The Liberal Tradition

2. THE EXTENSION OF DEMOCRACY

91. HERBERT SAMUEL: Liberalism (1902)

For how can there be true self-government if restrictions, whether formal or informal, written or unwritten, are allowed to limit the people’s free choice of their representatives? What liberty of election is there when all men of small income, however able, upright and earnest, however closely their convictions may tally with those of the electors, are barred from candidature; when political associations are compelled to seek their candidates within a small circle of rich men, and to accept—notoriously a frequent case—some dilettante politician, some landowner or capitalist whose views on important points are not their own, some questionable financier or some lawyer more ambitious than reliable, solely because there is no other available member of their party who possesses the necessary means? What hope is there of adequate social reform when the Lower Chamber is so composed that it can only approach industrial questions from the outside and never from the inside, can only know the needs of the people by information at secondhand and never learn them by actual experience; when a class spirit pervades it, leading it to deal with progressive legislation like an unwilling servant, idle whenever the master’s eye is not on him, careless of details, obeying rather the letter than the spirit of the orders he has received? And finally, what freedom of career is there when this road is closed; when the poor man, however capable, sees the higher positions in the State arbitrarily denied to him, when the nation blindly repulses from the Parliament and from the Ministry all talent that is not combined with wealth? The House of Commons is the most conspicuous theatre of public action, and gives the widest scope for useful work. To enter it is one of the most honourable ambitions that a British subject can form. An injustice is done to the majority of the nation, if its doors, opened wide to the rich, are left scarcely ajar for the poor.

Such are the grave abuses that attach to the present system and such the reasons that lead Liberals to demand the grant of a moderate salary to Members of Parliament, together with the payment of the official expenses of elections from public funds.

Herbert Samuel, Liberalism (1902), pp. 92-5.

92. SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Speech to the National Liberal Federation at Plymouth, 7 June 1907

[‘The quarrel’ had resulted from the tactics of the House of Lords during the first eighteen months of the Campbell-Bannerman Ministry’s life. In 1906 an Education Bill and a Plural Voting Bill had been killed in the Lords, and in 1907 four land reform bills had been either mutilated or destroyed.]

The quarrel was forced upon us, and it is because we are in earnest about our legislation and intend to find a way of getting it through, and because we do not regard politics as a mere game played for the amusement of two parties in the State, that we propose to bring this matter to a serious and decisive test. And remember another thing: these successive blows at the authority of the House of Commons, directed though they were at particular measures, were part of the general scheme for discrediting—not this Government, that was a small affair—but discrediting any Liberal Government, and impressing the country with the view that a Liberal Ministry, be it ever so powerful, ever so united, is impotent to carry its measures. You observe the brilliant idea. They first make our work well-nigh impossible and then hold us up to the contempt of the country as bunglers and impostors. And what is the sequel to that? What are they hoping and praying for in their Primrose lodge and tariff reform camp meetings? It is this, that the House of Lords by these tactics will set Protection on its feet again, and drive the electors in a fit of disgust back into the fold where for twenty long years they have been shepherded and fleeced. That is the game, and it may be exceedingly clever; but there is one thing I have learned in my Parliamentary experience . . . it is not cleverness which pays in the long run. The people of this country are a straightforward people. They like honesty and straightforwardness of purpose. They may laugh at it and they may be amused by it and they may in a sense admire it, but they do not like cleverness! You may be too clever by half. Sir, they are reckoning without their host. There is one thing they have overlooked. His Majesty’s Government have no intention to play the part referred to them in this nice little game, and when I hear those gusts of mirthless laughter arising from the Opposition benches whenever the question of the House of Lords is referred to, I feel sorry that the relics of a once great and respectable party, as the Conservative party was, are so engulfed in their petty tactics, so deluded by the flippant habit of mind which has become popular among them, as to be totally oblivious to the gravity of the issue which stands at their door.

