LORD ROSEBERY ON THE LORDS.
IT is a great pity Lord Rosebery cannot get a private Act passed reducing him, say for seven, fourteen, or twenty- one years, to the status of a Commoner. He has a talent for strategy for which the House of Lords gives him no scope, but which in the House of Commons might, with cultivation, make him a power in the State. It was more than clever of him to bring forward his motion for inquiry into the best means of increasing the efficiency of the House of Lords, just before the introduction of the new Franchise Bill. The Peers, it is said, though We hardly believe it, intend to reject that Bill on some colourable pretext or other, and so reduce the whole work of the Session to a nullity, besides bringing on themselves the wrath of the whole body of the unenfranchiged; and nothing could be more provocative of reflection among themselves than a speech in which a leading member of their own order, a man who could not be personally overlooked, brought before them their deficiencies, their want of representative character, their exclusive care for property, and their habit of neglecting their work as legislators, and then making up for non-attendance by rushing in droves to vote. That such a Peer should say such things, should so express the public dissatisfaction, should expose all the weak places of the House, and should hint, in no hesitating way, at a radical reform, is precisely the course which would induce average Peers to reflect whether this was quite the time for a serious quarrel with the nation and its representatives. If Reform is in the air, better give no occasion for demanding Reforms. Lord Rosebery did it so well, too. He grew eloquent towards the close, and was justly complimented by the leaders on both sides.; but the body of his speech had in it just that trace of lightness, that appearance of easy and stimulating chat about important things, which suited his immediate audience, mostly men of society, who like even the gravest topics to be treated without artificial solemnity.
The Lords are not given to laughter just now,—are, indeed, almost as solemn as the Commons, who seem to have lost that distinctive attribute of man ; but they enjoy humorous sense more than any body of men in the world. Humorous sense must always be clear, and they hate the work of thinking-out intellectual puzzles. They listened attentively to Lord Rose- bery; and though Lord Granville, suddenly betraying his inner self as Old Whig and aristocrat, threw Lord Rosebery over, and destroyed his last chance of a vote, it may prove that the speech had an important effect on the passing of the new Reform Bill.
Considered as a tactical move, the speech was perfect ; but considered as a speech for a reform of the Constitution, it betrays some weakness. Lord Rosebery has not quite made up his mind as to the line in which he desires reform to advance. He disclaimed plans, necessarily, because he was asking for a fishing committee to elicit plans ; but it is impossible to read his speech and not see that two general ideas are hovering before his mind. One is that the House as it stands could be made a much more effective instrument of legisla- tion; and the other is, that it must be made more widely representative. The two ideas got mixed, and jostled each other, till it was a little difficult to be certain what the speaker was driving at, and the confusion laid him open to a charge of vagueness which he did not deserve. He was riding straight enough, but it was on two horses at once, —which is acrobatism, not riding. All his allusions to the failure of attendance, all his suggestions for a larger quorum, all his clever sketches of the able Peers in the House, all his praises of the principle of delegation, point directly to an internal reform, the restriction of the voting power in the Lords to the Peers who mean business, who will work and will attend, and who, by dint of sheer ability, would do the work well. The very essence of this part of his speech was the distinction between the mere Peer and the distin- guished Peer ; and that leads logically to a plan of delegation. Reduced to a formula, Lord Rosebery's thought is, we imagine, that, say, two hundred Peers might be selected by co-optation or otherwise, who would make politics their life-work, would attend constantly, would agree to a quorum of forty, and would by force of ability form a much more impartial House than the present. Lord Granville saw that drift in Lord Rosebery's mind, and accepted his theory in substance, even admitting that the occasional rushes of absentee Peers to give a purely partisan vote, amounted to "a scandal ;" and we are inclined to believe that the idea may here- after prove fruitful. If the hereditary principle is to be main- tained, and Peers are to legislate in right of birth, that is the true line, as well as the easiest line, for reforming Peers to take. A winnowed House of Lords, with the power which it would possess of sitting early in the day, and therefore giving much time to its work, might be a very efficient body, while it would not be in the public eye a new body, or in any way less an " ornament " to the Constitution than the existing House. It might, too, be made a fairly impartial body, more especially if the Ministry were allowed any influence, either by law or by etiquette, in the selection of its Members. At any rate, as the stupid Peers would be shut out, it would be more, rather than less impartial, seeing more clearly the necessity of an accord with the representatives, if public business is to go on at all. Such a reform, too, would have this advantage,—that it might be obtained from the Lords themselves, without resort to the quasi-revolutionary methods by which alone a radical reform could be extorted from an unwilling House.
