1(i1)ICS OF TH16 DAY.

ELECTION PREPARATION: PLANS FOR REFORMING THE PEERS.

THE Reformers will do well to make ready for a General Election before Easter. There is but one course for the Ministers to (+nose, unless they declare themselves hors de combat, and re- linquish the field to their foes. That one course is, to lay before Parliament such measures as deserve and will receive po- pular support ; and, upon the rejection or muti'ation of the first of these—the Irish Municipal Bill, for instance—by the Irresponsible House, to " go to the country." We cannot defend this policy as strictly logical. It seems rather absurd to dissolve the House of Commons, in which the Minister has already a majority, because the Peers are non-compliant: but it is taken for granted, that the only chance of persuading the Peers to yield, is by adducing proof that the country is against them—which at present they deny. The King., also, it is surmised, will require another verdict from the electors, before he will be prevailed upon to give his Ministers the support they require. Logical or illogical, the belief prevails that an election will take place early in the spring : an expecta- tion arising front the feeling that Ministers cannot get on without one—not from any direct intimation of their intention to dissolve Parliament ; for we question whether as yet they have come to any determination, or had any communing on the subject. If, however, this anticipation should, as is sometimes the case,be the father, as the forerunner of its own fulfilment, it is probable that, with a view to get through the business of the session before the shooting-season, the present Parliament will assemble in the mid- dle of January, be dissolved about the end of February, and a new onto be summoned for the following April. In order to be prepared for the General Election, the Liberals should lose no time in deciding upon the course they intend to take on certain great questions. No doubt, that on which most difficulty will arise, is PEERAGE REFORM. But it cannot be shirked. Though we look for no immediate settlement of the question, let us seize the opportunity of advancing it a stage, by securing the return of many Members disposed to give it fair play. All that it will be necessary for Liberal constituencies to determine is, whether or not, by some means or other, the power of the House of Peers to bring legislation to a dead-leek, by systematically thwarting the Representatives of the People, shall be destroyed or checked. The modes by which this end might be reached are so various, that it is not worth while, in the present state of the question, to insist upon any one. Would the Govern- ment bring forward any plan of Peerage Reform, which should con- tain the grand principle of responsibility, doubtless it would soon be taken up by the country with as much ardour as the House of Commons Reform of Earl Grow, even although it differed in details from any one of the schemes lately propounded. Earl GREY was not the first Reformer,—" vi:are fortes" long before that aged Earl; but the scheme which he, functioned was thought so extensive. and seemed so effectual tig anysiits step, that the country adopted it at once, and forced it on K4t.cf a'.. Peers. So it would be even now, we are persuaded, if .st- °VANE, being himself con- verted in the first place, sho g, forward a projet of

Pterage Reform, and support ' • .-ef the Gotern-

ment. Because we expect nothing-. .at present, neither can we expect the utmost exertions of lftif country's energies for the carrying of Peerage Reform : but we can andflo expect a step to be made in that direction ; and therefore it is that we advise all those constituencies in which decided Liberalism preponderates, to stipulate that their Representatives shall consider and mature some plan of putting an end to the evils of irresponsible legislative power in the House of Lords.

Though we certainly do not believe that the question will be

ripe for settlement at next Easter, nor, of course, at the General Election which will probably take place in April, yet, knowing how much the cause of Commons Reform in Earl GREY'S time was aided by tho discussions of a bygone period, we rejoice at the examination to which every suggestion for improving the consti- tution of the House of Peers is subject, and the attention it attracts. These projects, as the readers of the Spectator know, are various; ea-:h having its advantages and defects, either in- trinsically, or in connexion with popular prejudices and opinions.

A simpleton in the Globe, this week, being hard put to it in an affair with the new Liberal Morning Paper, endeavoured to get out of the scrape by arguing as if his opponent had recom- mended a single Legislative Chamber ; and when required to point out any such recommendation in the Constitutional, referred, instead, to the Spectator; who, said the Globe, " when he tried the other day to bring forth a project for reforming the Lords, brought forth a preject for doing without them, and seemed not at all aware of the di fference."—ludeed! Not quite so unconscious as the simple Globe supposes. That journal either is unaware of the origin, or cannot comprehend the nature, of the Spectator's late controversy with the Standard, and had better keep its fingers out of a tire in which they are sure to be burnt. The Standard challenged the Spectator to show that a single Legislative Chamber, to which men of all ranks would be eligible, would not lead to despotism. This challenge we took up; we defended a position which the Tories deemed the most exposed and vul- nerable of ally. But had we been dislodged from it, we should not therefore have displayed the white feather, or given up Peerage Reform. The project whose paternity the Globe attri. butes to the Spectator, was in reality a suggestion which the Standard called upon us to defend or abandon. It was not our plan of Peerage Reform; for we have not, as yet, promulgated any, though we have occasionally explained and partly discussed several.

The arguments in favour of only one Chamber, we need not now recapitulate. Valeant quantum. Certainly no imperative cause

why the vigour of such an assembly should degenerate into despo- tism, or why sufficient precaution should not be taken against haste.and want of deliberation in its decisions—the main objec- tions urged against the plan of a single Chamber—has yet been made out.