I am addressing you to-night under a deep sense of responsibility; for the very existence of Liberalism as a force in the State and as an instrument of progress in the times to come depends upon the outcome of the struggle upon which we are now embarking. If there is to be no place for self-respecting Liberalism in this country, if Liberalism with the country behind it cannot enforce its policy, then is it not better that we should go down in the assertion of our rights rather than linger on as a shadow of a Government, strong, perhaps, in numbers, strong, perhaps, also it may be, in good intentions, but withal without authority or power? I ask you now to turn to the constitutional issue involved in this controversy. And I will tell you at once that, in my opinion, the Lords have abused their powers within the Constitution, and that in assigning to them their proper place, as it is our purpose to do—and a very good, useful, and honourable place it is—so far from attacking the Constitution or setting up a revolution, it is we who are defending, it is the Lords who are straining the Constitution. Remember that we are forced into this struggle by the circumstances which surround and confront us; it is the climax of a series of attacks upon the rights and liberties of the Commons. Therefore, if the immediate causes of the deadlock and confusion were withdrawn, we should none the less be bound to go forward. What is the doctrine of the Constitution? That doctrine is not as you might infer from the action of the peers, it is not that there are two Chambers exercising co-ordinate authority and equal powers. The peers themselves put forward no such claim. In terms they admit the predominance of the House of Commons, although their practice at times belies their profession. The last word, the ultimate supremacy, rests with the House of Commons. That is the accepted constitutional doctrine, and what we have to do is to see that the relations between the two Houses are so arranged as to define the limits within which the power which the Constitution has conferred upon the Lords may be properly exercised. . . . We must give the House of Lords to understand that, whilst we are perfectly ready to legislate with due deliberation and give every weight to their representations, the British people must be masters in their own house. . . . Above all things, remember, as you go into this struggle, that the greatest instrument of liberty, justice, and progress in this world is in your keeping and that it is yours to see that the efficiency of this great instrument of Parliamentary Government is not soiled and blunted any longer in the misuse to which it has been subjected.

The Times, 8 June 1907.

93. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE: Speech at Newcastle, 9 October 1909

[The ‘Bill’ was the Finance Bill, the Lloyd George Budget of 1909, which was to be rejected by the House of Lords on its second reading on 30 November 1909.]

Well, now, we are going to send the Bill up—all the taxes or none. What will the Lords do? I tell you frankly it is a matter which concerns them far more than it concerns us.. . .

But still this is the great Constitutional party, and if there is one thing more than another better established about the British Constitution it is this, that the Commons, the Commons alone, have the complete control of supply and ways and means; and what our fathers established through centuries of struggle and of strife—even of bloodshed—we are not going to be traitors to.

Who talks about altering or meddling with the Constitution? The Constitutional party—the great Constitutional party. As long as the Constitution gave rank and possession and power to the Lords it was not to be interfered with. As long as it secured even their sports from intrusion and made interference with them a crime; as long as the Constitution enforced royalties and ground rents and fees and premiums and fines, and all the black retinue of exaction; as long as it showered writs and summonses and injunctions and distresses and warrants to enforce them, then the Constitution was inviolate. It was something that was put in the same category as religion, that no man should touch with rude hands, something that the chivalry of the nation ought to range itself in defence of. But the moment the Constitution looks round; the moment the Constitution begins to discover that there are millions of people outside park gates who need attention, then the Constitution is to be torn to pieces.

Let them realise what they are doing. They are forcing a revolution, and they will get it. The Lords may decree a revolution, but the people will direct it. If they begin, issues will be raised that they little dream of. Questions will be asked which are now whispered in humble voices, and answers will be demanded then with authority. The question will be asked whether five hundred men, ordinary men chosen accidentally from among the unemployed, should override the judgement of millions of people who are engaged in the industry which makes the wealth of the country.

That is one question. Another will be, Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite? Who made ten thousand people owners of the soil, and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth? Who is it who is responsible for the scheme of things whereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labour to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and when at the end of his days, he claims at the hands of the community he served a poor pension of eight pence a day, he can only get it through a revolution; and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night while he slumbers, more than his poor neighbour receives in a whole year of toil? Where did the table ofthat law come from? Whose finger inscribed it? These are the questions that will be asked.

