Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/623

 nents, and their efficient power to challenge the House of Lords' veto was unmodified. Mr. Asquith continued in office. The king was in no way involved in Mr. Asquith's declaration at the Albert Hall on the eve of the general election (10 Dec. 1909) that he would not again assume or hold office without the safeguards necessary to give legislative effect to the decisions of the majority in the House of Commons. Before the new parliament opened Mr. Asquith saw the king when he was staying privately at Brighton on 13 Feb. 1910. The king offered no impediment to the government's immediate procedure, which was publicly proclaimed eight days later when the king opened parliament and read his ministers' The king's words : ' Proposals will be laid speech, before you, with all convenient ?eb. 1910. speed, to define the relations between the houses of parliament, so as to secure the undivided authority of the House of Commons over finance and its predomin- ance in legislation. These measures, in the opinion of my advisers, should provide that this House [of Lords] should be so con- stituted and empowered as to exercise impartially, in regard to proposed legis- lation, the functions of initiation, revision, and, subject to proper safeguards, of delay.'

The presence in the second sentence of the phrase ' in the opinion of my advisers ' gave rise to the misconception that the words were the king's interpolation, and were intended to express his personal unwillingness to identify himself with his ministers' policy. As a matter of fact the phrase was, like the rest of the paragraph, from the prime minister's pen, and the king made no comment on it when the draft was submitted to him. A similar formula had appeared previously in the speeches of sovereigns to parliament when they were under the formal obligation of announcing a warmly controverted policy of their ministers' devising. The king's personal misgivings of the constitutional change were well known, and it was courteous to absolve him of any possible implication of a personal responsibility.

In March the cabinet drafted resolutions (with a view to a future bill) which should disable the lords from rejecting or amending The commons' resolution on provide that a bill being passed the lords' veto, by the commons in three succes- B1 - sive sessions and being thrice re- jected by the lords should become law in spite of the lords' dissent. The terms of the resolutions were laid before the king, and he abstained from remonstrance. The reso- lutions were duly carried on 12 April, and the bill which embodied them was formally intro- duced into the commons. Meanwhile Lord Rosebery on 14 March moved that the House of Lords resolve itself into committee to consider the best means of reforming its constitution so as to make it strong and efficient, and on 16 March the lords agreed to Lord Rosebery's motion. For such a solution of the difficulty the king had no more zest than for the commons' scheme. On 25 April parliament adjourned for Easter, and next day the text of the commons' veto bill was circulated. The controversy went no further in the king's lifetime.

The ministers were resolved in case of the peers' continued obduracy to advise the king to employ his prerogative so as to give their policy statutory effect. Should the majority of peers decline to pass the bill for the limitation of their veto, the ministers determined on a resort to Lord Grey's proposed plan of 1832, whereby a sufficient number of peers favourable to the government's purpose would be formally created in the king's name to outvote the dissentients. But the time had not arrived when it was necessary directly to invite the king's approval or disapproval of such a course of action. The king for his part did not believe that the matter would be pressed to the last extremity, and was content to watch the passage of events without looking beyond the need of the moment.

The political difficulty caused the king an anxiety and irritation which domestic The king's policy had not previously personal occasioned him. He found no attitude. comfort in the action of any of the parties to the strife. The blank refusal of the conservative leaders to entertain his warnings was unwelcome to his amour propre. The prospect of straining his prerogative by creating peers solely for voting purposes could not be other than uncongenial. But while he tacitly recognised his inability to decline the ad of his responsible ministers, he had before him no plan for the creation of peers to call for an expression of opinion. To the last he privately cherished the conviction that peace would be reached by some less violent means. His natural buoyancy of disposition and his numerous social pleasures and interests outside the political sphere effectually counteracted the depressing influence of public affairs. While the last battle of his reign was waging in the houses