10 MARCH 1894, Page 8

PEERS IN THE COMMONS. A CCORDING to a statement made in

the Daily News of Tuesday, the Government contemplate the intro- duction of a Bill which will enable any Peer who so desires, and who can secure election, to sit in the House of Commons. We trust that the rumour. is a true one.

The amendment of the Constitution in that respect is one which we have always advocated. There is something childish in setting apart some of our most capable citizens, and declaring that, while all the rest of the nation may seek to enter the governing assembly, they alone are to be barred from the political opportunities offered by a seat in the Commons. A Peer may sit in • the London County Council, or on any other elective body in the Kingdom, but from Membership of the House of Commons he is for ever debarred by the accident of birth. Possibly, however, the change is one which will be held to require long and careful discussion, and it may therefore be declared impossible in the coming Session. If that is so, why should not the evil of the moment be remedied by a special Act, and Lord Rosebery be allowed to sit in the Commons ? This would abate the public nuisance of a Prime Minister in the Lords, and allow the general measure to follow later on. No doubt it might be said that such a measure was a Rosebery Disabilities Removal Bill, but that would not be a very serious ob- jection. Nothing is more thoroughly English than using a personal Act as a pilot-engine for a general measure. That, however, is a small matter. The essential thing is that the Government should choose the present oppor- tunity for doing something to get rid of the existing absurdity. The moment is auspicious, for there is a great public advertisement of the folly of closing the House of Commons to the Peers, and changes of the proposed kind can only be made when the country has been awakened to a defect in the Constitution. Under ordinary circum- stances, a constitutional defect is the one thing in which the mass of the people will not interest themselves. What is everybody's business is nobody's business, and so the reform hangs fire, while some measure, in itself small and trumpery, but in which a little knot of eager people are keenly interested, is passed as if it were a matter of supreme importance. The constitutional reformer must always wait for the moment when the public mind is by some accident inclined towards him. Then, and then only, can he strike with effect. The present is a case in point. If the new Government will only deal with the matter while it is warm, they may effect a very great and very important change in the Constitution.