D. Lloyd George, Better Times (1910), pp. 173-5.

94. H. H. ASQUITH: Speech at the Albert Hall, 10 December 1909

The immediate, the actively provoking cause of what is rightly called a constitutional crisis is the entirely new claim put forward by the House of Lords, not only to meddle with, but, in effect, to control and to mould our national finances. . . . This year, by one stroke, they have taken upon themselves to shatter the whole fabric of the year’s taxation. This, I repeat, is a new and entirely unexpected danger to popular liberties. Two years ago it was as undreamt of as would have been, as it is to-day, the revival by an arbitrary Minister of the veto of the Crown. . . .

We are indeed . . . suddenly confronted with no less than three constitutional innovations. In the first place we have the claim of the Upper House, not as an archaic legal survival, but as a living and effective right, to control the levying of taxation. In the second place we have the claim of the same House, a body which cannot itself be dissolved, to compel a dissolution of the popular Chamber. And, lastly, as a consequence and a corollary of the other two, we have the assertion of its power to make or unmake the Executive Government of the Crown. Every one of these revolutionary pretensions we shall withstand for all we are worth. The result is what at first sight seems rather like a paradox. We, the progressive party, find ourselves here to-day, in the first place, occupying Conservative and constitutional ground, defending the liberties which have been transmitted to us from the past against invasions and usurpations which have for the first time received the official countenance of the Tory party. What has been done once may be done again. I do not say that it will be. But I do say this, that it becomes our first duty to take effective steps to make its recurrence impossible. We shall therefore demand authority from the electorate to translate the ancient and unwritten usage into an Act of Parliament, and to place upon the Statute-book the recognition, explicit and complete, of the settled doctrine of our Constitution, that it is beyond the province of the House of Lords to meddle in any way, to any degree, or for any purpose, with our national finance. . . .

So far we are on the defensive. But at the same time and by the same action the House of Lords has not indeed raised but has hurried on a larger issue still. I tell you quite plainly and I tell my fellow-countrymen outside that neither I nor any other Liberal Minister supported by a majority in the House of Commons is going to submit again to the rebuffs and the humiliations of the last four years. We shall not assume office, and we shall not hold office, unless we can secure the safeguards which experience shows us to be necessary for the legislative utility and honour of the party of progress. . . . I myself, and I believe a large majority of the Liberal party, are in favour of what is called a bicameral system. I see nothing inconsistent with democratic principle or practice in a Second Chamber as such. On the contrary, I see much practical advantage that might result from the existence side by side with the House of Commons of a body, not, indeed, of co-ordinate authority, but suitable in its numbers and by its composition to exercise impartially in regard to our ordinary legislation the powers of revision, amendment, fuller deliberation, and, subject to proper safeguards, of delay. . . . Those are both useful and dignified functions. Yes, gentlemen, but we have got to deal with a present and an immediate necessity. . . . Our present position gives us all the drawbacks, with few, if any, of the advantages of a Second Chamber. For what is our actual Second Chamber? It is a body which has no pretensions or qualifications to be the organ or the interpreter of the popular will. It is a body in which one party in the State is in possession of a permanent and overwhelming majority. It is a body which, as experience has shown, in temper and in action is frankly and nakedly partisan. It is a body which does not attempt to exercise any kind of effective control over the legislation of the other House when its own party is in a majority there. It is a body which, when the conditions are reversed, however clear and emphatic the verdict of the country has been, sets itself to work to mutilate and to destroy democratic legislation, and even in these last days it lays a usurping hand on democratic finance. That is a plain, literal, unvarnished picture of what everyone knows to be the fact.

