LONDON GATES AND BARS.
" pRIVATE property in England," writes an American lawyer in a work which we notice elsewhere, "is, on the whole, less secure from attack on the part of the Government to-day than it was in the time of the Stuarts." It exactly agrees with this dictum that the Lords' Committee has decided that the preamble of the "Gates and Bars Bill" has been proved to their satisfaction. No one will be disposed to deny that these obstacles to traffic are an inconvenience, though if every one is to have the right of going the shortest way to everywhere, a good many changes will have to be made in London. It has further decided that there is no legiti- mate claim for compensation either to freeholders or lessees. This is a much more doubtful conclusion, as any- one not blinded by the craze for making things pleasant at somebody else's expense may see from the statement of a particular case. X, a man of letters, thinks that a house in, we will say, Gordon Square will suit him. It is near the Museum Library ; its quiet is secured, he thinks, by the gates that shut out the traffic from the Euston Road southwards. Accordingly he buys the remainder of a lease. Then comes the "Gates and Bars Bill." Will any candid person say that he suffers no injury ? It is quite likely that his whole plan of life may be upset by it. Work becomes impossible with a continuous stream of traffic passing by his windows. This is not the sort of thing to which a man gets used by patience ; even if it were, he could not afford to wait. He has to sell his lease, and will certainly sell at a loss. Even if it could be proved that the property had suffered no abso- lute depreciation, the abolition of a privilege would cer- tainly diminish its value in the market. As for the proviso that noiseless wood pavement may be put down where it is thought necessary, it is, we believe, an illusory protec- tion. Who is to decide whether it is necessary or not ? Some public body or other, which will have no interest in the matter, which will be simply guided by the considera- tion of cost, and which private effort will be quite unable to move.
It is a bad sign that it is a Committee of the House of Lords that has led the way in coming to this decision. Yet no one who has carefully watched the action of that House of late will be surprised. It has been busy in proving again the old proverb that "extremes meet." An aristocratic assembly, it is so anxious to be on its good behaviour, or on what will be thought good behaviour by the democratic party, that it is ready to go beyond the other House in its approval of " popular " measures. As hitherto it has acted as a moderating power, though in a very fitful, unreasonable, unreliable way, one cannot help asking whether it would be possible to devise any real check on what has been called the " omnipotence " of Parliament—that is, to speak practically, of the House of Commons. If an Act were to be passed to-morrow that the property of all persons whose name began with a " B " or who had red hair should be confiscated, there is no power in existence that could hinder its execution. The fact is, that one of the forces of the Constitution has swallowed up, or will soon have swallowed up, all the others, and because this development had. not been expected, no check has been provided against any exer- cise, however monstrous, of its power. Other demo- cracies have provided such checks ; but England, which has become a democracy without expecting it, has not. Athens, a city whose politics are really worth study- ing, even though it was not more than a tenth-part of the size of London, had its graphe paranomon, its indictment for unconstitutional proposals, or, to use modern language, "Bills." The Assembly was omnipo- tent, but any citizen who proposed a measure that con- travened some constitutional principle of civil or criminal law had this terror hanging over him. It would be no protection to him that the measure had been passed. He had committed a crime in bringing it forward, and might be punished for this crime when the people had come to their senses again. The check often proved futile. When, for instance, the Admirals were tried after the Battle of ArginusEe for neglecting to rescue their shipwrecked comrades, two grossly unconstitutional proposals were made,—first, that the Assembly should make itself into a Court of Justice, and second, that all the accused should be tried at once. The friends of the Admirals threatened the proposer with the indictment described above. He retorted by proposing to include their names in the list of the accused. On this they withdrew the threat, and the proposals were carried. Still, the institution did work in a certain way, as a deterrent, of course, not as a restraint, and deterrents, as is proved in morals even more conclu- sively than in politics, are fallible in their action. The Supreme Court of the :United States is a more skilfully devised and a more potent check on legislative omni- potence. Its history proves, indeed, that you cannot elevate any tribunal into a region so serene that no gust of popular passion will touch it ; but it also proves, by many instances of salutary action, that the founders of the Constitution antici- pated. a real danger, and in some measure provided against it. Can we have a Supreme Court in England ? Why not ? Of course it will be said that such questions are out of the region of practical politics. Perhaps they are. Still, even the speculation has a certain interest and attraction. Could. not the High Court of Justice or a Committee of the Privy Council be empowered to exercise the necessary function ? The veto of the Sovereign is obsolete ; but it could be exercised in a fashion more consonant to modern ways of thinking, by Judges sitting, as it were, in the Sovereign's seat, and eudowed with the power of reviewing all legislation by the standard of the fundamental principles of equity.
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