ENGLISH POLITICAL HISTORY 497 



the opposition of the House of Lords. (5) A provision that " in every Bill so presented 

 to the King, the words of the enactment shall be as follows:' Be it enacted by the 

 King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Commons 

 of this present Parliament assembled, in accordance with the provisions of the Parlia- 

 ment Act, and by authority of the same, as follows.' " This had substantially been 

 proposed unsuccessfully in Unionist amendments, in the House of Commons by. Mr. 

 L. Hardy on May ist, and in the House of Lords by Lord Camperdown on July 6th. 



In all vital respects the Parliament Act remained as originally introduced in 1910. 

 While its preamble declared that reform of the House of Lords itself still remained a 

 task for the future, the supremacy of the House of Commons, both for purposes of 

 finance and for public legislation, was definitely enacted. If the House of Lords 

 obstructed and rejected the Bills passed by the Commons, it could now only do so 

 for two years if the Commons persisted, and at the end of that time a Government in 

 control of the Lower House could pass its measures into law with the Royal assent 

 without the Upper House having any further voice in the matter. The power of 

 forcing an appeal to the electorate, which the House of Lords had hitherto had for all 

 practical purposes, unless a Bill they rejected was dropped, was taken away; and what 

 was virtually single-chamber government was thus established. It became possible 

 for the first time, without any parliamentary check on a party in power, to pass measures 

 into law simply because a majority in the .House of Commons (which might be quite 

 unrepresentative of public opinion) could be secured for them. On the Liberal side it 

 had been contended throughout that, when a Tory majority had control of the House 

 of Commons, this was really the condition of affairs before, since the House of Lords 

 always supported Tory measures; the cases however could only be considered parallel 

 on the assumption that there was some fair correspondence in the character of the 

 legislation proposed by the two sides when either was in power. While the Act, on the 

 face of it, made the Government masters of the situation, it was recognised, on the 

 other hand, by people who looked a little ahead, that in parliamentary practice it did 

 not make things quite so easy. In order that its provisions should apply, to the extent 

 of Bills becoming law over- the resistance of the Lords, these Bills had to be sent up 

 in time, for two years to elapse during the same Parliament, and during these two years 

 they had to be sent up again and again without being changed from their original form. 

 As the duration of Parliament was cut down to five (practically four) years, this meant 

 that nothing not sent up in the first year or two would benefit by the Act; and apart 

 from that, it would be difficult to avoid changes in Bills sent up year after year. Even 

 as regards " Money Bills " which the House of Lords was now to have no power of 

 rejecting at all, the prospect was uncertain. The Budget of 1909, the rejection of 

 which was the cause of the whole revolution, was probably considered a Money Bill 

 by most Radical politicians; but the Speaker (Mr. J. W. Lowther). upset any such cal- 

 culations in December 1911, by ruling, in answer to a question, that the Budget of 

 that year was not a Money Bill within the Parliament Act a fortiori therefore neither 

 was that of 1909. 



On the very day that saw the triumph of the Parliament Bill (Aug. loth), yet 

 another great alteration was being made in the essential conditions of parliamentary 

 life. Following an invitation already given by Mr. Lloyd George, a 

 members? resolution was carried in the House of Commons, by 256 votes to 158, 

 providing " for the payment of a salary at the rate of 400 a -year to every 

 member of the House, excluding any member who is for the time being in receipt of a 

 salary as an officer of the House or as a minister, or as an officer of His Majesty's 

 Household." Most of the Unionists were opposed to the proposal, and a good many 

 Liberals did not like it, but the Government had determined to introduce payment of 

 members as a way out of the difficulty they were in with the Labour party, owing to the 

 Osborne Judgment having made illegal the payment of salaries to working-class mem- 

 bers out of Trade Union funds. 1 To legislate in the way the Labour party demanded, 

 . x Ibid., xxvii, 143. 



