The motion is: "That this Bill be received for final consideration and do now pass."
PUBLIC BUSINESS. - CONSTITUTION (AMENDMENT No. 10) BILL, 1928.—FIFTH STAGE.
CATHAOIRLEACH
I have to offer a final protest against the passing of this Bill, which constitutes a piece of political dexterity that is neither creditable to its authors nor beneficial to the prestige and stability of our political institutions. No attempt whatever has been made to justify the deletion of the Referendum, one of the items dealt with in the Bill. We have had vague meanderings about the almost certain abuse of this instrument if it were retained. An attempt has even been made to connect up the existence of the Referendum with the question of national production. There has been similar brilliant nonsense from both Ministers and Senators trying to make excuses for a Bill of which, inwardly, I think, they must feel heartily ashamed, and in connection with which they undoubtedly feel serious misgivings because of the example it sets to all Governments of the future that may be equally reckless and unscrupulous. The broad fact remains that the Referendum is in actual operation in progressive, industrious and prosperous States, and that no evidence has been adduced to show that it has been or is being abused. There has been no attempt, or apparent intention on the part of the Governments of these States, to expunge it from their Constitutions. The Referendum has not been tried here, and consequently has not been abused here. It is no wonder that, in these circumstances, the supporters of this Bill have not attempted to try to defend or justify what the Bill proposes to do. Senator Jameson, on the Second Reading, said that we had no need for the Referendum because the people had the power of electing their legislators, while on the very next day he voted for a Bill which abolishes popular election to one House of the Oireachtas.
Senator MacLoughlin, in stentorian tones, said that we defeated conscription in 1918 without the Referendum. The inference to be drawn from that statement is so clear that his laboured attempt at explanation yesterday only rendered it all the more unmistakeable. His hint to the electors, in connection with a Bill to which serious objection is taken by a very large section of the people, is this: "You know what you did in connection with the attempt to enforce conscription. Start off with a general strike. Form committees of defence in every parish. Arm men to the teeth and make every house an entrenchment."
Was that the programme of the Mansion House Conference?
That is what happened in 1918.
I deny that absolutely.
The Senator probably was not in the fray.
CATHAOIRLEACH
It would be just as well perhaps if Senators did not deal with these burning questions here.
At all events, the Senator may not be fully informed of what was happening in those days. That is what happened when a Bill supported by a very influential minority in this country was objected to by a majority and was rendered absolutely inoperative. The Senator suggests this peaceful constitutional method as a very desirable alternative to the violent and unconstitutional method of the Referendum. Senator Sir Walter Nugent told us that he never liked the Referendum. Well, I can appreciate, while I do not agree with, the viewpoint of the Senator because he served his political apprenticeship with a Party which did not approve of any effective popular voice in political affairs.
Question?
Anyone who remembers the proceedings at National Conventions of the United Irish League will, I believe, see the Senator's difficulty. However, we had hoped that we had passed away from the stage where the views of the Party executive were enforced at national gatherings by the gentle persuasion of the baton on occasions. Senator O'Hanlon made the most unconvincing speech that I have ever heard him make in this House. Might he permit me to say that he almost invariably makes an exceedingly able case for his point of view, but when he was speaking yesterday one felt that he was merely apologising for the vote that he was going to give, and that he could make an infinitely better case against the Bill than he made for it.
I must say that I was surprised and disappointed to hear Senator O'Hanlon, whom I took to be a man of peace like myself, deploring the fact that the operation of the Referendum might prevent the country engaging in some just war, as he put it, in the future. I suppose he meant, for instance, a war to end war like the last war, or a war to make the world safe for democracy. Certainly he did not mean invasion because under the Constitution not even the assent of the Oireachtas is necessary for the country to enter upon war. The Senator, therefore, meant a foreign war, in other words, a war in which we should be the aggressors inasmuch as we would have at least to cross the seas. Senator O'Hanlon, in the event of something occurring in some foreign country in the future that appeals to his higher sentiments, wants to be in the position to take his gun from behind the rafters and hang his harp upon the willow tree and take himself away to some foreign battlefield. He ridiculed the idea of delay in a matter of that kind taking place as a result of the Referendum. I feel that if he ever does visualise a position in which a decision is entered upon to go to war, or that it is decided upon to go to war at some midnight meeting of the Cabinet, that the Senator will answer the call of the bugle and that he would have the approval of Senators MacLoughlin, Nugent and Jameson.