We are going to ask the country to give us authority to apply an effective remedy to these intolerable conditions. Here, again, what is to be done is to be done by Act of Parliament. The time for unwritten convention has unhappily gone by. We are not proposing the abolition of the House of Lords or setting up a Second Chamber, but we do ask, and we are going to ask the electors to say, that the House of Lords shall be confined to the proper functions of a Second Chamber, which I enumerated to you a few moments ago. The absolute veto which it at present possesses must go. The powers which it claims from time to time of, in effect, compelling us to choose between a dissolution and so far as legislative projects are concerned—legislative sterility—that power must go also. The people, in future, when they elect a new House of Commons, must be able to feel, what they cannot feel now, that they are sending to Westminster men who will have the power not merely of proposing and debating, but of making laws. The will of the people, as deliberately expressed by their elected representatives, must, within the limits of a single Parliament, be made effective.

H. H. Asquith, The Three Capital Issues. A speech . . .. 10 December 1909 (Liberal Publication Dept.).

95. L. T. HOBHOUSE: Liberalism (1911)

Thus individuals will contribute to the social will in very varying degrees, but the democratic thesis is that the formation of such a will, that is, in effect, the extension of intelligent interest in all manner of public things, is in itself a good, and more than that, it is a condition qualifying other good things. Now the extension of interest is not to be created by democratic forms of government, and if it neither exists nor can be brought into existence, democracy remains an empty form and may even be worse than useless. On the other hand, where the capacity exists the establishment of responsible government is the first condition of its development. Even so, it is not the sole condition. The modern State is a vast and complex organism. The individual voter feels himself lost among the millions. He is imperfectly acquainted with the devious issues and large problems of the day, and is sensible how little his solitary vote can affect their decision. What he needs to give him support and direction is organisation with his neighbours and fellow- workers. He can understand, for example, the affairs of his trade union, or, again, of his chapel. They are near to him. They affect him, and he feels that he can affect them. Through these interests, again, he comes into touch with wider questions—with a Factory Bill or an Education Bill—and in dealing with these questions he will now act as one of an organised body whose combined voting strength will be no negligible quantity. Responsibility comes home to him, and to bring home responsibility is the problem of all government. The development of social interest—and that is democracy—depends not only on adult suffrage and the supremacy of the elected legislature, but on all the intermediate organisations which link the individual to the whole. This is one among the reasons why devolution and the revival of local government, at present crushed in this country by a centralised bureaucracy, are of the essence of democratic progress.

The success of democracy depends on the response of the voters to the opportunities given them. But, conversely, the opportunities must be given in order to call forth the response. The exercise of popular government is itself an education. In considering whether any class or sex or race should be brought into the circle of enfranchisement, the determining consideration is the response which that class or sex or race would be likely to make to the trust. Would it enter effectively into the questions of public life, or would it be so much passive voting material, wax in the hands of the less scrupulous politicians? The question is a fair one, but people are too ready to answer it in the less favourable sense, on the ground of the actual indifference or ignorance which they find or think they find among the unenfranchised. They forget that in that regard enfranchisement itself may be precisely the stimulus needed to awaken interest, and while they are impressed with the danger of admitting ignorant and irresponsible, and perhaps corruptible voters to a voice in the government, they are apt to overlook the counterbalancing danger of leaving a section of the community outside the circle of civic responsibility. The actual work of government must affect, and also it must be affected by, its relation to all who live within the realm. To secure good adaptation it ought, I will not say to reflect, but at least to take account of, the dispositions and circumstances of every class in the population. If any one class is dumb, the result is that Government is to that extent uninformed. It is not merely that the interests of that class may suffer, but that, even with the best will, mistakes may be made in handling it, because it cannot speak for itself. Officious spokesmen will pretend to represent its views, and will obtain, perhaps, undue authority merely because there is no way of bringing them to book. So among ourselves does the press constantly represent public opinion to be one thing while the cold arithmetic of the polls conclusively declares it to be another. The ballot alone effectively liberates the quiet citizen from the tyranny of the shouter and the wire-puller.

L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (1911), pp. 231-5.