PEERS AND THE PARLIAMENT BILL.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—In your issue of last Saturday Lord Ebury challenges the last paragraph of my letter in the Spectator of this previous week as being of a controversial character, and I will ask for a brief space in reply. I claimed that those who voted with the Government in the last division on the Parliament Bill might congratulate , themselves that they had been the means of giving time for reflection by the Govern- ment as the result of Lord Loreburn's wise letter at a critical moment. Lord Ebury does not really deny this, but, on the contrary, admits that our action has "postponed civil war." But how has that been effected except by our votes having prevented the creation of three hundred puppet peers ? And may we not now reasonably hope that, as a result of the postponement of the Bill and of civil war, for which Lord Ebury grudgingly gives us some credit, no Prime Minister will dare to advise the King to assent to a Home Rule Bill fraught with such danger to the State, which would probably be repudiated by the constituencies at the next general
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