LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE LORDS AND THE INSURANCE BILL.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—The action of the House of Lords in reading the Insurance Bill a second time, after its condemnation by Lord
Lansdowne as unjust and extravagant, seems hardly worthy of a revising Chamber. If they propose to pass every Bill, good or bad, and disclaim all responsibility for the latter, it is difficult to see what useful purpose their deliberations serve. The two other courses open to them were either to hang up the Bill or to refer it to a Poll of the People ; and by adopting either method the Lords would have shown more concern for the good of the nation than by deliberately abandoning it to a bad measure that they did not dare to reject,. That was not the way that the Barons of England safeguarded the people's rights in the reign of King John. In these degenerate days one may well say with the late Poet Laureate :
"And you, my Lords, you make the people muse In doubt if you be of our Barons' creed—
Were those your sires who fought at Lewes?
Is this the manly strain of Runnymede?
0 fallen nobility that, overawed, Would lisp in honey'd whispers of this monstrous fraud!"
Denbigh.
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