TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LIBERALS AND THE LORDS.
AGOOD deal of the talk in which some Liberals are indulging to their constituents about the House of Lords is very vague, and some of it is not a little silly. There is no pro- bability whatever that the Lords will resist or attempt to resist the ascertained will of the nation, even upon a subject which so deeply enlists their prejudices as the Irish Church. They know perfectly well, perhaps better than many Liberal orators and journalists, that a couple of hundred gentlemen, however rich or however highly placed, cannot, without material force behind them, set themselves against a whole people with any prospect of success. If the elections show a tolerable equality of opinion, they will no doubt throw a cast- ing-vote on the wrong side; but if the majority is a great one, greater than that of the present session, they will yield, just as the clergy themselves will, to irresistible power. It is quite useless, therefore, for Liberals to go about uttering vague threats as to what will happen to the Lords if they presume to oppose the nation ; for they have no intention of presuming or opposing either, and if they had would be very little moved by the threats. They either mean nothing, and that in many mouths is precisely what they do mean, or they mean the abolition of the Upper House, which is not what the majority of Liberals want, or are likely to approve. They might be forced into such a policy by a continued exhibition of the Lords' independence, — not of the Commons, but of the nation,—but they know quite well that the House as it stands is a Liberal, and not a Conservative influence. It protects the Commons from the great proprietors. The country is not going, at present at all events, to arrest accumu- lation of property, and it is by no means clear that it has the power to abolish titles. We wish it had, for we believe, with Mr. Arnold, that their effect is to keep a false ideal, the nobleness of life without labour, perpetually before the people; but we are very doubtful if it has the power. No break-down of the Legislature has been so signal as its effort to abolish titular Bishoprics, and it must not be forgotten that no law guards the titles of courtesy which are nevertheless as rarely refused as the titles of right. It would be difficult to make it a penal offence for a tenant of Knowsley to call his landlord "My lord," and if it were not an offence the title would most assuredly be conceded. Retaining their titles and their estates, the Peers would very soon make themselves as much of a political nuisance as the untitled millionaires are begin- ning to be ; would seat themselves by the dozen in the House of Commons ; and with their leisure, their social prestige, and their habit of politics, would be twice as formidable as they are now, when the secession of an eldest son like Lord Grosvenor is a political event. The sense of threatening a man like the Marquis of Salisbury that if he is not a very good boy he shall go to the Commons, i. e., become a Senator with unlimited powers, instead of a Senator with limited privileges, is, we confess, quite imperceptible to us. You might as well threaten a parvenu with a peerage. The real duty of Liberals with respect to the Lords is not to threaten them with abolition, because they have determined to take a plebiscitum before abolishing the Irish Church,—a determination they had a moral as well as a legal right to form,—but to ascertain whether the nation does or does not wish for a reform in the Upper House, a point upon which very considerable doubt exists. That cultivated Liberals wish for one is, we imagine, clear, for they see that unless the tone of the Lords can be brought into closer rela- tion with the tone of the Commons, there will ultimately be a collision, in which the iron pitcher will crack or deface the porcelain one, not, as we conceive, greatly to the gain of the owners of both. Many signs concur to show that the com- promise which has worked so fairly for thirty-six years will not work much longer ; that the Lords will either resist the Commons much more openly than heretofore, and so get themselves hurt ; or in despair of independence efface them- selves as in 1867, thus changing the Constitution in either event into government by a single Chamber. Tact has helped the Lords for thirty-six years, but when questions are very great, tact loses half its value ; and the new questions will be very great. The Commons have been very forbearing, but forbearance is not the virtue most appreciated by democratic constituencies, forbearance can hardly be shown about radical questions like the land laws, and with its disappearance will disappear the readiness to give way. And finally, there is no proof that the singular quality of the Upper House, its docility under men like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Derby, will last under men whose instinct, as Lord Salisbury said, is for battle a outrance. The balance of evidence at all events would seem to be that the House does need reform, and it would be well worth while to ascertain whether the nation thinks so too.
The question can be more easily asked if, as we fancy is the case, men's minds are becoming clearer as to the mode of reform. They are wearying of a system of menace which, for reasons stated above, is ceasing to be operative, and which whenever it succeeds does so at the expense of the best quality in the House of Lords, its independence of non-intellectual pressure. A horse can hardly be useful when he has to be forced past every milestone on the road. We want him to help to get us past safely, not to call out the driver's energies by a fit of rearing or kicking, ending usually in a kind of sulky bolt. If the House of Lords is to be brought into accord with the rest of our institutions, it can only be by a permanent modification of its own tone, which modification can only come from the introduction of some new element. The ideal House, supposing we have one at all, is a body as independent as at present, able to suspend legislation when the country is not fully pre- pared, competent in extreme cases to compel it to think once more over its own decision, yet in the main in accord with its wishes, and always so far in accord as to be able to understand. them. This House could not be secured in perfection by any device like the change of the permanent into the merely suspensive veto, or any provision like the two-thirds' clause in the Constitution of the United States, valuable as either of those improvements might prove in other ways. The more the question is studied, the more clearly does it appear that Lord Palmerston was right, and that the readiest way to reform the Upper House is to introduce Life Peerages, in number sufficient to leave the dignity of the House unim- paired, yet to leaven alike its votes and its deliberations;. and that, if we are not mistaken, is becoming the conviction of the political class. Scarcely any speaker or writer ever touches the subject without a hint more or less open that under guarantees more or less cogent he should prefer the creation of Life Peerages to any other reform in the Lords. There is great hesitation as to the number, many Liberals. fancying apparently that Life Peers need only be few, because they would act like yeast,—a very gratuitous assump- tion—and many suggestions as to the possible danger of increasing the power of the Crown. But as to the principle, we think we see a consensus very near at hand ; and whatever the difficulty as to number, one limit will, we think, be ulti- mately adopted, that the Peers shall not, except by accident, outnumber the House of Commons. Granted those conditions, that Life Peerages are necessary, that they must be limited in number yet be numerous enough to influence divisions, that they must reflect the changing opinions of society, and that they must not make the Lords more numerous than the Com- mons, a practical measure is at once sketched out. Those conditions would be fulfilled by the creation of about fifty Life Peerages to begin with, and the addition to them of four new names a year. Under that arrangement probably every mart fitted for the position would be absorbed, yet the Life Peers could never be more than one-third of the whole House-170 is the outside possible number—the House would be incessantly invigorated with new blood, yet it could never be swamped by the Ministry in order to carry any particular measure. More- over, the social importance of the hereditary Peers, which is probably the sine gilt non of their consent, would be but slightly if at all diminished, a diminution which might be reduced still further by confining the life creations to a single grade. It would not be impossible, we believe, to obtain a consensus of educated Liberals, and of a large section among the Peers themselves, to some such plan as this ; and it may be well worth the while of Liberal candidates to take the nation's opinion too. There is no one subject upon which politicians are more hopelessly in the dark than the opinion of the constituencies about the House of Lords.
Previous page
