In the intervals between dealing with the Amending Bill the House of Lords disposed (on June 30 and July 7) of the Council of India Bill, a measure attributed (though inaccurately) mainly to Mr. Montagu, late Under-Secretary for India, and carrying out the developments of Liberal policy indicated in 1913 (A.R., 1913, p. 187 seq.). The salient feature was that the Council of the Secretary of State for India, which was now to contain from seven to ten members instead of from ten to fourteen, must always include two natives of India, to be chosen by the Secretary of State from a panel nominated by the Indian elective members of the Viceroy's Council and the Provincial Legislative Councils. Changes were also made in the working rules of the Council, partly to expedite its business, and one, which was severely criticised, provided that it should meet not, as heretofore, weekly, but only when summoned by the Secretary of State. The actual rules of procedure were extremely cumbrous, and it appeared from Ministerial statements made in the debate that it took nearly a month to get the most ordinary piece of business through the Council, and that in fact the Secretary had often, for practical purposes, to come very near evading the law. The Bill had been supported by a deputation from the Indian National Congress, though some organs of native opinion held that the elective provisions did not go far enough. It was strongly opposed both in The Times and by Peers with Indian experience, including Lords Ampthill and Harris; and Earl Curzon of Kedleston moved its rejection, as diminishing that element in the Council that possessed administrative experience, rendering procedure by Committees impossible, and making the Secretary of State into an autocrat. The presence of Indian members he thought entirely desirable, but the methods of selection would bring in platform speakers rather than competent advisers on questions of administration. The opposition to the Bill had gathered force by the second day's debate (July 7) when it was strongly defended by Lord Morley of Blackburn, and Lord Reay, and opposed no less strongly by Lords Ampthill, Harris, and Sydenham, Earl Roberts, and Viscount Midleton, while Lord Faber commended its proposals for simplifying financial business, and other Peers urged the House at least to give it a second reading. Lord Courtney of Penwith had desired to refer it to a Select Committee, but in spite of these arguments, and an able defence by the Marquess of Crewe, it was rejected on second reading by 96 to 38.
Next day (July 8) the Lords proceeded completely to transform the Amending Bill. They struck out, by 158 to 35, the provision that any county in Ulster might vote itself out of the Home Rule Scheme for six years, the Earl of Selborne, who moved this deletion, laying stress on various complications which the provision would set up, and explaining that, as an advocate of the Referendum, he desired that it should not be associated with an experiment that could only end in disaster; and Lord Killanin said that if no time-limit were imposed, Ulster would be free to come in voluntarily. Next, the House rejected, by 196 to 20, Lord Macdonnell's scheme for establishing in Ulster "Home Rule within Home Rule," in the form of local administrative control through an Ulster Council elected by proportional representation. To this Council would be transferred the Departments concerned with education, local government, and agriculture and technical instruction, and possibly portions of others. The expenses incurred by the Ulster Council would be provided by the Irish Parliament, or, in default, deducted from the transferred sum by the Joint Exchequer Board. The Marquess of Crewe said that the proposal would be rejected by the various parties to the controversy; Earl Loreburn, Lord Courtney of Penwith, and, later, Viscount Bryce supported it; the Lord Chancellor, while admitting that the exclusion of Ulster was a most unfortunate solution, said that the Government only proposed it because the Opposition were deaf to all appeals. The latter were forcing the country into proximity to a great danger. They hoped soon to take office, but had no clear idea how they would deal with the situation.' To this Earl Curzon of Kedleston retorted that they at any rate had a consistent policy and would not flinch from the issue. After this division the Marquess of Lansdowne moved an amendment permanently excluding the whole of Ulster from the operation of the Home Rule Bill, advocating this course as the most likely way to avert a conflict, though the Opposition could not guarantee that it would do so. The Archbishop of Canterbury thought that a division based on religious differences was the worst possible, and that only a geographical division was practicable. Lord Macdonnell protested strongly against the exclusion of Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan from the control of the Irish Parliament, but the amendment