in the House of Commons that their action was "a breach of the Constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the Commons," and in a speech at the Albert Hall he announced: "We shall not hold office until we can secure the safeguards which experience shows us to be necessary to the legislative utility and the honour of the party of progress. . . . We are going to ask the electors to say that the House of Lords shall be confined to the proper objects of a second chamber. The absolute veto must go." He was reverting to the scheme of a suspensory veto which John Bright had once fathered, and which in 1907 had been the subject of a resolution proposed by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

The election of January 1910 had an unexpected result. The Government majority, which in 1906 had been 356, was now only 124. Moreover, 82 of it were Irish, and, if the Irish voted with the Opposition, the Government would fall. Now the Irish had not loved the Budget, and, indeed, had opposed it on the second reading. In Great Britain the election had been fought chiefly on that Budget, no constituency showing much interest in the Lords question. The result was a mandate for Mr. Lloyd George's policy, but only if the Irish supported it, and for that they must have their reward in the shape of a Home Rule Bill. No Home Rule Bill, however, would pass the Lords in their present form; therefore as a necessary preliminary the Second Chamber must be dealt with. For a week or two the fate of the Government hung in the balance. The Cabinet was by no means united, the Prime Minister desiring to confine himself to the suspensory veto, while other ministers were anxious to link this with Second Chamber reform. The Opposition had been presented with a formidable cry. The Lords were to be attacked not for their faults but for their virtues; they were the only barrier against secession, and their destruction was the price to be paid for the precious Budget to separatists who were otherwise hostile to Mr. Lloyd George's adventure.

The danger was tided over. In early April the House of Commons carried three resolutions on the subject of the Lords and the first reading of the Parliament Bill which embodied them. The Irish having been thus appeased, the Budget passed through both Houses on April 20th, the Lords reserving their fire. The King's death found Government and Opposition ordering their battle lines for a constitutional clash of the first magnitude.