This is not to deny, of course, that Asquith’s statement enabled him suddenly to become decisive about the Budget. The period of ‘wait and see’ was over. He moved a ‘timetable’ resolution on April 18 for the reintroduced Finance Bill and firmly declared that the fortunes of the Government and of the Liberal Party were bound up with the measure. A day and a half was to be devoted to the preliminary resolutions, two to second reading and one to third reading, while at the committee stage the only amendments permitted were to be those relating to changes which had been made in the bill since its previous passage through the Commons. The debates to which these various stages gave rise, and which began almost immediately after the ‘time-table’ resolution and followed each other in quick succession, necessarily involved the flogging of very old horses. The main point of interest was the attitude of the Irish members. The Independent Nationalists remained implacable in their opposition, and O’Brien, who on a different occasion in the same week had spoken in almost Tory terms of the Chancellor of the Exchequer having decided ‘that the Irish votes should be bargained for at the expense of the King rather than the Treasury’, moved the rejection of the second reading. Redmond, however, was firm in his support (one of his followers, Joseph Devlin, who spoke on third reading, reminding O’Brien that there were other people in Ireland besides landlords and distillers), and the motion to reject was defeated by 328 to 242, a majority only a little smaller than that which had been secured in the first division on the veto resolutions. Third reading was obtained on April 27 by 324 to 231.
On the next day the bill was taken into consideration in the Lords. Here the second reading debate lasted only three hours. Lord Lansdowne made a few old points about the national credit and negotiations with the Irish, and Lord Russell1 some new ones about motor cars; the Lord Chancellor replied for the Government; and that was about all. There was no division, and the remaining stages passed without debate. On this issue at least the Lords were prepared to accept the fact that they had been defeated in the appeal to the country which they had forced. It needed only another twenty-four hours to secure the Royal Assent, and the Finance Bill of 1909 therefore passed into law precisely a year after Lloyd George had opened the Budget upon which it was based.
During the difficult weeks at the end of March, Ministers had not only had the tasks of deciding upon the order in which they were going to proceed and of agreeing to the form of the veto resolutions. There had also to be produced an acceptable draft of the Parliament Bill. In substance it was the same as the resolutions. But this alone would not have satisfied Grey and the other advocates of reform, nor would it have left others like Asquith himself and Mr. Churchill, who were very willing to put the veto first but who none the less believed that reform was desirable and should not be lost sight of, entirely happy. The difficulty was solved by a preamble, which was an expression of the wishes of the Government, but which would, of course, if and when the bill passed into law, have no legal force.
‘Whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists,’ it ran, ‘a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such a substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation: And whereas provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber, but it is expedient to make such provision as in this Act appears for restricting the existing powers of the House of Lords.’
The suggestion that a reconstituted Upper House might be invested with greater powers than those which the bill would leave the House of Lords was a little sinister, but it was all so vague as not to cause great radical agitation.
In this form the bill was sent out to the King, who was at Biarritz. He acknowledged it in his own not over-literate hand. His letter, dated April 19, read as follows: ‘The King has received from the Prime Minister the draft of a Bill to make provision with respect to the powers of the House of Lords in relation to those of the House of Commons and to limit the duration of Parliament. The King notices that the date of this Bill is the first of this month.’k
The Government had at last made their intentions clear and thrown a difficult ball to the House of Lords. But when Parliament rose for a short spring recess on April 28, great difficulties still lay ahead for Asquith and his colleagues. Their trump card was the exercise of the prerogative, but this involved the King as well as themselves, and there was no doubt that he was distrustful of the whole constitutional policy of the Government and would approach such action with great distaste.