was passed by 138 to 39. Among other amendments passed one substituted a Secretary of State for the Lord-Lieutenant as the executive authority in the excluded area. Another reduced the representation of Ireland in the Imperial House of Commons from 42 members to 27. A third, moved by the Earl of Halsbury, continued the existing method of judicial appointments and of appeal, to the House of Lords instead of to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as provided in the Bill. This was supported next day by several Unionist Peers, the Earl of Desart urging that under Home Rule one party would be permanently in power, that the Judges would therefore be under special pressure, and that attacks on a Judge would probably have the sympathy of the Irish Parliament. The Marquess of Crewe urged that the amendment would be a slight on the Irish Government; the Marquess of Lansdowne supported it, partly as tending to reassure the Unionists outside Ulster. It was passed by 166 to 42. An amendment by Lord Macdonnell, making the administration of the Land Purchase Acts a reserved service, was next adopted. The Marquess of Lansdowne supported it, but explained that the Opposition had limited themselves to framing amendments to the provisions intended to avert civil strife, and had, therefore, abstained from attempting to protect minorities outside Ulster. The Marquess of Crewe intimated that, if the Bill were altered after discussion between the Houses, the alteration need not be confined to Ulster. Lord Macdonnell then proposed a scheme for proportional representation in the Irish Parliament; but the question, after debate, was deferred to the Report Stage. Some other amendments were negatived; one, moved by the Earl of Kenmare, was passed, keeping the Royal Irish Constabulary under the Imperial Government; and a new clause, moved by the Earl of Selborne, provided that nothing in the Home Rule Bill should prejudicially alter or affect the powers and rights of any person in the excluded area.
Meanwhile the Labour and suffragist disturbances continued to promise fresh complications. The London builders' dispute had resisted all attempts at settlement; and a strike similar to those which had caused the dispute arose at Woolwich Arsenal (July 3), where an engineer in the Carriage Department refused to erect machinery on a concrete base prepared by a non-unionist. At first only the men in certain departments were called out, but by July 6 over 10,000 had ceased work. On July 7, however, the Prime Minister stated in the House that the contract under which the base had been laid ran from 1912 to 1915, that no question as to non-union labour under it had been raised previously, and that the men had left work without notice. A Court of Inquiry, however, was appointed—two representative employers, two trade unionists, and Sir George Askwith as Chairman, and on July 9 the men returned to work.
Though this fresh extension of the Labour unrest was happily checked, the Suffragist militancy which was gradually estranging public sympathy did not abate. On July 3, Ballymenoch House, near Belfast, was burnt, the damage done being estimated at 20,000l.; an attempt was also made to burn Carmichael Church, Lanark, and on July 9 to destroy Robert Burns's birthplace at Alloway. A day earlier Mrs. Pankhurst had recovered sufficiently to visit the militant headquarters, and to submit to rearrest as the prelude of her ninth hunger-and-thirst strike; and two women (whose behaviour in court was disorderly) had been convicted of conspiracy to destroy windows, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment, while a sentence of two months had been passed on the printer of the Suffragette. The King's visit to Scotland had occasioned futile and fatuous attempts to gain the Royal attention by throwing leaflets into the carriage or shouting protests (during his visit to the Clyde) through a megaphone; and on Mrs. Pankhurst's arrest, a bomb was deposited in St. John the Evangelist Church, Westminster (July 12); the depositor, however, was arrested, and no harm was done. Nevertheless there was a strong feeling that the true remedy for the agitation had not been found, and it was intensified by the publication of a letter from the Bishop of London (Times, July 5), in which, however, he disclaimed support of militancy. But two real successes were obtained by the promoters of the "emancipation" of women. On July 9 the Representative Church Council of the Church of England (consisting of the members of the Convocations and the Houses of Laymen of the two Provinces) decided by a large majority of clergy and a small one of laymen to give women votes in the elections of Church Councils and enable them to sit on parochial councils; and on June 17 deputations from societies connected with the protection of women and children obtained from the Home Office a promise of favourable consideration of the appointment, for special duties, of women police.
