LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
LORD SALISBURY AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
ITO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"' SIR,—Lord Salisbury has had more than one quotation from Shakespeare levelled at him, but not the attest of all :—" I'll assure you, a uttered as brave words at the bridge as you shall see on a summer's day." So said the resolute Welsh captain ; but he added, at the due time, "I beseech you heartily, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek." And though poor Pistol replies, "Not for Cadwella- der and all his goats," he has to eat, "certainly and out of doubt, and out of question too, and ambiguities," and that with the warning, "I have another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat."
That the leek has to be eaten without doubt, question, or ambiguities when Parliament meets we all know. What form of cudgel and of stroke is to be used, we can more than guess from the intimation of Mr. Gladstone that the Government knew how, in the last resort, to crush the attempt of the Lords to rule the country, by the methods provided by the Law and Con- stitution; and from Sir William Harcourt's more recent words, that when, in 1832, the House of Lords a second time rejected the Reform Bill of that day, the House of Commons was not dissolved :—" No, the men of those days, Lord Grey and Lord Althorp, understood the Constitution of the country too well for that. They took a shorter, more expeditions, and more effectual method to subdue the opposition of the House of Lords ; and you may depend on it that Mr. Gladstone is not going to create so mischievous and oppressive a precedent as that ;" and, again, from Lord Hartington's declaration at Chatsworth "that the resources of our Constitution are not ex-
hausted, and it is my conviction that, however near we may be to a Parliamentary deadlock, that deadlock will be averted."
That is to say, Mr. Gladstone is going to follow the good precedent of 1832. The Lords may desert Lord Salisbury, and give in now as they did then. But if Peers must be, and are, created in order to carry the Franchise Bill, we shall have many advantages thereby. For not only will the Redistribu- tion Bill be carried without mutilation or delay, in whatever form the country may desire, but the whole question of Reform of the House of Lords would have a whole generation in which to settle itself, and might very probably get settled by mere evolution, and without any special enactments.—I am Sir, &c., EDWARD STRACHEY.
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