Mr. Campbell. Bannerman, the Secretary for War, addressed some of
his constituents at Inverkeithing yesterday week on the House of Lords question in a more moderate tone than the Members of the Cabinet have been accustomed lately to adopt. He said that so long as the popular House and the House of Lords were not absolutely opposed to each other, it was possible to find some modus vivendi between them ; but that at the present day the House of Lords cares only to undo what the House of Commons does. That appears to us a very great overstatement of the case. The Parish Councils Bill would never have passed into law as it did, had that been true, and even the Budget Bill might have been rejected as a whole. However, we do not deny at all that the antagonism between the two Houses, is much too strong, and that there is need of some recasting of these relations. But we do entirely deny that the recasting should consist of reducing one of them to sheer impotence. As we have often suggested, the true solution is to give a sifted and much-diminished House of Lords the power to consult the people at large on any measure concerning which there is real ground for doubt, whether it is approved or disapproved by the people. But if all the Ministers were as rational in their tone as Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, we should have had none of the very tall talk at Preston and Glasgow:
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