I suppose Senator MacLoughlin would be ready to put him into a bullet-proof shirt, and that Senator Sir Walter Nugent would see that he was taken away by a special train to the nearest port, while perhaps Senator Jameson would recommend him to take with him a little drop of "three star" to give him courage to go over the top. When the Senator had gone away his three colleagues would march home to engage in the monotonous if comparatively safe task of keeping the home fires burning. But Senator O'Hanlon would not be the only person engaged in a war of that kind. There would be others, the sons, brothers, and fathers and husbands who would also have to go to the front if they were to win glory on this distant battlefield. There would be the mothers who would have to give up their sons, wives giving up their husbands, their bread winners, and these people might like to have something to say as to whether they should participate in a foreign war in which they had no particular interest, to say nothing at all of those who would have to pay in treasure if they did not pay in blood.
Senator O'Hanlon ridiculed what he termed the street corner orator and the platform politician who would come into play in the event of a Referendum. I fancy that Senator O'Hanlon has won fairly brilliant spurs even in that noble art. I have an idea myself of seeing him come back covered with the dust of the Kilkenny bye-election and feeling apparently as proud of it as if he had flown across the Atlantic. He certainly supported the Party that does not despise platform oratory or the soap-box political art. In view of the arguments which I have mentioned as being the only excuse advanced in support of this Bill, it is I think clear to all that its authors felt that it was incapable of being defended, and I believe that if there was the respect for the Constitution which should be in any country that has a written Constitution, that this Bill would be speedily sent back to the source from which it sprang. But no excuse has been made for it at all. No justification even has been pleaded for it except the plea of Party expediency, and even that does not seem to be particularly urgent. I do not see that there is any great necessity for it. It strikes a blow at the stability of our institutions and damages the respect which all Parties and the people as a whole should have for the Constitution, which, as I stated before, should be looked upon us the fundamental law of the land. For that reason, I am going to vote against the Fifth Stage of this Bill.
I did not speak of the question of war, and I did not advocate war. The only comment that I made in that respect should be perfectly obvious even to Senator O'Farrell, if he chooses to see the obvious in that respect. As regards the position of the Seanad and the Referendum, the Seanad is replacing an instrument which it did not use, and was unlikely to use, by an instrument which gives this House the powers of delay. That is an instrument which it should use. The power of delay by the Seanad has been increased under the legislation at present before this House. That power of delay has been increased from nine months to twenty months, thereby increasing in a practical way the powers of this House and giving it a very practical instrument to use. Listening to Senator O'Farrell reminded me of nothing more than an appendix. No one has ever yet been able to discover what an appendix is for or what are its uses. Perhaps even my friend Senator Gogarty would not be able to write the thesis on its use. Like the Referendum, the appendix is an exceeding dangerous thing, but it is of no use as the Referendum is of no use. But, when it proves a source of irritation it naturally has to come out, and so it is with the Referendum—it has to come out. When the Referendum proves an irritation, and when there can be little use made of it, then the thing to do with it is to get rid of it.
I was not present on the second stage of this Bill. That is partly my excuse for speaking now. My objection to the Referendum is a totally different one to the grounds upon which it is opposed by Senator O'Farrell and others who are not in favour of the Bill. I believe the only function of a Referendum is to prevent legislation being passed. If you had a Referendum only on issues of vital importance to the people, and it is still provided in the Constitution as it stands for Constitutional amendments after eight years, you would have a somewhat different proposition to deal with. We are told that people who are fit to elect to the Dáil are fit to vote on a separate measure which is put before them. The experience of other countries is that the Referendum is the most conservative instrument that has yet been found for the prevention of legislation. I think if Senator O'Farrell will look into the effects of the Referendum in the countries he has referred to he will find that almost invariably if a Bill is objected to it is rejected. No Bill has ever passed to which some people will not have objection. If the Bill is vital to the life of a Government, or if the life of an Opposition depends on it, both parties will spend money and people will be instructed in the same manner as in a General Election, and you will get every information on the Bill. If there was a practical method on vital matters of getting the opinion of the people, irrespective of the issue whether this Government was to remain in power or not, I would not be opposed to the Referendum. Personally I feel almost a grievance that the talk on the rights of the people that we would have from Senator O'Farrell was prevented owing to his not being able to move his amendment. If he had been able to move his amendment we would then have seen the form in which the Referendum would maintain the rights of the people.
Last night I met a lady who had been studiously reading Senator O'Farrell's speeches, and she asked me whether he was joking or in earnest. I do not know, but to-day we know he has put in some effective joking. I am inclined to think in much of the solemn talk we had about the rights of the people and being undemocratic that there was an element of joking in it, in view of the fact that what we are doing is removing one of the most conservative pieces in our Constitution. The Constitution was drafted by a Committee of which I was a member. It was turned upside down by the Dáil. How much I am responsible for it or not I do not know, but at any rate I would not be ashamed to say I changed my mind if I did so. Under proportional representation I believe you will always have a party with two-fifths in the Dáil in opposition. You will never have such a difference as you might have in England. The result is that as the section which we have taken out of the Bill stands, whether it be the people in support of the present Government or the Opposition, there will always be delays to the so-called Referendum. You are not taking away the rights of the people, but you may take away the rights of certain Parties to thwart useful legislation because it did not suit them at the time. I strongly support the Bill.
