a-half against its national life and independence deserves sympathy and the support of all right-minded people. It has proved its right to live. The programme which Mustapha Kemal Pasha published to the world the other day inspires the hope that the statesmen of New Turkey realise the complexity of the task before them. They will have to devote themselves not merely to the economic restoration of their devastated country, but also to the organization of the moral elements that go to constitute a great and civilised State the development of education on national lines, with full regard to the necessities of the advancing tide of human progress; the promotion of peace, concord and a feeling of security among all their subjects; improvement in the administration of justice; and above all an immediate arrangement, a concordat, safeguarding the privileges and prerogatives of the Caliph in accordance with the sentiments of the whole Moslem world.

The new Caliph is reported to be a man of culture and a scholar of attainments and intellectual gifts. He appears to be conversant with some at least of the European languages, and au courant with the politics of the world. This is a happy augury for the renaissance of Islâm. It is to be hoped that, given the opportunity, he may, in co-operation with the representatives of the people, revive the memories of earlier days by his interest in promoting the public weal. Perhaps he may be able to pave the way for a better understanding between Islâm and Christendom. Where humbler men have failed, the Caliph Abdul Medjid may attain success.†

AMEER ALI

*Under Musulmân law, sex is no disqualification for any office under the State. Abu Hanifa declared that a woman can hold the office of a judge. The appointment in Angora a little while ago of an accomplished lady as Minister of Education is an object lesson to modern Europe.

†According to the Echo de l'Orient, he strongly opposed Turkey being dragged into the war of 1914, which made him most unpopular with the Germans and the men then in power in Constantinople.

THE

A CONSERVATIVE PROGRAMME

HE accession to power of a Conservative government after an interval of thirty years may mark a date in the history of Great Britain. The last frankly Conservative government in this country came to an end in August 1892, when the late Lord Salisbury resigned after six years of office, and Mr. Gladstone became premier for the last time. It is true that three years later Lord Salisbury was again prime minister; but by that time the character of the government had changed. The Liberal Unionists had progressively acquired an increasing influence in the combination which had been formed to resist Home Rule, and in 1895 they definitely amalgamated with the Conservatives and obtained important ministerial positions. The organization that ruled the country was no longer Conservative; it had become 'Unionist.' The Liberal Unionist wing was led by the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who temperamentally was perhaps even less of a Conservative than Mr. Lloyd George. The Limehouse' rhetoric of the latter is little more than a paraphrase of the speeches that the leader of Birmingham Radicalism used to deliver before he broke with Mr. Gladstone over the Home Rule Bill of 1886. Possibly Joseph Chamberlain when he reached a position of greater responsibility abandoned some of the cruder forms of his early Radicalism. But there is no evidence that he ever ceased to be at heart a Radical, and his strong personality enabled him to impose his ideas upon his Conservative allies. In particular he was able to persuade the Unionist Party to abandon the Conservative tradition of free trade established by Sir Robert Peel, accepted by Disraeli, and endorsed by such prominent Conservative leaders as Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and the late Lord Salisbury. The outcome of his influence was the crushing defeat of the Unionist Party in 1906, a defeat from which that combination of impetuous Radicals and timid Conservatives never recovered. It was left to his son to complete the disaster by betraying the cause of the Union which was the very foundation of the Unionist Party.

The present Conservative Party is happily free from these past

embarrassments. Its leader has wisely seen that what the country expects from a Conservative Party is above all things quietude.' The nation turns to Conservatives to protect it against the impetuosity of politicians trying to force into law their own fads, regardless of the teaching of history and without any adequate attempt to estimate probable results. The most typical living examples of this impetuosity are Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill. In the matter of money these two men have been the cause of terrific losses to the nation: a very large part of the present burden of the national debt is due to the recklessness with which they, to give effect to their own fancies, squandered the money of the taxpayer. In addition their habit of rushing into action without waiting for thought loaded the country with a number of ill-considered schemes which in the main aggravate the evils they were intended to solve. Finally, their persistent craving for some dramatic solution of difficult problems embittered our relations with our foreign Allies, and intensified the difficulties with which we have to contend in India, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, and above all in Ireland. So far as these external problems are concerned we cannot hope to attain quietude until many of the blunders made by the late ministry have been reversed.

