On the question of reforming the House of Lords, Lord
Salis- bury did not at all expect that any measure would be carried which would diminish the power of the House of Commons. Yet all proposals for strengthening the Lords were really based on steps which involved weakening the Commons. He thought the attacks made on the House of Lords very irrelevant.
However wicked the Lords might be individually, while they retained the duty of acting as trustees for the country, they had no choice but to do that duty to the best of their ability ; and it would not be doing it to the best of their ability if they did not refer back to the country any proposal on which they had reason to think that the country had not decided at the previous General Election. As Mr. Gladstone refused to tell the country what his Home-rule Bill is to be, he cannot claim, as Lord Grey could, when the country returned him to power to carry the Reform Bill, that "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," had been enthusiastically accepted by the constituencies. In a very powerful peroration, he pointed out that the whole drift of political thought in Europe is towards closer union, and not towards loose-knit States.