I opposed the passing of this Bill in all its stages. I am totally opposed to taking away from the people the rights which they got under the Constitution. The principal argument in favour of taking these rights away and passing this Bill is that people can always have a General Election, and that at a General Election they can express their views by electing representatives who will carry out their wishes. There is this difference between an election and a Referendum in that in a Referendum there is only one matter put before the electors, and it is much easier for people to come to a decision on one matter than to decide on the various matters that are put before them by the different parties in a General Election. I would find it quite easy to vote in a Referendum to decide whether a Bill was a desirable one or not. Take it, for instance, that a Bill, say a Prohibition Bill, was passed here, and in fact a Prohibition Bill may be passed at some time or other, it would be quite easy for the electors to say whether they wished that Bill passed or not. There would be nothing to complicate them in coming to a decision. On the other hand, at a General Election, I would be faced with several items in the programme of each political party. There may be some items in a political programme of which I would approve, and others of which I would disapprove, and I would be in a quandary as to whether I should vote partly for one group and partly for another. For instance, I would be very glad to support the party that would have a programme for encouraging industry and manufactures, and for consuming the produce of this country and make it self-supporting. I would be very anxious to support a party that would have that policy in their programme, and I would also be desirous of supporting a party that would endeavour to have the Treaty carried out to its full extent, especially as regards the taking up the question of financial relations with Great Britain, and, in particular, as to whether or not we should retain the annuities. I would be very desirous to support that programme, but the party with that programme might also have in their programme a repudiation of the National Loan, and the commitments that the Dáil and Seanad have already agreed to. Between the two programmes I would find myself in a very awkward position, and would find a difficulty in deciding as to how I would vote. In the case of a Referendum, as I have said, there is only one matter to be decided.
I do not imagine that there are many voters so wanting in intelligence that they could not decide how to fill their voting papers according to their views. This is only one of a series of Bills which have been brought forward to change the Constitution. As a matter of fact, those Bills are tearing the Constitution to pieces. The Constitution is regarded as only a scrap of paper. We cannot assume that the present Government will last always. It happens that Opposition Governments come in now and again, and when this Government makes eighteen or twenty amendments in the Constitution we cannot be sure that their successors may not make eighteen or twenty more amendments, and then where will we be with our Constitution? I think all those Bills were brought forward because the Government got into a state of panic. Evidently the whole object of this is to prevent a Referendum on the question of abolishing the Oath. I think there is no necessity for them to be so alarmed, because even if, as a result of the Referendum, people decided in favour of abolishing the Oath, that would not have effect, because even if the Oath were taken out of the Constitution it is still to be found in the Treaty, and in the Act establishing the Constitution it is laid down that any amendments to the Constitution which are repugnant to the Treaty shall be null and void and of no avail. But, even assuming that the result of the Referendum would have that effect, I think it is not playing the game fairly, because the Constitution is really the rules of the game between the political parties. It is hardly playing the game when matters appear to go against one side that, instead of taking their defeat, they want to alter the rules so that they might succeed. It is very doubtful if before very long the Government might not have reason to regret that they did not retain the Referendum in the Constitution, and it may then be seen that the members of the Seanad who opposed the passing of this Bill have more sense than they are being credited with.
I am very glad that we have had at last an utterance from Senator Douglas, who, I understand, played a very important part in drafting the Constitution. I am in the position of the lady referred to who questioned him about Senator O'Farrell's speeches, as to whether he was joking or in earnest, because the Senator gave us no inkling as to why he had in the course of the last five years changed his views on the question of the Referendum, because I must assume, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that he must have been in favour of the Referendum when the Constitution was drafted. Surely the Referendum has not been tried or practised, and it would be rather interesting if the Senator gave us some logical explanation as to why he adopts rather the attitude of the dog returning to his vomit. That is the only intelligent explanation one can get of his action in this case. I was glad to hear Senator Linehan gave a sensible and dispassionate explanation of the attitude he and some of us have taken up in this case. It is not a popular thing to have to stand up in a small minority in these matters, but one has to use one's judgment to the best of one's ability and form one's reason of the facts. Incidentally, I was rather interested to discover from the remarks of Senator Douglas that I appear to be the only consistent person in the Opposition, for I am not ashamed to say that I stand a Conservative, although I have been deserted by other Senators whom I know to be Conservative. Senator O'Farrell has the misfortune to find himself in strange, uncongenial company, but I am the only member of this House who is consistent to his political creed.