While all these causes seemed tending to set up a great crisis, the King and Queen, with Princess Mary, had been spending a busy week in Scotland (July 6-13). Making Holyrood Palace their headquarters, they paid a state visit to Glasgow (July 7) where the King laid the foundation-stone of the new Municipal Buildings, opened a new block at the Royal Infirmary, and were received at the University; next day they visited the Fairfield shipbuilding yard at Govan, where His Majesty walked underneath the hull of the super-Dreadnought Valiant, in course of construction, and visited H.M.S, Benbow, completing; the day following they witnessed the stages of manufacture of the 15-inch gun at Parkhead Steel Works, visited Lord Newlands (who marked the occasion by giving 25,000l. to the Western Infirmary) and the Duke of Hamilton; next day they visited Dundee and Perth, and on the Saturday Dunblane Cathedral, Stirling Castle, and the ruined ancient palace of Linlithgow. On the Sunday they attended service at St. Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh, and on Monday returned to London. Everywhere they were enthusiastically welcomed, and, save for the few futile militant interruptions, the visit was an entire success. The King, as the Spectator remarked, was enabled by these visits to know his own country better than the best informed of his subjects.
However, less pleasant matters were soon to engage His Majesty's attention. The "historic Twelfth" was approaching, in Ulster; the Ulster Unionist Council was to take the opportunity of meeting (July 10); and on the previous day Captain Craig, M.P., made a statement, in the course of which he read the preamble to the Constitution of the Ulster Provisional Government. This document declared that, trusting to Divine aid, the signatories, "the people of the counties and places of Ulster represented in the Ulster Unionist Council," undertook to resist to the utmost the claims of an Irish Nationalist Government to exercise powers over them hitherto exercised by the Crown and the Imperial Parliament, and resolved to ignore the Irish Parliament, and to assume and exercise within the Ulster area, pending the restoration of direct Imperial Government, all powers rendered necessary by the withdrawal of such Government for the maintenance of peace and order and the protection of the rights and liberties of His Majesty's subjects; but such powers were to be exercised in allegiance to the King and in trust for the Constitution, to the intent that the Ulster area should continue an integral portion thereof. The laws in force, other than the Home Rule Act, would be maintained and all judges and others acting under the direct authority of the King protected. After contrasting the aims of the Nationalist and of the Ulster leaders, Captain Craig added that the outlook was as dark as it could be. This view was emphasised by the landing of machine guns for the Ulstermen, and of consignments of arms for both sides, and by the announcement that "rest stations" were being arranged in England for Ulster refugee women and children, at Eaton Hall and elsewhere; while the National Volunteers were stated to number 200,000. On July 10 Sir Edward Carson had an enthusiastic welcome at Belfast, and he and Mr. Long, addressing a meeting of Ulster delegates, left the impression that the moment of supreme crisis was at hand. Possibly through the confidence of the rank and file in their leaders, the celebrations of the Boyne anniversary on Monday, July 13, though more numerously attended than ever, passed off without disturbance. Seventy thousand men marched from Belfast to Drumbeg, where Sir Edward Carson again emphasised Ulster's determination to resist; "Give us a clean cut," he said, "or come and fight us."
Liberal journals stated that Lord Northcliffe's newspapers, in particular The Times and the Daily Mail, were making the most of these demonstrations by means of a host of special correspondents and photographers, and an important Unionist paper, the Birmingham Daily Post, also thought the alarm exaggerated. But the House of Lords increased the impression already produced by its treatment of the Amending Bill. The Report Stage was disposed of on July 13. An amendment was negatived which was proposed by Lord Weardale, modifying the provision for the exclusion of Ulster by enabling a poll to be taken on the question upon a requisition from 10 per cent. of the electors in any four counties; and then Lord Macdonnell renewed in a simplified form his proposal for proportional representation, by moving that each constituency in the Irish Parliament should return not less than three members. He advocated this in the interest of the Unionists outside Ulster. Viscount St. Aldwyn supported this scheme; Viscount Bryce held that it was a corollary to the exclusion of Ulster; but the Marquess of Crewe objected to making the Irish Parliament a corpus vile for experiment, and Viscount Morley of Blackburn doubted if Irish peasants would understand the "single transferable vote." On a division being challenged, the leaders on both sides abstained; and no "Not Contents" appeared. The amendment, therefore, was declared carried.
