TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORDS AND COMMONS.
THE petition to the House of Lords, and the address to Lord Derby, both adopted bythe meeting on the paper duties at St. Martin's Hall, open rather seriously important questions—What are the rights of the Lords with reference to taxation ? and what is the policy of the Lords with reference to the special measure ? The petitioners argue that to reject the bill for repealing the 'Paper-duty would be "an usurpation of the privileges of the House of Commons and of the rights of the people." The Crown, they say, has not asked for the continuance of the tax, the House of Commons has not voted to continue it ; and, therefore, the tax has not either the demand of the Crown or the consent of the Commons in its vindication. This is only a circumlocuting me- thod of asserting that the House has no right to amend a money bill, or to reject it. But the fact is that the Lords have ample power in that behalf. Are they not simply restrained from alter- ing a money bill by increasing the intended impost? The Lords have a right to overhaul the entire question of taxation, its policy, and its bearing on the existing state of public affairs ; and they have full powers to amend a bill in the way of diminution, or to reject it altogether. We do not see any advantage in denying a right which the Peers possess in the letter and spirit of the law ; while we do see a great disadvantage in mingling with a strong case assertions that cannot be maintained.
The question of policy rests upon entirely different grounds. It seems to be calculated that the Conservative party possesses, or can recover in the Lords, a majority which it has lost in the Commons ; and that Lord Derby, therefore, who cannot form a Ministry of his own holding the balance of votes in the represen- tative chamber, may employ the majority which he leads in the Upper House to harass the Government of the day. The calcu- lation may be false in fact, we are sure it is false in sound sense. There are other questions on which the Lords are arrayed against the Commons. The Commons are for abolishing Church- rates ; the Lords reject the bill. Some persons expect that the Commons will affirm Mr. Cardwell's Irish Tenant Right Bill ; Mr. Whiteside tells us that the Lords will reject it. One measure upon which the Peers and Commons stood opposed to each other for some time was the admission of Jews to Parliament; the Peers were beaten. They are now confessedly to be employed by the Conservative minority as an engine for obstructing measures of which the Conservatives disapprove ; and in order to employ the machine for that purpose, the Conservatives are once more setting the House of Peers against the House of Commons. This is to revive that old con- flict in which the Liberal press, siding with the Commons, used to rail at "the House of Impracticables," "the House of Incu- rables," and used to prophesy that the obstructive power of the Peers would call forth a destructive power in the popular half of the Legislature. We cannot prophesy so fast; but Peers even sitting on the same bench with Lord Derby must see the deroga- tory, if not the dangerous tendency of a position which holds out the House of Lords as an engine to be employed by party against the declared wishes of the English people. It is an assertion of privilege, Tory perhaps in the letter, but most unconservative in spirit.
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