Happily Mr. Bonar Law from the moment he became Prime Minister took one step which by itself goes a long way towards relieving the nation of the dangers arising from Lloyd-Georgian and Churchillian methods of government. He got rid of the Cabinet secretariat and restored to the Foreign Office the primary responsibility for the management of foreign affairs. That alone means much. For the Foreign Office has, at any rate, the advantage of tradition behind it and has concurrently the advantage of knowledge. Whereas Mr. Lloyd George's Cabinet secretariat was a piece of newly created machinery for giving effect to his own impetuous decisions, taken on the advice of irresponsible faddists, or inspired by motives which have never been explained. This action, so promptly taken by Mr. Bonar Law, may be described as typically Conservative. It represents the abandonment of the slap-dash methods of the sensation-loving politician and a reversion to methods of government that have been tested by experience.

But it is not enough that the present Prime Minister should

himself act wisely, as well as modestly, in matters of importance to the nation. What the nation wants is not merely a temporary relief from the disquietudes of the Lloyd-Georgian regime; it also wants some constitutional guarantee that these alarms and excursions will not be repeated by the next occupier of the post of premier.

In considering by what means the nation can best be safeguarded against the evils from which it has suffered, the first question to ask is: by what means was it possible for Mr. Lloyd George thus to impose his autocracy on the whole country? No doubt his own personality counted for much. A strong man will always guide weaker men. But it is certain that many of his colleagues often submitted reluctantly to his will, and that a large part of the House of Commons had long before his fall become dissatisfied with his leadership. What then was the pivot on which his prolonged autocracy rested? That pivot is to be found in the fact that under the English constitution, as interpreted in recent years, the power to advise the Crown when to dissolve parliament resides in the Prime Minister alone. Consequently the Prime Minister can, whenever he chooses, impose upon his colleagues in the Cabinet and upon his supporters in the House of Commons, the expense, the inconvenience and the political risks of a general election. In no other leading country of the world does the Prime Minister possess such an instrument for establishing his own autocracy. In the United States both branches of the legislature are elected for fixed periods and remain in being till those periods have expired. In France, whose constitution most closely approximates to that of England, the Chamber of Deputies cannot be dissolved by the President of the Republic before its full course has run, except with the consent of the Senate. This is an invaluable safeguard against ministerial autocracy, and there is no reason why a similar safeguard should not be adopted by this country.

As a matter of fact the practice of allowing the Prime Minister alone to dictate how the Royal Prerogative of dissolution shall be used is of recent origin. During the greater part of last century the advice which the Prime Minister gave to the sovereign in this as in other matters was assumed to be the advice of the whole Cabinet. To go back to that principle would be a distinct gain; but it would not suffice. For very often a Cabinet has motives

of its own for coercing the House of Commons, and solely for its own interests may threaten a dissolution. The best way of dealing with the problem is to revive the conception of the Privy Council as a body existing to advise the sovereign in matters of difficulty. The members of the Cabinet form only part of the Privy Council, and they frankly put foremost the sectional interests of the political organisation which they represent. But in a matter so important as the dissolution of parliament, before its legal term of existence has expired, the sovereign ought to be guided by a body so composed that national interests may at least have a chance of obtaining precedence over sectional interests. Such a body is to be found in the Privy Council. The existing Privy Councillors belong to all parties; most of them are men of wide political experience; most have held high office. It would be strictly in accord with our national traditions to pass an Act providing that parliament shall not be dissolved before its full statutory period has expired, 'except with the consent of His 'Majesty's Privy Councillors in meeting assembled, to which ' meeting shall be summoned by His Majesty for the purpose of advising him on that matter all persons holding the dignity of 'Privy Councillor.'

It is of course possible that an unscrupulous Prime Minister might try to dodge this safeguard for the liberty of the House of Commons by creating ad hoc a large number of Privy Councillors prepared to obey his orders, just as Mr. Asquith secured the passage of the Parliament Act by threatening to create a horde of new peers. But it would be comparatively easy to guard against this possibility by providing in the same Act that the number of Privy Councillors to be created in one year shall not exceed a prescribed total. Protected by these safeguards the House of Commons would, except in very rare circumstances, continue in existence for its full term. Its members would consequently no longer be subject to the terrorism which the Prime Minister can at present exercise, and the House would at once regain some of the independence and dignity which in former generations made it a model for the legislatures of the world. This is the first reform that the present government ought to undertake in order to safeguard parliament against the danger of another dictatorship on the Lloyd-Georgian model.

Even more important, however, than the protection of