On the third reading next day, the Marquess of Crewe pointed out that the exclusion of Ulster raised, in a new form, the difficulty of governing Irish Nationalists from Great Britain, which had been somewhat masked by the concessions of certain Unionist Ministers in the past to Irish ideas. He reminded the House that the Irish Councils Bill of 1907 was accepted reluctantly by the Nationalist leaders, but rejected by their followers, and hinted that legislation could not depend solely on the legislators; politics were not a game of chess. The Marquess of Lansdowne, reviewing the Bill as amended, declared that the coercion of Ulster was dead. Lord Joicey, as a Liberal Peer, protested against the refusal of the Government to assist in altering the Bill. But the interest of the debate lay mainly in a new clause moved by the Earl of Dunraven, after the Bill had been read a third time without a division, providing that the Home Rule Act might be suspended by Order in Council until a Commission had reported on the relation of Ireland to other parts of the United Kingdom. He desired, he said, to avoid "the horror of the dismemberment of Ireland," ensure a stable peace, and indicate the line of a future final and satisfactory settlement. Viscount Morley opposed the amendment as against the whole spirit of the Constitution, and treated, the action of the Peers as only an elaborate way of rejecting the Home Rule Bill. The Archbishop of York and Lord Ribblesdale supported the amendment; Earl Beauchamp indicated that, while the Government could not accept a Statutory Commission, they would, if there were any desire for it, agree to a voluntary conference. The Marquess of Lansdowne held it undesirable to put the Constitution in the melting-pot on the chance of getting Ministers out of a purely domestic difficulty in Ireland, and refused to accept the amendment as a substitute for the Unionist demands; were they conceded, an inquiry might be of advantage. The clause was then added to the Bill without a division.
Thus the main changes in the Home Rule scheme effected by the Bill were as follows: Ulster was entirely and permanently excluded from the Home Rule scheme, and was to be administered by a Secretary of State through offices and departments different from those exercising authority under the Home Rule Bill, and set up by Order in Council, subject to the acquiescence of both Houses of the Imperial Parliament. Ulster would continue to send members to the Imperial Parliament, in which Irish representation would be reduced to twenty-seven. Judges would be appointed as under the existing system, and the appeal from Irish courts to the House of Lords would continue. Land purchase would be reserved, so would the Royal Irish Constabulary, and the Lord-Lieutenant would control the Dublin metropolitan police.
The House of Lords next day continued its protest against the Parliament Act by rejecting (July 15) the Plural Voting Bill. The debate was, however, languid. The Marquess of Crewe, in moving the second reading, hoped that the inherent impropriety of plural voting would have in any case led Ministers to introduce the measure; the party advantage it gave was, in fact, only occasional, and unknown before 1884. He repeated the promise (p. [84]) of a Redistribution Commission. Lord St. Audries said that such promises were idle; the general election would come as a thief in the night, and would find the Redistribution Bill in bed. In fact, most plural voters had but two votes, one for their residence and one for their place of business or their University, and agriculture, commerce, and industry should be adequately represented. Lord Newton traced indirectly to the Bill the militants' agitation, stimulated by the juggling over the Franchise Bill in 1913, and the Irish crisis, as the general election was being postponed till the plural voter was abolished. Earl Grey held that the Bill aggravated the existing inequality of representation. The Marquess of Lansdowne said that the debate was unreal. The authority of the Government in the country was waning, and they hoped the Bill would save something out of the wreck. The second reading was postponed by 119 to 49.