Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 11th December 1909 — No.23
Facts and Opinions
Aristocratic Quibbling
When we speculated that the Lords would be more likely to amend the Budget and leave their opponents the onus of throwing 
the finances of the whole country into confusion, we underestimated the want of wit of which this highly venerable but somewhat brainless house is capable.
This want of wit has shown itself in an unseasonable and wholly futile excess of refined cunning.
The House of Lords felt that its great weakness, when its conduct went before the country for its verdict, would be the odium of its unconstitutional attempt to interfere with the control of the finances by the people.
To mend the unconstitutional appearance of their act, they have taken up this position, that they have no right to amend but they have the right to reject the Budget.
It appears to be a right which they have sometimes been unwise enough to claim, but never unwise enough to enforce.
The aristocratic hair-splitter who discovered this quibble seems to have forgotten that, however pleasing the distinction may be to his ingenuity, the mass of the voters will not care one straw to examine fine distinctions which claim the whole and disclaim the part.
They will simply say that the right of rejection means the right of baffling the representatives of the people and paralysing finance.
The other device of the Lords is to avoid the appearance of disputing the people's right by putting the rejection in the form of a referendum to the people, a procedure which the British constitution does not include in itself and which is entirely new.
Unfortunately they have made too much noise about the woes of the Dukes and Mr. Balfour has made the damaging admission that it is only the liquor and the land clauses to which he objects, so that it is too late to pretend that it is anxiety for the liberties of the people and not solicitude for their own pockets and the pockets of their allies the publicans that has dictated their action.
The indecent crowding of Lords who never before attended a single sitting, to reject the Budget, was also a tactical error.
On the whole the action of the House of Lords has greatly helped Mr. Asquith and we may await with some confidence the result of a struggle in which India is deeply interested.