THE FIVE HUNDRED PEERS.
WE do not suppose that the point will be reached when the Ministry will think it expedient to advise the King to create five hundred. Peers as the only alternative to leaving the country without a Government. It is far more probable that the Ministry, rather than force the Lords into a position which will make this necessary, will agree to some reasonable compromise on the Constitutional issue,—to some amendment of the Veto Bill which will facilitate its passage. We must, however, protest against the notion that " an appalling revolution " would be upon us if it comes to the making of five hundred Peers, or that such an act—though we admit that it would. be inconvenient—would be without compensating advan- tages, or would in any way spell national ruin. If we look at the matter coolly, it will be seen that in reality it is only one of many methods of abolishing or reforming the existing House of Lords, a course which is practically agreed upon as requisite by the whole country. Though personally we neither expect nor desire the doubling of the present number of the Peers, we can quite well understand that a good many people might think that, from the Con- servative point of view, it would be a blessing in disguise. To begin with, the creation of the Peers must, as we have repeatedly said, make the constitu- tion of a new Second Chamber a matter of immediate practical politics. It would be impossible to work with a House of a thousand Peers, a House which could only find. room for its deliberations in Westminster Hall. The moment the Veto Bill had been passed by the gallant five hundred the reconstruction of the House of Lords would have to be undertaken. That must have precedence of all other business. But this is a result which no Unionist and no opponent of single-Chamber government could possibly regard as undesirable. Another reason which would make it imperative to take up the Second. Chamber question would be the fact that the House of Lords if left alone would have for many years a permanent Liberal majority. Liberals have told us in season and out of season that it was impossible to go on with the existing system because one party had a permanent majority in the Lords. For very shame, then, and even if there were no physical reasons for action, they could not first create and then maintain a state of things to which all their old. arguments would. apply, the only difference being that their party, and not their opponents, were the possessors of the majority. If the new Second Chamber, the creation of which would. thus be ensured, were to be a purely elected body, and therefore a body necessarily possessing powers co-ordinate with those of the House of Commons, the five hundred might no doubt sink the Peerage for good. and all. But it is humanly certain that the Commons would not allow the establishment of a purely elected. House. We may feel sure that a con- siderable portion of the new House would be chosen from the existing House of Lords. Hitherto one of the diffi- culties in regard to proposals of this kind has been the fact that the House of Lords contains such a vast majority of Unionist Peers. If, however, five hundred Liberal Peers were created, this difficulty will no longer exist. The thousand. Peers would be a body from which it would be very easy to choose, by a system of minority voting, some two hundred elected. Peers. This constituent body would not only represent both political parties very fairly, but would contain a great many valuable elements which are not now to be found. in the House of Lords, if we assume—and we are sure we may assume—that the Cabinet would. be reasonably careful in their selection. Almost certainly a large number of new Peers would be Nonconformists, a section of the nation which has hitherto been almost unrepresented in the House of Lords. In other words, the thousand. Peers would. make an admirable body from which to choose, say, a third of the new Second Chamber. Another advantage of the large infusion of Liberal blood into the Peerage would be that it would be no longer possible for Mr. Lloyd George and other Liberal orators to denounce Peers qua Peers, and talk as if any man with the title of " Lord " was necessarily a wastrel or a fool or both. The answer would be too obvious : " How can that be when half the Peers are of your own way of thinking and were selected by your own party ? " People sometimes talk as if the creation of the five hundred. Peers would ipso facto destroy the Peerage and deprive it of all influence in the country. On the contrary, we should. expect an exactly opposite result. We do not suppose for a moment that the existing Peers, though they might feel at first a little shy of the new Lords, would be so foolish as to make any attempt to send them to Coventry, or to treat them in any way as outside their Order. We believe instead that the new Peers would very rapidly be assimilated, and that the Peerage would be strengthened thereby. What would happen would be something not unlike what happened in the case of the creation of large batches of new Magistrates. Those Liberal Magistrates, many of them working men, or drawn at any rate from a class which had hitherto been supposed to be one from which Magis- trates ought not to be drawn, have been accepted by the existing Benches without any confusion or trouble, and have become pillars of the institution of an unpaid Magis- tracy. Instead of the demand for the total abolition of Justices of the Peace growing in strength, it has appre- ciably weakened. There are grumblings, no doubt, that not enough Liberal Magistrates have been made, but practically no one now asks for the total abolition of the Justices and the substitution of Stipendiaries. No doubt there are limits to all things, and if four or five thousand Peers were called into existence the institution of the Peerage as we know it would succumb ; but considering the population of these islands, it can hardly be said that a thousand Peers would be an impossible number for a respectable nobility. Without going into the exact figures, one may say that the proportion of Peers to commoners would. not be much greater than it was a, hundred years ago.