T.! Let us examine somewhat more in detail what is pro- posed to be done, what are the arguments against doing it, and if it is to be done, in what form the change can be carried out. The present proposal can be best expressed as one to put all Peers, for all constituencies, in the position which a certain section of the Peers occupy for some five hundred and sixty-six constituencies, that is to give the privilege of ability to sit in, the House of Commons, if elected, not merely to Irish Peers, but to all Peers. Under the present system, if a man's great-grandfather was lucky enough to obtain an Irish peerage, he can, like Lord Palmerston, pass his whole life in the House of Commons. If on the other hand his great-grandfather obtained a barony of Great Britain, he is debarred from seeking the suffrages of his fellow-citizens. What are the arguments against letting the ablest of the Peers (if they can get elected) sit where the Empire is really governed. For good or ill, the House of Commons rules. The House of Lords may criticise the details of Bills before Parliament, and may stop legislation of which the country disapproves, but in choosing and directing the course of Administration, and in the real work of government, the Commons are supreme. It is the Lower House which says who shall rule us and how we shall be ruled, which makes peace and war, which provides for and controls the Army and the Navy, 'which holds the life of the nation in its hand. But since everything pivots on the House of Commons, it is essential that the House of Commons should contain all that is best in the nation. But if it is to do this, the constituencies must be free to choose whomsoever they may desire to sit in the governing House. Surely it is madness, under such circumstances, to shut out some three hundred men belonging, by tradition, by training, by heredity, to the governing class, and able by their wealth and their leisure to carry on public work, and to say On no pre- text must you select men from this segregated band. It is true they are suitable in every way, that many of them long for election, and that you are often anxious to elect them. That does not matter. Immemorial usage forbids you to choose them, and choose them you must not. The irony of the Constitution requires that they shall drag on a half-hearted existence in their gilded cage, and that the country shall be forbidden the use of much excellent material out of which to make Members of Parliament.' Yet this is what we in fact say when we forbid a Peer like Lord Rosebery to seek election at the polls. The only valid argument which is used to support a contention priniti facie so absurd, is the argument : "You are proposing to 'gut' the Lords. If you subtract all, or a large proportion of, the best men from the Peers you will so weaken that body as to render it unfit to perform its functions." The Lords, it, is said, are weak enough already ; do not still further lower their strength. If the House of Lords still possessed the powers of government, we might be inclined to give weight to this argument, but as things now are, it does not appear to us valid. The power of the Lords, except under very exceptional and temporary circumstances, has sunk so low that it is not worth while to diminish artificially the fund of ability available for the House of Commons in order to preserve it. Practically all that the House of Lords can now do is to suggest useful amendments to ordinary legislation, and in cases where there is a strong doubt as to the will of the people in regard to a particular Bill, to see that such a Bill is not passed without a direct appeal to the people. The House of Lords, in fact, has become a House whose powers are primarily advisory, but which also possesses the right of referring doubtful questions to the people themselves. But these functions could be per- formed quite as well by a House from which the more active and ambitious spirits had been subtracted as by the present House. Though the House of Lords would no longer contain Lord Rosebery, Lord Salisbury, or the Duke of Devonshire, there would still be plenty of men left whose opinion would be quite as valuable, or indeed more valuable, for the purposes of revision. The experts in law, in civil administration, in military, in naval, in Indian and in Colonial affairs, would still be there, and their advice would still be most useful. Men like Lord Thring, Lord Selborne, Lord Welby (if that is to be his title), Lord Wolseley, Lord Ancaster, and the ex-Indian and Colonial Governors, of whom there are half-a-dozen in the Lords, would not attempt to seek the suffrages of the people, and would be available for critical purposes. In- deed, for critical purposes the powers of the House of Lords would be increased, not impaired. The absence of the great Party leaders would tend to give the Upper House something of a non-party character. If Peers could be elected to the House of Commons, it would soon come to be considered as the proper thing for the regular party men to leave the Lords. "So strong a partisan is not in his element here" would be the kind of feeling ; and though no doubt the party divisions would continue to take place, the proper attitude for a Peer as regards party matters would be considered to be that which is now assigned by custom to the Lord Chancellor. Members of the House of Lords would of course continue to belong to the Government, but they would not make the Upper House a party battle-ground, nor would they be very prominent in outside party scuffles. The result would be that the House of Lords would go to their work in a cooler spirit, and when it was done, the work would deserve more general respect. When a Bill came up from the Commons, their attitude would be something of this kind. They would say to the Commons, We do not claim any right to transmute your Bill or to alter its nature. We simply take its principle and examine it in order to see whether you have applied that principle in a workmanlike and proper manner. Where we think you have not, we suggest and advise the following alterations. We do not claim to force them upon you, but we draw your attention to them, and ask your careful reconsider- ation.' In many cases such revision would be all that would be required. Amendments suggested in such a spirit would in a great many instances be at once admitted to be wise and prudent and made with knowledge, and even if the House of Commons were to grumble, they would be maintained by the force of public opinion.. Again, in cases where circumstances demanded an appeal to the country—a Referendum, either carried out directly or by Dissolution—we believe that the so-called "gutted" House would be just as capable as the present one. Her% again, its party-character being shaded off would stand it in good stead. It would not be perpetually asking for a reference ; but in cases where it did, it would be influenced by big and not by little motives. It would, that is, refer Bills touching the Constitution and the capital institutions of the country, but not, even though it might dislike them, Bills of a petty kind. The Referendum function is indeed one which no one need grudge the Lords. The only alternative would be to put it into operation by petitions of—say-300,000 people. But there would never be any difficulty in getting up such a petition for Bills which the Lords would send for refer- ence. Still if jealousy there were, this power might be given both to the Lords and to petitioners. Such a provision would meet the complaint, that if the right of reference were to belong exclusively to the Lords, it would never be exercised in the inberests of the Home-rule Party. Look at the question as you will, the fact remains that for purposes of revision and reference, the House of Lords would be more, not less, efficient after the more actively political Peers had gone to another place. It remains to consider shortly the form of a Bill for allowing Peers to sit in the House of Commons. The forms under which Peers now sit in the House of Lords naturally suggest the method. A peerage is only the hereditary right conferred by patent to receive a summons to the House of Lords. Every new Parliament the Peers receive their writs, and these writs cannot be refused them. Nothing but the fact that a Peer has been summoned to sit elsewhere (i.e., in the Upper House) prevents him from sitting in the Commons. The statute, then, would empower the Crown not to issue the writ to any Peer who expressed his desire not to receive it, and might, to dissipate all doubts, further declare that the person thus relieved from a summons to the House of Lords should be eligible for a seat in the House of Commons. This non-issue of the writ might extend only to one Parliament or for life. Further, it would seem advisable to take away the privileges of peerage, such as they are (for the non-criminal classes they are almost nil), from Peers who applied to be ex- cused from the writ. The form is, however, immaterial, for the thing can be done in a dozen ways. Fortunately, the lawyers will have no excuse for saying that the change is impossible without also abolishing the Monarch, the Church, and the privileges of the City of London, for they have the case of the Irish Peers staring them in the face. If one set of Peers can be eligible both for seats in the Lords and seats in the Commons, why not the Peers of England, of Scotland, of Great Britain, and of the United Kingdom ?