16
The Green Bag
that the House of Commons should rule the kingdom. In a country where the Constitution is subject to Parliament, rather than Parlia ment to the Constitution, and where there is
no tribunal having power to declare a law
strongly partisan character. Such a course is in many respects inconsistent with sound public policy. The House of Commons has virtually exceeded its prerogative in the matter of money bills. England is still a
unconstitutional, the removal of every possible
free trade country, but if a less radical money
limitation on the power of the House of Com mons would be in the highest degree hazardous and harmful. Lord Morley has quoted Burke to the efiect that the House of Lords has no right in any sense to the disposition of the public purse. But it is problematical whether Burke, if he were living today, would assert that the disposition of the publicfpurse included the right to alter the Constitution. The reason why the Lords have not ex pressly asserted the right to pass on all con stitutional measures is probably because they have not dared to take any step which might be misconstrued. From the standpoint
bill could not have been drawn to meet the emergency, the constitutional issues should have been separated from the budget and framed up in a separate bill for submission to the House of Lords, to open an unob structed path for the budget itself. The final outcome of the present crisis probably cannot be as grave as some have feared. It does not seem as if the British Constitution had been "cast into the melting pot," or as if it were likely to be. A Unionist writer (Mr. J. Ellis Barker in the Fortnightly Review, v. 86, p. 799, Nov. 1909) is not
of the House of Commons, such a rule might
when he says:—
be made the pretext for interference with almost all money bills. For the distinction between constitutional and other measures
Socialist but a Conservative nation.
is obscure, and the Lords are to be judges in
their own case; and even were there any possible way of submitting the question to the arbitrament of the highest court, the House of Lords would then nevertheless be the judge in its own case. Such fears would not be wholly unfounded. Thus is disclosed a serious defect of the government of Great Britain, the absence of a disinterested supreme tribunal possessed, like the Supreme Court
of the United States, of the right to subject the legislative power to constitutional re straints. Far better were it, however, that the House of Lords should be the judge in its own case, exercising its own discretion in determin ing what measures are and what are not un constitutional, than that the House-of Com
mons should be liberated from every restraint, and should, when money bills are before it, arrogate to itself exclusive power to alter the Constitution at will. The policy which has been pursued by the House of Commons is open to serious objections. A financial emergency renders the immediate raising of a vast revenue imperative. Under the guise of a money bill, the House takes advantage of this emer gency to attempt to force the passage of measures of far-reaching constitutional sig
nificance, measures also partaking of a
in his partisan zeal wholly blinded to facts,
The British nation is not a Liberal-Radical
The present
House of Commons, with its flabby, cosmopolitan, and urn-national sentimentalism, and its predilec tions for socialism and bureaucratic absolutisrn, misrelpresents a male, individualistic. patriotic and mperral race.
If the Liberals triumph at the coming election the country will certainly survive a forced system of taxation without repre sentation. If the House of Lords is reformed, that is a reform which prudent, conservative counselors like Lord Rosebery have for some time advocated, and the reform, when we consider the respect of Englishmen for tradi tion, is not likely to be carried out in a
destructive or revolutionary spirit. If the election by popular vote of a Liberal upper house ever becomes possible, any possible danger may perhaps be offset by the un diminished fiuence and power of the upper chamber. The fears of Lord Rosebery and the Archbishop of York, of the abolition of
the upper chamber, or other men's fears of a socialistic upper chamber. are as ill-founded as Mr. Frederic Harrison's fears for the safety of the monarchical form of government. The worst that can happen is a dangerous curtailment of the powers of the House of Lords. Such a misfortune, however, would have been invited rather than repulsed had the Lords mildly surrendered to the Commons instead of pursuing a sound and reasonable course.