But perhaps we shall be told that this notion that the Peerage might ultimately be strengthened rather than destroyed by the creation of five hundred Peers is absurd, because the creation of the five hundred Peers would certainly be followed by the total abolition of all hereditary titles, or at any rate of hereditary peerages. We very much doubt it. In the first place, we question whether the new Peers, though they might not perhaps be willing to speak loudly on the point in public, would consent to their coronets being knocked off their heads. But even if this were not so, we expect that the wiser minds in the Government would see the disadvantage of being unable to create Peers. The creation of Peers in our system very often makes the path of a Ministry smooth where it would. otherwise be hard, and we should be very much surprised if the Prime Minister and the Whips, who know most about such matters, would deprive themselves of this easy way of rewarding party services. The only people who would really gain by the abolition of the Peerage would be the old Peers, for no matter what Acts might pass officially abolishing titles, they would still retain theirs. You cannot make it a penal offence to address a Duke in a letter as " Dear Duke of —," or prevent his friends, relations, and acquaintances, and indeed the public generally, from referring to him as "The Duke of —." The Mackintosh is no less The Mackintosh because be has no official right to the title and no official precedence. The Duke of Norfolk would be known throughout England. as the Duke of Norfolk even if rates and taxes were levied upon him as Mr. Howard.. Courtesy titles are as real as legal titles.
It is rumoured that when the New Year honours appear on Monday there will be a very long list of new peerages,—a creation which will be intended to sho'w that the Government are quite capable of doubling the numbers of the House of Lords if, as they would say, they are compelled to do so. We have no doubt that the list will be an excellent one, and that all the persons receiving the peerages will be above criticism. But we cannot believe that the result will be to frighten the Peers. On the contrary, we should imagine that the result would be just the reverse, and would make the Peers recognise that after all the idea is not so terrible as had been asserted. We have never been among those who thought that the creation of five hundred Peers was a physical, any more than a legal or Constitutional, impossibility. As we pointed out about a year ago, the Govern- ment would probably compile their list by taking first the heirs to the existing Liberal peerages and any Liberal Honourables who were suitable. They would then no doubt turn all the Liberal Baronets who would agree into Peers, and also make their eldest sons Peers. Further, they would find amongst the Liberal Privy Councillors a -very large ntunber of persons who could easily be ooronetted. Next, there are still quite a considerable number of big Liberal squires who could probably be induced to accept peerages if a sufficiently strong party appeal were made to them. Finally, the great provincial towns would yield quite a large supply of wealthy business men for the five hundred. In almost all the great towns four or Eve prominent citizens would be found willing to become members, we will not say of the House of Lords, for, as we have shown, that must immediately come to an end, but of the new body which would in all probability be the constituency of a large section of the Second Chamber.
We must end as we began, by pointing out that this article is in no way intended to be an incitement to the Peers to throw out the Veto Bill and to force the Government to do their worst. On the whole, assuming that the Government will make some reasonable con- cessions, we expect the Veto Bill will be carried without the creation of Peers. All we want to do is to make it clear that it must not be supposed that the creation of Peers is so appalling a thing that the Lords must yield to the mere threat of it. If the worst came to the worst, the political skies would not fall. In all human probability, however, the worst will not come to the worst. The Peers, we believe, fully recognise that the last General Election must be regarded as the verdict of the country in favour, we will not say of the Parliament Bill, but of the Government's policy generally for dealing with the House of Lords. But when we say this we must remember that the Government, as we pointed out last week, have never said that the existing Parliament Bill and its preamble are the absolutely last word on the Constitutional question. On the contrary, Mr. Lloyd George has told us that if their political opponents can produce a better plan, the Government will be quite ready to accept it. It behoves the Unionist Party, then, to put forward their proposals for ending the Constitutional deadlock.
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