496; ENGLISH POLITICAL HISTORY 



ing Street, was counselling the avoidance of an extreme course as long as it could possibly 

 be avoided, for the sake of the Crown. 



On August 3d it was known that the Government meant to take the risk of sending 

 the Bill up, without any actual assurance of the result, and the debate on the question 

 of the Lords' acquiescing took place on August gth and loth. In answer to Lord Rose- 

 bery, Lord Morley made the precise statement that if the Bill was defeated " His Maj- 

 esty would assent to a creation of peers sufficient in number to guard against any com- 

 bination of the different parties in Opposition by which the Parliament Bill might again 

 be exposed to defeat;" and this declaration had a marked effect on the result. Up to 

 the last moment the figures on the two sides were in doubt, but the division showed 131 

 in favour of passing the Bill, and only 114 for insisting on the amendments, and the 

 Government had won the day by the help of enough votes from peers who usually acted 

 with the Opposition to counterbalance the " Die-Hards." Thirty-seven Unionist 

 peers, the two archbishops, and eleven bishops, voted with the Liberals; but Lord 

 Halsbury's followers were more than had been expected, several peers, including the 

 Duke of Norfolk, joining them in protest against the action of the Unionists who helped 

 to carry the Bill. Lord Cromer, who had been active in getting Unionist peers to sup- 

 port the Bill on the ground that only in this way could the damage likely to accrue from 

 a creation of new peerages be avoided, was absent through illness; and Lord Curzon's 

 was eventually the most powerful influence exerted in this direction, his action being all 

 the more hateful to the " Die-Hards " because earlier in the year he had been specially 

 prominent in counselling resistance to the Bill at all costs. 



The Parliament Bill thus became an Act and duly received the Royal assent; and 

 a statutory enactment defining the relations between the two Houses of Parliament was 

 substituted for an unwritten British Constitution. As compared with the 

 passed. ** original form in which it was introduced, 1 various small drafting alterations 

 were made, including an improved definition of a " Money Bill," and a 

 more definite exclusion of Private Bills from the scope of the measure; but the only 

 changes of any substantial importance were the 1 following, (i) A provision by which 

 the Speaker, before giving his certificate (to be endorsed on every Money Bill sent up 

 to the House of Lords) that a Bill is a Money Bill, " shall consult, if practicable, two 

 members to be appointed from the Chairman's panel at the beginning of such session 

 by the Committee of Selection/' This was the final result of various unsuccessful 

 Unionist amendments for modifying the original provision by which the Speaker alone 

 was to be the judge of whether a Bill was a Money Bill; in the House of Commons, Mr. 

 Cave (April 8, 191 1) had proposed that, a Joint Committee of both Houses with the 

 Speaker as Chairman should decide, and in the House of Lords (July 6th) Lord Peel's 

 grave warning, as an ex-Speaker, against the danger of making the Speaker the sole 

 arbiter, though unsuccessful in its support of Lord Cromer's proposal for a Joint Com- 

 mittee, induced the Government to move an amendment of their own, which, as amended 

 by Mr. J. F. Hope from the Unionist side, was adopted on August 8th. (2) Provisions 

 excluding from any Public Bills, as to which the Lords' consent would not be required 

 after being sent up in three successive sessions, " a Bill containing any provision to 

 extend the maximum duration of Parliament beyond five years " (an exclusion originally 

 proposed unsuccessfully in the House of Commons by Mr. Cassel on April 2oth, and 

 carried in the House of Lords by Lord Avebury), and also " any Bill for confirming 

 a Provisional Order." (3) A provision altering the limits of the two years which must 

 have elapsed during the three successive sessions to " between the date of the second 

 reading in the first of those sessions of the Bill in the House of Commons and the date 

 on which it passes the House of Commons in the third of those sessions." This was a 

 Government modification of a Unionist amendment proposed in the House of Com- 

 mons by Mr. Goldman (May ist). (4) A provision requiring a certificate signed by 

 the Speaker, stating that the provisions of the Act in this respect had been complied 

 with, to be endorsed on any Bill so presented to the King for his assent notwithstanding 



1 See E. B. xx, 846, 847. 



