LORD ROSEBERY ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
TORD ROSEBERY'S great speech of Monday night was full of keen and thoughtful criticism ; but, in our opinion, the weakest part of it was the part which should have been the strongest, because it was absolutely essential to the justification of the whole scheme that he had in his mind,— we mean the reply to Lord Salisbury's speech at Oxford on the hopelessness of greatly strengthening an Assembly which could only be strengthened at the cost of the House of Commons, unless, indeed, the public mind had first been roused to demand that step explicitly as a needful security against the encroachments of the democratic principle. Now, no one pretends that such a demand has been made. Nay, far from its having been made, the people of Great Britain are at present in the full flush of their demo- cratic victory, and, instead of being disposed to ask for fresh bulwarks against the progress of democracy, complain of the House of Lords because it is out of sympathy with the democracy, and is disposed to erect frail and useless sea- walls against the flowing tide. What did Lord Rosebery say in answer to this really weighty argument of Lord Salisbury's? He said only this, that it implies two fallacious assumptions, —first, the assumption "that there is only a limited amount of legislative and political strength in the country ;" and next, the assumption that to make an Assembly " efficient " for its purposes, means the same as making it " powerful " to resist other and more popular bodies. Both these assumptions Lord Rosebery denies ; but we hardly understand the bearing of the former denial on the issue ; and he did not explain how his many proposals for increasing the efficiency of the House of Lords could, if they were accepted, fail to make it more confident in its own power to dispute with the House of Commons the ultimate right of the democracy to issue final decrees. He compared the reforms he proposed to the care which a prudent owner of an old feudal castle would take to prevent the decay of the walls from making progress, as distinguished from any attempt to make it once more a threatening fortress which might command the neighbourhood, and alarm its fears. That is a very happy comparison, but Lord Rosebery did not show that the reforms he was advocating could only keep the House of Lords in repair, and could not so far strengthen it as to render the House of Commons jealous of it as a curb on the democratic spirit. What was the general drift of his proposed reforms? It was to limit the number of the Peers, and to give the House of Lords an "external buttress" by getting either the new County Boards, or the larger Municipalities, or the House of Commons itself, or all three bodies, to elect the greater number of the Peers to seats in the Upper House of the Legislature; while those of the hereditary Peers who might be left out in the cold should be permitted, as Irish Peers are now, unless they be Representative Peers sitting in the Upper House, to offer themselves to the constituencies as candidates for the House of Commons. Further, Lord Rosebery proposes that the House of Lords, so strengthened as regards its efficiency by being reduced in numbers, disembarrassed of all its weakest members, and fortified by the free confirmation of the popular vote, should, when it differs from the House of Commons, sit with the House of Commons as a Council of the Nation, to decide the issue by a joint vote. Now, will any one pre- tend that reforms such as these would not be regarded by the House of Commons as deliberate preparations for curbing and banking-in the new democracy ? The introduction of the elective element,—although a candidate must already, accord- ing to the scheme, be a hereditary Peer to qualify him to be elected,—would undoubtedly give the Peers a confidence in rejecting House of Commons measures which they do not now possess. And especially would this be the case, if they knew that, as a consequence of rejecting them, they would be allowed to sit with the Commons and join in the vote upon the final result. That means, of course, that any majority, not enormous, in the Commons, would be neutralised by the opposite majority in the Lords, and that thus the democratic measure would be shelved. How can Lord Rosebery persuade himself that proposals of this kind would not be regarded with the utmost jealousy by a democratic Assembly which has only just been installed in power, and which is now asked deliberately to sanction the construction of hostile works which would command and enfilade its own position, and lend them the appearance at least of the same sort of representative authority which the House of Commons boasts that it alone has at present the right to assert? It seems to us that Lord Rosebery, in the earlier part of his speech, endeavoured to consider how he might give the House of Lords a certain self-sujicingness (as well as greater efficiency as a suspensive" and revising Assembly), and then, in the latter part of his speech, endeavoured to persuade himself and his auditors that he had not done anything of the kind, but had simply proposed what would prevent the decay of the Lords' efficiency as legislators, instead of reinforcing their capacity to resist the Commons.
To our minds, Lord Rosebery's scheme of reform, like Mr. Rathbone's scheme of reform, goes much too far, at least in the present condition of the public mind. Such a scheme would be possible, and might be useful, if there were, what there is not, a generally diffused wish for some strong curb on the House of Commons. But, so far as we know, there is no such wish ; there is, indeed, a generally diffused wish to see what democracy can do, before any attempt is made to curb it. This being so, we confess that the direction in which we look for reform is the weeding-out of the House of Lords, and very little further. We should be glad, indeed, to see a few life-Peers added to the Upper House who would never be likely to get elected to the House of Commons, and whose experience and wisdom would yet be of use to the Upper House,—men like Lord Blachford, Lord Lingen, Lord Thring,—for they would really make its votes more weighty without in any sense lending it the appearance of representative authority. We should like to see a few Colonial Peers added, who would at least keep us informed of the general interests and aspirations of the more distant Colonies and Dependencies. But we do not wish to see the elective principle introduced at all until there shall be,—and, of course, there never may be,—a widely diffused dread of the dangers of democracy such as led to the establishment of the Senate in the United States after the War of Independence. We believe that the House of Lords might very easily be purged of its
weakest elements without being made formidable to the Commons. As we have once before suggested, the Minister of the day might be bound to summon, at the meeting of each Parliament, those Peers whom he thought most representative of the various political parties in the State, in about the same relative proportions as they were to be found in the Commons, the trust being imposed upon him to select without reference to p'nrty bias, and solely so that the Upper House of the Legislature should contain the ablest Peers of all parties in
very much the same proportional strength as the Commons. We believe that the Prime Minister, whoever he might be,
could be trusted so to advise her Majesty that she would find in the Upper House a really good revising Assembly, but not an Assembly whose chief object it would be to thwart the policy of the Lower House. But if any of the various plans for giving the Peers a sham representative capacity should be adopted, there can be no doubt that the House of Commons would be alarmed, and justly alarmed, lest an encroachment on its power should be attempted. Let the decay of the feudal ruin be arrested ; but let us not attempt to fortify it anew.
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