A LIBERAL PLEA FOR THE CREATION OF LIBERAL PEERS.
[TO TEX EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:]
SIR,—Why will you persist in refusing to "see things as they really are," as in your plea for conciliation in the Spectator before me, where you endorse the suggestion in the Morning Post that we may have another General Election over the Parliament Bill ? There is not a shadow of possi- bility of our having another Election for three years, and all who dream of it are living in a fool's paradise. We are going to have the Parliament Bill, and the whole Bill, and it is with profound regret that we see signs that the Lords will give way ; that, after dallying with amendments, they will ultimately pass the Third Reading as they have passed the Second. It is the earnest desire of the rank and file of the Liberal Party—of which I am an obscure item—that the Government should be compelled to make five hundred new peers. We are told, it is true, by Lord Rosebery that it would "make them supremely absurd." The only people whom it would make absurd are the little community to which Lord Rosebery belongs. The new peers will bring the House of Lords to heel, and their existence will destroy the aristocracy of England. Their average of mentality will be no better and no worse than that of the existing peers, but they will make a barony as ridiculous in the eyes of the people and as "cheap" as a knighthood now is. But, although a knighthood has its ridiculous side, it is still calculated to be worth the equivalent of about £5,000. It takes a knight some few years to forgo the moral bond which pledges him body and soul to the Party that gave him his title. A barony is at least worth £10,000 as an ass4 and a man who has accented the eanivalent of that sum will take at least three years before he writes himself down an ingrate. Thus, with five hundred peers added to the Liberal benches, we should not have had to wait for the cumbrous machinery of the Parliament Bill; we could at once have passed Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment, the Abolition of Plural Voting, and a number of other reforms that are urgently needed. It is monstrous to think that we may have to wait three years for these ; and that is why every Liberal who is worth his salt hopes for the creation of five hundred new peers immediately after the Coronation. Three years from now the Government will go to the country, and, thanks to the Payment of Members and the Abolition of Plural Voting, we shall have a much more democratic House of Commons, and a much more earnest one, than the present. I do not say that your Party will never be in power again, but it will have to come out with a brand -new programme and some brand-new leaders before it again enjoys the sweets of office. But why should I, or any other Liberal, object to your offering up to your unhappy followers such poor consolation as you may ? Yet 1 have only proclaimed the obvious.—I am, Sir, &c.,
C. K. S.
[The best comment on such a letter as this is silence. We must point out, however, that what is said as to the Spectator's endorsement of the views of the Morning Post is an absurd misrepresentation. It is not our business to protect prospective Liberal peers from the charge of political prostitution. We must leave the task to "C. K. S.'s " fellow Liberals, but in common fairness we are bound to register our dissent from the insults which he showers on his own friends.—ED. Spec- tator.]
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