In this connexion it may be added that on June 11, in reply to an inquiry from Mr. King (L., Somerset, N.) as to the existence of an Anglo-Russian naval agreement, or negotiations to that end, the Foreign Secretary had distinctly replied in the negative, saying that the Prime Minister's answer of the year before (A. R., 1913, p. 70) still held good, and that, if any agreement, were concluded modifying it, such an agreement, in his opinion, should be laid before Parliament.
The dignified tributes to the murdered Archduke were followed in the Commons, by a storm. In Committee of Supply on the Treasury Estimates, Mr. J. F. Hope (U.) attempted to revive the Marconi scandal by moving to reduce the Premier's salary as a protest against a recent refusal by him to warn Civil servants against speculation in stocks. Despite repeated calls to order, Mr. Hope managed to mention Lord Murray, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir Rufus Isaacs; Major Archer-Shee (U.) added fuel to the flame; the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not allowed by the Chairman to reply by citing "more pertinent illustrations"; the Prime Minister treated the suggestion that a warning was needful as a reflection on the honour of the Civil Service, and ultimately the reduction was negatived by 274 to 122.
The rising excitement of the Opposition was partly accounted for by the increasing difficulties of the Government. The Finance Bill was taken in Committee on July 1 and 2; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer had already found that the course of his plans must be cleared and their burden lightened by dropping its second part and putting the additional grants to local authorities into the Revenue Bill. This was announced in the House on June 29. On July 1 the President of the Local Government Board moved an instruction empowering the Committee to provide for amending the law relating to income tax (including supertax), death duties, and the National Debt. This was intended mainly to enable members to discuss grievances relating to the taxes in question, but Mr. Cassel (U.) moved to extend it so as to empower the Committee to deal with grievances affecting general taxation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a bitter speech, opposed this as an obstructive manœuvre; Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who described him as "a bad loser," said that the amendment was designed to revert to the old procedure of discussing grievances before imposing fresh taxation—a procedure imperilled by the practice adopted in 1913 of dividing the Finance Bill; for the second part of that Bill might be dropped, or delayed too late for adequate discussion. Eventually, however, the amendment was rejected by 271 to 185; another amendment moved by Sir F. Banbury, excluding the National Debt from the purview of the Committee—in order, he said, to prevent the reduction of the Sinking Fund—was defeated also by 276 to 182. In Committee, amendments (1) to graduate the tea duty ad valorem, and (2) to give a preference of 1d. per lb. to tea grown in the British Empire, were rejected, after discussion, by 241 to 130 and 258 to 165 respectively. On the first, Mr. Snowden (Lab., Blackburn), speaking for the Labour party, said that ad valorem duties on tea were barred by insuperable difficulties, and that, while his party disapproved of indirect taxation, they would support the Bill as intended, broadly, to increase direct taxation. On the second, the Attorney-General pointed out that 270,000,000 lb. of tea came from British India and Ceylon, 11,000,000 lb. from China and 31,000,000 lb. from other countries.
Next day (July 2) the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved an amendment reducing the income tax from 1s. 4d. to 1s. 3d. (p. [130]). He explained that the alternative lay between taking off this additional penny and reducing the older taxation. But the amount saved by postponing the grants to local, authorities would not suffice to relieve the death duties, or to take off the sugar duty, and the income taxpayer, especially in the lower rates of income, deserved relief more than the payer of supertax. The inconvenience of the change to bankers had been greatly exaggerated, and, as soon as they had been officially told to deduct 1s. 4d. on dividends till the House otherwise ordered, the position became simple. The reduction was passed after a long debate by 251 to 56. The Committee was resumed on July 13 after the introduction of the guillotine (post, p. 146).
Meanwhile the debate on the second reading of the Amending Bill had begun in the House of Lords on July 1. After a preliminary objection by Lord Willoughby de Broke, that it proposed to amend a non-existent Act, had been overruled by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Morley of Blackburn moved the second reading. The Bill, he said, afforded a better solution than Earl Grey's proposed Convention; had it not been introduced, Home Rule would have been wrecked by the sectarian prejudice which hampered the Union at its outset. The Government believed there could be no better opportunity for discovering the common ground existing in Parliament for attaining an effective peace in Ireland. The situation in Ireland had a historic base for which neither party could escape responsibility. As to exclusion, no part of Ulster was homogeneous. The National Volunteers had dispelled the illusion that the masses in the South and West of Ireland had lost their care for Home Rule. The danger was that the constitutional agitation for self-government might give place to the older methods of violence and disloyalty. He hoped the House would have no hand in promoting the change.
The Marquess of Lansdowne described the Bill as a "freak Bill," fit for a museum, and wholly inadequate to avert a calamity. Exclusion, on its merits, had probably no friends at all; and the form of it in the Bill was futile and vicious. It had been accepted by the Nationalists only because they thought Ulster would refuse it; so that the original proposal was insincere. The plan of voting by counties was most unfortunate, for in some of the counties Roman Catholics and Protestants were almost equal, and the voting would set up a saturnalia of intimidation and corruption. The time limit was vexatious and superfluous. After criticising in detail the system of government for the excluded areas, he said that the Opposition would not resist the second reading, but would move amendments in regard to the area excluded, the duration of the exclusion, and the conditions of government in the excluded area. But any revision of the Government of Ireland Bill was hopeless, and they would not deal with minute points of the Amending Bill, but leave the Government to make it "watertight." They would be misrepresented and misunderstood, but failure of this last effort might mean an irremediable misfortune to the country. When Æneas descended to Hades, the final and most dread of all the spectres he met was War. But they would support the second reading as that of a makeshift emergency measure meant solely to gain time. The meshes of the Parliament Act left them no other way, but, were a better way offered, they would be ready to explore it. They fully recognised that there was a great Irish problem, requiring to be handled with courage and sympathy, and that they could not adopt a policy of mere negation or destructive criticism.
Viscount Bryce, as an ex-Chief Secretary for Ireland, pointed out that the Lord-Lieutenant would have to act on the advice of the British, not the Irish Minister, and thought future Irish parties would be formed on different lines. Personally he would have preferred to give certain northern areas local autonomy, with an appeal to England against any measure which they thought objectionable. He defended the provisions as to exclusion, while admitting the great difficulty as to areas.
The Archbishop of York said that a general election would now give no chance of a settlement; and he suggested a Statutory Commission in two sections, to consider devolution from the point of view respectively of Ireland and of the United Kingdom. They had suffered all along from shortness of view; let Parliament stand aside and allow the Irish people to come to an agreement. The chances, however, were not propitious.
After other speeches, Lord Willoughby de Broke moved the rejection of the Bill. The Home Rule Bill might never become an Act. The Irish policy of the Government had broken down, and with it the Parliament Act, and they were asking the despised House of Lords to help them out. Nobody wanted the exclusion of Ulster, and to vote for it was to support a Parliament in Dublin. He spoke strongly for the maintenance of the Union. Lord Macdonnell urged that the problem might be solved by proportional representation and Home Rule within Home Rule, rather than by exclusion. Of later speakers, the Earl of Mayo, opposing the Bill, did not believe in the danger of civil war.