LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. GLA.DSTONE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Now that Mr. Gladstone has spoken, with words of which the meaning is not the less clear because they are so carefully weighed, it is the time for reviewing and forecasting the Liberal position. The Redistribution Bill will require all the Session of 1885, and therefore the Franchise Bill must be passed in the coming Autumn Session. If the Lords, on the re-assembling of Parliament, pass the Bill at once, they may still pass it with "dignity and honour ;" but if they renew their tactics of last Session, they will have to pass it with the "humiliation" of the threat, or the actual creation, of sufficient new Peers. It may be that either the one or the other—the dignified or the humili- ating—form of surrender, will be enough to restore the House of Lords to" harmony with the affections of the nation, and to prolong its own existence "; though it may be that "the field of the controversy will become wider still." That the surrender and, submission of the Lords will be complete,
is beyond doubt; nor is it less certain that the surrender will mark an irrevocable step in the contrary direction to that which they have so madly attempted to take under the leadership of Lord Salisbury. But whether it shall be enforced by statute, and by some statutory mode of reform, of one of the many kinds which men are talking of, or whether the surrender shall be of the unspoken and unwritten kind to which the pre- rogatives of the Crown have been submitted, time will show. The House of Lords has brought to issue the question whether they or the House of Commons shall rule the country ; and this question has to be answered so plainly that it shall never be asked again. The surrender of the Lords must be, and will be, complete. But the less the change in the forms of the Con- stitution, the better will the nation be pleased, for then it will be "that which will divide us the least."
Such, I take it, is Mr. Gladstone's view of the situation he recognises it as the view of the country as well as his own ; and he is ready to carry it out by the fitting and effective methods-
of the statesman.—I am, Sir, ez.c., ED WARD STRACHEY.
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