During the whole course of this discussion I was hoping we would learn something of the use of the Referendum and get some indication of the reasons people had for retaining it. I find, as the speeches went on, they were getting poorer in quality. I want to tell Senator Linehan that I do not dispute the right of the people to change the Treaty, or to say that the Oath must go, but, unlike him, I would not take the line of looking to a safeguard in law to protect us in that respect. My objection, if I have any objection to that, is that the people must select their instrument to effect the change. I am not going to do the work of Senator Linehan's or Senator Sir John Keane's friends, for I do not believe in that policy. It is a nice thing to say people can easily decide on one thing. That is political nonsense, democracy gone mad. If you ask them if they would like a tax on tea they would say "No," or if they would like a tax on sugar they would say "No," and you could go on in that way to the last of your taxes and you will find they do not want any of them. You are not presenting them with a fair and honest question when you say there are some important matters of legislation which you could put to the people and which they could decide. Equally, the Senator will find on the programme of every political Party in the State something with which he agrees or disagrees. That is the usual position of a crank. You will never find a person in that position doing any good for himself or anybody else. Government carried out on democratic principles is mainly government by Parties. In modern times, with proportional representation, a greater diversity of views can be expressed than under the old system. The main consideration is, you must get a Government. I would like to see a Government in which Senators Linehan, O'Farrell and Sir John Keane would be the moving spirits. If it happened, although it would be only for a day, it would afford some amusement, but it would not contribute to stability.
Senator O'Farrell said this was a blow to the stability of the country. If there is any people in the world who have a clear idea of political freedom and of democracy, and the rest, it is the people of this country. I doubt if there is any country which is stronger in the intensity of its political Parties than this country, and yet how many public meetings have been held to denounce the removal of Articles 47 and 48 out of the Constitution? Senator O'Farrell has not had one. A member of the other House, who was at the bottom of the poll in an election a short time ago, presided at one meeting. The position is that people take no interest in this, for the people have the political insight to know that you cannot get your laws dealt with simply by a Referendum and decided as Senator Linehan wants. That is ridiculous. If every issue had to be put singly to the people you would get no result. As everyone knows, a Government makes a lot of political opponents one way or another in the course of transactions, and the weaker members of the Party fall away. Senator Sir John Keane says Senator O'Farrell has gone to his way of thinking, and if Senator Linehan belongs to any Party he has probably gone from it now.
In view of the references of Senator Sir John Keane, perhaps I would be allowed to state the position on the original Constitution Committee and other committees set up. I do not want to go into my reasons any more on it for, as I said, I would be abusing the privilege of the House. The members of the original Constitution Committee, at a meeting, jointly prepared drafts for the Provisional Government. They arranged not to publish their opinions as to the attitude they took in the proposals. The draft, altered in many respects, was submitted to the Dáil sitting as a constituent Assembly, and it proceeded to alter the drafts submitted to it by the Provisional Government. The original members of the Committee were granted freedom to speak and vote as they wished on the proposals. It is only right to say there is nothing in the Constitution of which every member of the original Committee approved. It is known that a Committee was appointed by the Government a couple of years ago to make certain recommendations. That sat and it made recommendations for certain constitutional changes, including the abolition of this section. Members of that Committee sat on the same terms—that their votes would not be published, and that they could speak and take any action they wished. I think the same applied to the Committee of the two Houses set up with regard to the changes, and that the members of the Committee were free to speak and act as they thought fit. I only mention this in view of Senator Sir John Keane's challenge, and because I think it should be on the records of the House.
Question put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 27; Níl, 6.
Tá
- T. Westropp Bennett, Leas-Chathaoirleach.
- William Barrington.
- Sir Edward Bellingham.
- Sir Edward Coey Bigger.
- P. J. Brady.
- Samuel L. Brown, K.C.
- Mrs. Costello.
- John C. Counihan.
- The Dowager Countess of Desart.
- James Dillon.
- Sir Walter Nugent.
- Joseph O'Connor.
- Michael F. O'Hanlon.
- James G. Douglas.
- Sir Nugent Everard.
- Michael Fanning.
- Dr. O. St. J. Gogarty.
- James P. Goodbody.
- Right Hon. Andrew Jameson.
- Patrick W. Kenny.
- Francis MacGuinness.
- John MacLoughlin.
- General Sir Bryan Mahon.
- James Moran.
- Bernard O'Rourke.
- Thomas Toal.
- W. B. Yeats.
Níl
- J.C. Dowdall.
- Thomas Farren.
- Sir John Keane.
- Thomas Linehan.
- John T. O'Farrell.
- Siobhán Bean an Phaoraigh.
Motion declared carried.