494 



they may understand that in the event of the policy of the Government being approved by 

 an adequate majority in the new House of Commons, His Majesty will be ready to exercise 

 his constitutional powers, which may involve the prerogative of creating peers, if needed, 

 to secure that effect shall be given to the decision of the country. His Majesty's ministers 

 are fully alive to the importance of keeping the name of the King out of the sphere of party 

 and electional controversy. They take upon themselves, as is their duty, the entire and 

 exclusive responsibility for the policy which they will place before the electorate. His 

 Majesty will doubtless agree that it would be inadvisable in the interests of the State that 

 any communication of the intentions of the Crown should be made public unless and until 

 the actual occasion should arise. 



The King had felt that he had no alternative except to assent, though he did so, as 

 Lord Crewe now stated (as was understood) on his behalf, " with natural and legitimate 

 reluctance." The Government, according to their own view, had hoped that, as the 

 result of the general election, the Parliament Bill would be allowed to pass without 

 amendments which would be fatal to its purpose, and therefore without a disclosure of 

 the confidential understanding which all the time existed as to the use of the Prerogative, 

 but this was no longer possible; and the only question now was whether the threat was 

 to be sufficient by itself, or whether, by continued resistance, the Government should be 

 forced to carry it into effect. 



On this point a serious division of opinion at once was shown in the Unionist party. 

 It was clear that, in the House of Commons, the Lords' amendments would be summari- 

 The Die-Hard^ rejected by the Coalition majority, and any further development of the 

 Movement political crisis depended on what would happen in the House of Lords when 

 and tin result. tne gjjj was sent j Dac j c to ^ ^ hurried meeting of Unionist Peers was held 

 immediately (July sist) at Lansdowne House, at which Lord Lansdowne informed them 

 that the Government had told the Opposition leaders that their intention was not to 

 send the Bill up from the House of Commons unless an assurance was given that it 

 would be passed, the assumption being that, failing this assurance, peers would at once 

 be created in sufficient numbers for the purpose; and it was freely stated in the Liberal 

 Press that the Government Whips had a list ready of persons who were prepared to accept 

 peerages on condition that they voted for the Liberal programme. A state of extreme 

 exasperation prevailed, but a considerable majority of Unionist peers agreed with Lord 

 Lansdowne's view that, if this creation of peers was proceeded with, not only would the 

 Parliament Bill be passed, but even such opportunities as it left open for subsequent 

 resistance to Home Rule and similar measures would be nullified; the only prudent 

 course, in the interest either of the Unionist party or of the peerage, was to sink further 

 opposition, now that they were no longer " free agents." On the other hand a minority, 

 whose view was strongly expressed by Lord Halsbury, the veteran ex-Lord Chancellor, 

 bitterly opposed such a surrender; in their view they did not cease to be " free agents " 

 until they were actually out-voted, and it was in this sense that they had understood 

 Lord Lansdowne's use of the phrase on the third reading, and only on that condition 

 that they had not rejected the Bill then; they still regarded the Government threat as a 

 piece of bluff, which could not be carried into action; but even if it was not bluff, and a 

 large number of new Liberal peers were actually created, such a violent course would 

 bring ridicule and disaster on the Liberal party, and would make the country realise, as 

 nothing else apparently could, the revolution that was contemplated. Moreover, from 

 experience in the past, it was well within what might be expected that, when the 500 

 eligible magnates who were willing to take Liberal peerages had voted for the Parliament 

 Bill, they would take a more independent view of their position so far as Home Rule and 

 other measures were concerned. When the Government had finally shot their bolt, and 

 by creating the new peers had reconstituted the existing House of Lords in such a way as 

 to destroy the Liberal contention that it was simply a Tory preserve, it would, formally 

 at all events, be actually strengthened as part of the constitutional machinery. It was 

 impossible to suppose that, even in so wholesale a creation, the class of men whom Mr. 

 Asquith was prepared to nominate for the purpose would be different from those who in 

 recent years had been added, quite acceptably, to the House of Lords by Liberal initia- 

 tion in considerable numbers, and who had in many cases come round there to a different 



