472 



The Review of Reviews. 



UNIONIST ATTACK UPON THE CROWN. 



The Dublin Revinv gives a Unionist view and a 

 Liberal view of the passing of the Parhament Bill. 

 The Liberal says that the Unionist attack would 

 seem to be directed not against Mr. Asquith, but 

 against the Crown. The Unionist writer leaves little 

 doubt on this matter. He says : — 



.SoiiiellMiig liappened ; some new aspect of the case must have 

 presented itself to the Unionist leaders at the eleventh hour 

 which made them fee'l constrained to alter their policy, even at 

 the cost of presenting to the country, by their unexplained 

 change of front, a deplorable spectacle of inconsistency and 

 apparent weakness. This view is confirmed by a similar change 

 in other quarters, both in individuals and in the press. Some- 

 thing happened which the leaders had not counted on ; some- 

 thing did not happen on which they had counted. But there 

 'vas, at all events, one fresh argument used for the first time 

 publicly, and with the utmost vehemence at the eleventh hour. 

 I allude to the argument drawn from the fact that it would be 

 unpleasant to the King to create the peers, and that it was 

 the duty of Unionists to extricate him from this unpleasant 

 necessity. 



This argument may conceivably have been urged on the 

 Unionist leaders before it was pressed with such violence on the 

 House of Lords itself, and it may have had its share in making 

 the leaders change their intentions. 



Whether or not it was tliis new argument that'transformed 

 the situation in July, it is almost certain that it determined the 

 actual issue in the narrow and critical division of August lo. 



.Such a u^e of the King's name was surely very unfortunate, 

 whetiier it had the far-reaching effect of changing the leaders' 

 policy or only that of deciding the majority on August loth. 

 As the Duke of Norfolk so strongly urged in his speech, it is 

 impossible to conceive anything which could place the King in 

 a more undignified position. A constitutional monarch in 191 1 

 considers that he must act on the advice of his ministers. A 

 hundred years ago, no doubt, this would have been otherwise. 

 George III. regarded the King's right to refuse assent to his 

 ministers' advice to be a real one. The parallel right of the 

 President of the American Republic is still so regarded. 

 George V., however, holds that a constitutional monarch must 

 now, in such a matter, simply do what the Government of the 

 day tells him. That is to s.ay, the \veit.ht of the King's nominal 

 political power is at the disposal of his ministers for the time 

 being. The King himself does not interlere, the responsibility 

 rests with the ministry. But if, instead of his ceasing to be a 

 power in the political situation, we have the immense weight of 

 his social and moral influence brought to bear in order to 

 disarm the opponents of the Government and make thenv 

 change the policy they had judged most effective, a very serious 

 situation is created. The use of the King's name in such a 

 matter can be, as we all know, a most powerful weapon withotil 

 any authority from the King himself. 



The situation then— if recent events are to be regarded as a 

 precedent — amounts to this. The majority of the Mouse of 

 Commons can, at any moment, overbear the House of Lords by 

 a threat to create peers, and then relieve themselves of all con- 

 sequent public" citow by calling on their opponents in the King's 

 luime to yield rather than force them to do anything so unseemly 

 and ungracious. 



From all of which, and much else besides of the 

 same sort elsewhere, it appears that the Constitu- 

 tional Party, after destroying the unique power of the 

 Peers by jockeying them into rejecting the Budget, is 

 now setting itself against the Crown. 



THE UNIONIST RECONSTRUCTION. 



Mr. F. E. Smith, M.P., writes on Unionist 

 prospects in the Oxford and Cambridge Rei'ieiv. He 

 declares the party is passing through a period of 

 self-analysis. Mr. Smith certainly illustrates this 

 tendency. He regrets that after five years of oppo- 

 sition the Unionist Party to-day is by no means full 

 of the spirit of confidence and audacity. After the ■ 

 debacle in 1906 the Governtnent embarked on a series 

 of legislative proposals which left the proletariat 

 absolutely cold. The rejection of the Licensing Bill 

 found Jhe Liberal Party at a lower level than the 

 greatest Conservative optimism would have conceived 

 possible in 1906. Mr. Lloyd George then profited 

 by the lessons of Mr. Chamberlain, and made up his 

 mind to appeal to the spirit of dissatisfaction. Hence 

 thousands of working men who were Tariff Reformers 

 voted for the Budget. They wanted the Budget first 

 and Tariff Reform afterwards. Conservatism has 

 nothing to learn, he thinks, from the Labour members, 

 whom he denounces for stupidity and ineptitude, and 

 declares that with the exception of Mr. Snowden they 

 possess no man of even considerable parliamentary 

 talent. The working classes do not care a brass 

 farthing for Home Rule, they are profoundly in- 

 different to Welsh Disestablishment, and they are 

 prepared to meet the Licensing Bill with the same 

 hostility which destroyed the last. 



MR. F. E. smith's positive PROGRAMME. 



But mere criticism of the Radicals will not enable 

 the Conservatives to gain office, \\hat is needed is 

 a programme sincerely believed and strenuously 

 prosecuted. With Tariff Reform, Mr. Smith insists, 

 must go social reform : — 



There are still to be found in happy England the most 

 revolting slums in Christendom ; and hundreds and thousands 

 of our fellow-subjects live under conditions which rtnder 

 civilisation a mockery, and morality a name. At the present 

 moment the most clamant national requirement is undoubtedly 

 a national measure — the crisis has long since exceeded tho 

 admirable efforts of the municipalities — in the direction of 

 eradicating dwellings which are grossly unfit for human 

 liabilation. 



You have no right to expect patriotism towards a country 

 which fails to provide industrious citizens with the means of a 

 decent and tolerable subsistence. Let England afiord lo 

 Englishmen who are prepared to work a lair share of the 

 humble amenities of life, and the heart of England will be 

 proved in the supreme moment of trial lo be as true as that of' 

 Canada ; but let the proletariat be once convinced that the 

 Unionist Party is the party of the classes and the mouthpiece 

 of privilege, and it will undoubtedly spue them forth from their 

 mouths. And it will be right to do so. 



These are vigorous words. Let us hope they will 

 be taken to heart by the Parly ihat already acclaims 

 in Mr. F. E. Smith its future leader. 



" Home Rule for Ireland comes nearer : the 

 writing iS on the wall, the long struggle is drawing 

 to a clima.x. Next year will see the conclusion. 

 'I"he policy of the Government will he endorsed 

 by the people." — Editor of October Fonim. 



Sir ls.•\.^c Pitm.ax and Sons, IjOndon.have published 

 the first number of a new shorthand monthly maga- 

 zine, Tlie FIw7wgraphic Obstrver. Phonographers 

 will understand what is meant when it is said that the 

 shorthand is as close an imitation as possible of the 

 uniquely neat style of the late Mr. E. J. Nankivell, 

 who for so many years was one of the best and most 

 popular exponents of Pitman's Phonography. 