While, however, Lord Rosebery saw that some plan of this kind would be essential to efficiency, he saw also that the House needed additional strength, and that this must be obtained from "representation ;" and with that word he lost himself in a maze. He declined to hint even at representa- tion by election ; for though he warmly praised the Senate of the United States, he was, of course, aware that the solid strength of that body belongs to it, not because it represents electors, but because it represents the Federal principle,—the rights of the States to a limited autonomy. He said no word of election by the people. He refused to accept Life Peerages as the device which would meet his views, though Lord Granville offered his support, if he would accept that method. Yet he discoursed at length of "representation," asking that representatives of movable wealth, of commerce, of colonies, of the arts and professions, of literature, and even of labour, should be seated in the House. What did he mean? He clearly did not mean that merchants, and Colonial Agents, and doctors, and poets, and painters, and Trades-Union chiefs should be made hereditary Peers, for they could not accept the position, and would be useless in the second generation. Apparently he did not mean that they should be made Life Peers, for he would not touch Lord Granville's olive-branch ;
and what probable meaning remains That such persons should be nominated from Parliament to Parliament to sit as assessors of the Lords in the Upper House, voting and speak- ing, but bearing either no titles, or titles only to be used during their term of office That seems the plan nearest to Lord Rosebery's thought, and that is a conceivable scheme for an Upper House, though we should doubt its working well ; but then, it is not a scheme which can be examined by a Com- mittee. We might as well submit the existence of the Throne, or the entire Constitution, to a Committee. A plan of that kind must be considered on grounds which can hardly be brought before a Committee, and from points of view which no Committee, even if it were composed of a dozen Lord Macaulays, could adequately discuss. The idea was too big, and only prejudiced the House against a proposal which, had it been confined to an internal reform of procedure, might have been accepted, and certainly ought to have been. Lord Rosebery's speech, in fact, though a masterpiece of strategy, was, as a political proposal, too wide. The Upper House can be improved as a machine, and the method of doing it is a fair subject for inquiry ; and it can be made more representa- tive, but that is wholly beyond the range of any Committee whatsoever. B., mixing up the two reforms, both are invested with an air of impracticability which does not, when they are separated, belong to either.
We are rather disappointed in Lord Granville's conduct on this occasion. He must know perfectly well that the House of Lords is not a good House, that it is constantly spoiling good work, and that it must sooner or later be radically re- formed. In refusing to acknowledge this he raised a suspicion, already very prevalent in certain minds, that no Peer will con- sent heartily to any reform of the Lords ; in other words, that no Cabinet which under the existing scheme is possible will propose to reform the Upper House. That is a danger- ous attitude for Peers to assume, for it involves this result, that before the reform can be commenced the laws which assign certain offices to Peers must be swept away, and a Cabinet created in which Peers shall have no place. That is not a Cabinet which Lord Granville desires ; yet if every Peer in office is to pronounce the Upper House perfect, and question the possibility of improving its efficiency, it is to such a Cabinet we must come. Democracy and the Upper House must be reconciled, and there are only two ways to that end. One is, that the House should abnegate its veto as the Crown has done, and sanction all Bills sent up to it ; and the other is, that it should acknowledge its own defects and suffer them to be repaired. Lord Granville, while objecting to the first change, cannot see, or, at all events, thinks it right to deny that he sees, any necessity for the second.
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