ENGLISH POLITICAL HISTORY 4 8r 



intervention in party politics which it involved on the part of the King marks a distinct 

 step in the history of the Throne itself, and one which affects the whole system of English 

 parliamentary government. Whatever were the necessities of the case from 

 t ^ ie P omt f vi ew f the Liberal party, there can be no question that, 

 politically, the successful use of the Royal prerogative in overcoming the 

 resistance of the House of Lords to the Parliament Bill brought the Crown itself into 

 open conflict with the passionate desires and convictions of a very large section of the 

 community, a minority indeed, so far as its representatives in the House of Commons 

 were concerned, but a minority even then which, in the country at large, stood for nearly 

 as many people as the majority. Under a sense of constitutional obligation, brought 

 about by what the Opposition leaders indignantly denounced as ministerial trickery, 

 the Crown lent itself to the last resort open to the party in office for forcing its demands 

 through Parliament, by assenting to Mr. Asquith's demand that, if necessary, enough 

 new peers should be created to vote down the resistance of the Upper House to a measure 

 which practically wiped it out as an effective part of the machinery of legislation. Those 

 who considered the use of the prerogative for such a purpose, and in such circumstances, 

 a constitutional outrage, agreed in putting the responsibility on the Government and 

 not on the King, who acted on the advice of his ministers; but this view, though undeni- 

 ably correct, only emphasizes the fact that the King was made to appear to act simply 

 as a ministerial puppet. The independent authority of the Throne, as a factor in the 

 Constitution standing outside party politics, was to that extent publicly weakened, and 

 it was only because all parties agreed in deploring such a result and desiring to minimize 

 the effect of the action ostensibly taken by the Crown, that its bearing on the Constitu- 

 tional position of the Monarchy was slurred over as much as possible. The question 

 whether so drastic an assertion of ministerial power was justified depends, of course, 

 for its answer on the point of view taken as to the merits of the Parliament Bill itself 

 and the importance of passing it as introduced, without the amendments carried in the 

 House of Lords; and from the point of view of the Liberal party the Government, no doubt 

 was driven to the use of the last weapon in its armoury, unless it was to" admit that the 

 preceding steps taken, and apparently sanctioned by the results of two general elections, 

 were to be stultified. But no competent observer of the working of British political 

 machinery can deny that the use of the Royal prerogative for so violent a party purpose 

 disclosed the subordination of the Sovereign to the Parliamentary Executive in all its 

 nakedness, in a way which was 1 directly contrary to the development of constitutional 

 theory and practice concerning the functions of the Crown during the reigns of Queen 

 Victoria and King Edward. With a less popular Sovereign on the Throne, and in 

 circumstances less favourable to British pride and affection for the institution of .Mon- 

 archy, such a disclosure would have been a more serious danger. 



As it was, while the Opposition levelled their denunciations at the ministry, and the 

 Government justified themselves by the absence of any alternative, it was generally 

 The State recognised that since the Lords' rejection of the budget in 1909 the whole 

 and the course of domestic politics had been quasi-revolutionary. In the pro- 



Crown, longed crisis in parliamentary affairs, complicated by acute industrial un- 



rest/which continued during 1910, 1911 and 1912, the political conflict in the United 

 Kingdom was being waged under conditions dominated by the peculiar and almost 

 unprecedented relations between parties, and the situation was such that the moderat- 

 ing influence of the Crown had practically no scope for its exercise. It was known at 

 the time of King Edward's death that he had been gravely disquieted at the course 

 which the constitutional crisis was taking; and though there was a strong hope that 

 the parties might embrace the opportunity of the beginning of a new reign to settle 

 their differences by some sort of agreement, it was perfectly clear that, if the dead-lock 

 went on, King George himself must inevitably be placed in a position of serious embar- 

 rassment. When the conference of 1910 broke down, and when immediately afterwards 

 the second general election of that year gave the Liberal Government once more a major- 

 ity, matters had to take their own course. The politicians ott both sides, and their 



