Liberalism and the Social Problem

by Winston Churchill

That is a very natural explanation of their action; but if we for our part were to accept the assertion lately made by the House of Lords—an assertion which is the furthest point to which aristocratic privilege has attained in modern times—that assertion itself would become only the starting-point for a whole new series of precedents and of constitutional retrogressions; and worse than that, if by any chance, having raised this issue, we were to be defeated upon it—if having placed this Resolution on the records of the House we were to fail to give effect to it, or were to suffer an electoral reverse as the conclusion of it—then good-bye to the power of the House of Commons. All that long process of advance in democratic institutions which has accompanied the growth of the power of the House of Commons, and which has also been attended by an expansion of the circles of comfort and culture among the people of this country—all that long process which has gone steadily onward for 200 years, and which has almost exclusively occupied the politics of the nineteenth century—will have reached its culmination. It will have come in contact with that barrier of which we have heard so much in this debate. The tide will have turned, and in the recoil of the waters they will gradually leave exposed again, altered no doubt by the conditions of the age, all the old assertions of aristocratic and plutocratic domination which we had fondly hoped had been engulfed for ever.

Hon. gentlemen opposite would be well advised to treat this Resolution seriously. This Parliament is still young, but there are some things at which they have laughed which have already become accomplished facts, I could not have during the past eighteen months listened to their taunts about the permanence of Chinese labour without reflecting now with satisfaction that Chinese labour is going. Yes, and other people may follow. We are only at the beginning of this struggle. We are not necessarily committed to every detail of the proposal; we are opening the first lines for a great siege, we have to sap up to the advanced parallels, to establish our batteries, and at no distant date open our bombardment. It may be many months before we shall be able to discern where there is a practicable breach; but the assault will come in due time.

The right hon. gentleman opposite[7] said he welcomed this contest with great confidence. I wonder if the Conservative Party realise, to use an expressive vulgarism, what they are "letting themselves in for" when this question comes to be fought out on every platform in every constituency in the country? They will not have to defend an ideal Second Chamber; they will not be able to confine themselves to airy generalities about a bicameral system and its advantages; they will have to defend this Second Chamber as it is—one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee. They will have to defend it with all its anomalies, all its absurdities, and all its personal bias—with all its achievements that have darkened the pages of the history of England. And let me say that weighty constitutional authorities have not considered that the policy on which we have embarked in moving this Resolution is unreasonable. Mr. Bagehot says of the House of Lords:

"It may lose its veto as the Crown has lost its veto. If most of its members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of one class, and that not quite the best; if its doors are shut against genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not £5,000 a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so much kingly power is gone—no one knows how."

What is the position of the Conservative Party when they attempt to defend the House of Lords? They are always telling us to imitate the Colonies; they are always telling us that we ought to adopt the fiscal systems and other methods employed in the self-governing Colonies; but what is their unprejudiced view of the relations which are held between the two Chambers under the bicameral system in the Colonies and as established by their own Australian Commonwealth Act in the last Parliament? By that Act they have given power to the Lower Chamber to over-ride the Upper Chamber in certain circumstances. The Commonwealth Act says that when the Chambers differ they shall meet together, and that the majority shall decide, measures being taken, however, that the numbers of the Upper Chamber shall not be such as to swamp the opinion of the Lower Chamber. Imitating them, and following in their footsteps, we have adopted such a plan in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony Constitutions.

The Leader of the Opposition asked us yesterday whether the people are not often wrong, and he proceeded characteristically to suggest that he always considered them wrong when they voted against him. I am not prepared to take such a rough-and-ready test of the opinion and of the mental processes of the British democracy as that. I should hesitate to say that when the people pronounce against a particular measure or Party they have not pretty good reasons for doing so. I am not at all convinced that in 1900 the electors were wrong in saying that the war should be finished—by those who made it. Even in the last election I could, I daresay, find some few reasons to justify the decision which the people then took; and if we should be so unfortunate in the future as to lose that measure of public confidence now abundantly given to us, then I shall not be too sure that it will not be our own fault. Certain am I that we could not take any step more likely to forfeit the confidence of the people of England, than to continue in office after we have lost the power to pass effective legislation.

I will retort the question of the Leader of the Opposition by another question. Has the House of Lords ever been right? Has it ever been right in any of the great settled controversies which are now beyond the reach of Party argument? Was it right in delaying Catholic emancipation and the removal of Jewish disabilities? Was it right in driving this country to the verge of revolution in its effort to defeat the passage of reform? Was it right in resisting the Ballot Bill? Was it right in the almost innumerable efforts it made to prevent this House dealing with the purity of its own electoral machinery? Was it right in endeavouring to prevent the abolition of purchase in the Army? Was it right in 1880, when it rejected the Compensation for Disturbance Bill? I defy the Party opposite to produce a single instance of a settled controversy in which the House of Lords was right.

[An honourable Member: What about Home Rule?]

I expected that interruption. That is not a settled controversy. It is a matter which lies in the future. The cases I have mentioned are cases where we have carried the law into effect and have seen the results, and found that they have been good.

Let me remind the House that, but for a lucky accident, but for the fact that Letters Patent can be issued by the Crown and do not require the statutory assent of Parliament, it would very likely have been impossible for this Government to have made the constitutional settlement in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony, because the Constitutions would probably have been mutilated or cast out by the House of Lords, and the Executive Government would have found itself responsible for carrying out the government of Colonies on lines of which it wholly disapproved, and after their own policy had been rejected.