Mr Balfour's Poodle(73)

‘Lord Lansdowne,’ Sir Almeric Fitzroy wrote, ‘who always shines in a position of extreme difficulty, acquitted himself of the task he had to perform with the greatest tact, polish, dignity and address, and but for the fact that he appealed to a section of the House impenetrable to reason and proof to the dictates of prudence, his allocution could not have failed of success. It was lamentable to see his calm and dispassionate view of a very critical situation succeeded by a blunt appeal to blind passion, couched in terms of turgid rhetoric and senile violence.’i

Dr. Lang of York, who followed, stressing that he spoke only for himself, censured the Government and urged moderation with some force and more unction. Then came Salisbury, who placed upon Crewe’s statement an entirely different construction from Lansdowne, again pressed Morley for clarification, and, failing to receive an answer, took this as further evidence that talk of a large creation was not to be taken very seriously. In any event, he somewhat surprisingly argued, if the radicals created 500 peers to serve their purpose, the Conservatives could easily do the same when their time came, so there would be no great disadvantage from their point of view. The other die-hard speakers that day were Willoughby de Broke, Bedford, Marlborough, Ampthill, Denbigh, Scarbrough, and Stanhope. Of these, Willoughby and Ampthill remained sceptical of the threat to create, whilst the two dukes and, to some extent, Stanhope thought that there could be many worse things than even the largest of mass creations. Marlborough said quite bluntly that he would prefer a big reinforcement to the ‘purge’ which Lansdowne had tried to force upon the House; Bedford believed that creation would advertise the despotic power that the majority in the Commons was arrogating to itself; and Stanhope thought, ingeniously and possibly correctly, that a Government majority in the Lords and the rapid implementation of the principal Liberal measures would result in the break-up of the coalition upon which the Government depended in the Commons. Within the die-hard ranks there was another conflict between the ‘autocrats’ and the ‘democrats’. Some, like Ampthill and Bedford, persisted in the claim that their refusal to accept the will of the Commons was bound up with their determination to give the electorate an endless series of last words. Even on the Parliament Bill they could not admit that it had yet spoken with a decisive voice. Others, like Willoughby—and Halsbury would probably have agreed with him—faced the issue more frankly:

‘… I suggest that all these conventions with regard to the Cabinet representing the House of Commons and the House of Commons representing the electors and the electors representing the nation are only applicable to ordinary legislation and become tyrannical if used to push through extraordinary legislation. When they are applied to legislation which is not only extraordinary but in our view absolutely unthinkable and impossible, then we cannot entertain that affection for representative government which we ordinarily extend to it. You may claim majorities if you like in favour of the Parliament Bill at a dozen General Elections, but that will not alter my view and I do not think it will alter the view of Lord Halsbury or those acting with us in this matter.’j

That was clear enough.

On the side of submission the Bishop of Winchester combined his moderation with a little more liberal feeling than his brother of York had shown, Lord Russell rebuked the Duke of Bedford and Lord Ampthill1 for their desertion of the cause with which the name of Russell had once been associated, and Lord Ribblesdale gave the Government rather cooler support than might have been hoped for from the brother-in-law of the Prime Minister. But the speeches of note came from St. Aldwyn and Newton. The former attacked Halsbury’s position with great vigour, both because he was convinced that no change of opinion had occurred in the country since the last general election and because he regarded the threat of a large creation as very real. But coupled with this attack upon the die-hards was another equally strong attack on the Government and upon more surprising ground. In November, St. Aldwyn argued, Ministers should have advised the King to see the leaders of the Opposition, and it should have been suggested to him that in the event of his declining to give the promise asked for by Asquith and Crewe, Balfour and Lansdowne might be willing to form a Government. In failing so to act Ministers had shown neither common generosity nor common honesty in their dealings with the Sovereign. To the extent that this part of his speech increased union  ist feeling against the Government—and it was referred to with much approval by several subsequent die-hard speakers—it was not altogether helpful to Lord Lansdowne’s cause.