On the supposition that a Second Chamber is desirable as a court of revision—as an assembly which could bring the results of experience and greater calmness of deliberation to the correc- tion of measures carried under the immediate influence of the popular feeling,—on this supposition, we can imagine, that out of a Chamber whose members were chosen directly by the People, it would be practicable, nay easy, to select a body of grave and wise senators, whom all men would respect : such, for example, as the Norwegian Storthing, whose functions and constitution we were lately led to consider in the literary department of our journal. But then, we should require that the primary assembly, by and frsm whom those respected senators were chosen, should them-

selves be elected by a more extended constituency than the pre- sent Parliamentary constituency, and by a method that would in- sure the free exercise of the franchise. Neither would we

exclude from that assembly any member of the Peerage. To this

plan, we imagine, it would be objected—that having the élite of the country already in the House, there would be no occasion for any other, seeing that, by internal regulations, deliberate exami-

nation of measures and abundant caution in passing them might be secured.

Mr. O'CONNELL'S scheme of an Upper Chamber suggests, that out of the whole Peerage of the Three Kingdoms, a House of Lords, not very numerous, should be elected by all householders, divided into districts in a ratio corresponding with that of the population. But why out of the Peerage only ? Why not select a Senate out of the best men in the country, be they Peers or Commoners ? Peers, however, chosen by the country, and liable to be turned out periodically, would make an infinitely better court of review than the present House of Lords.

It has been proposed that a limited number of Peers should be chosen by the Peers themselves out of their own body, after the fashion of the Scotch Sixteen. But we doubt whether, in the present state of the Peerage, there would be much difference be- tween the existing House of Lords and a body so chosen, except that probably the small minority of Liberal Peers at present in the Upper House would be excluded. If, as a preliminary to such a measure, a very large creation of Liberal Peers were made, it might indeed get us over the present difficulty, but by and by, little respect would be paid to an assembly which would be mani- festly the mere instrument of a party, and the party not that of the People, but of the King and courtiers, or at best the Minister of the day.

In Colonel Trimmest's ingenious Letters to the Constituency of Hull, the question of Peerage Reform is taken up ; and, im- proving on Mr. O'CONNELL'S plan, the gallant Colonel suggests that the same electors who choose the House of Commons should select an Upper Chamber from among the Lords, to sit for a longer period than the Commons, and to vacate their seats in portions, after the fashion adopted in our Municipal Councils ; thus preserving the "continuity of the assembly" in the same manner as if the vacancies were left to occur by death and to be supplied as they arose. Each constituency now electing two Members might send one to the Commons and another to the Lords : those electing only one Member might club together. In this manner, the Colonel thinks we should have an assembly that would fulfil the only rational condition of a Second Chamber,— namely, one that would combine the "feeling of an aggregate of years with the feeling of the present.", Hera again it might be asked, why may not the 'feeling of the present" be sufficiently checked by arrangements which should delay the passing of mea- sures not sanctioned by a certain majority, for one, two, or three sessions ? This would perhaps be a more efficient safeguard against the passing of measures spurred on by "the feeling of the present," than a Second Chamber which might share in the " momentary " feeling to the full, and be as eager as the First Chamber to make laws on the spur of the occasion. "A suspensive veto" has been proposed—first, we believe, by Mr. ROEBUCK. On this plan, which has the recommendation of simplicity, the House of Lords would be allowed to reject a bill passed by the Commons, twice, but not a third time, for the third passing in the Commons would make it law. But what regula- tion would be made with respect to amendments? If the Peers were permitted to "amend" a bill, they would by degrees knock all the life out of it, and still be within the limits of the constitu- tion as modified by the suspensive veto. If they were not allowed to alter a bill passed twice or three times by the Commons, they would become a mere chamber for registering the acts of their masters. A Legislative Chamber deprived of the power of reject- ing bills, would rapidly fall into uselessness and contempt : which perhaps was the desideratum. A House of Lords elected by a constituency of a higher pecu- niary qualification than that which chooses the House of Commons, would be liable to the objection of acting under influences hostile to the masses. If such a plan of Peerage Reform were adopted, an extension of the constituency for electing the House of Com- mons—something very like universal suffrage—would be required, in order to give the masses their due weight in the Government ; and even then it might happen that the same clashing of hostile interests which now offends us, might occur. Under the existing system, with all its elaborate artifices and guards against the people, we see the evils of the 10/. qualification—the scope it affords to litigation, fraud, and the jealousy of those who, equal or superior, it may be, in every other respect, do not or cannot live in ten-pound houses. Who will maintain the abstract justice of excluding any tax-paying citizen from a share in electing the men who tax him and make laws which be is compelled to obey ?

The Whigs have a scheme of Peerage Reform ; and thoroughly Whiggish it is. The Holland House clique have propounded '4 in their Edinburgh Review. According to this sage plan, hereditary Peers are to be qualified by a previous apprenticeship in the House of Commons. Mensvho have contrived to cheat the electors of any place, however small and contemptible, twice, are to be privileged to make laws for the community as long as they live ; for, once in the Upper House, they are to be as irresponsible as the present members of that assembly,—who, by the way, are all to remain there. Thus, Launceston, Woodstock, Caine, Rich- mond, Eye, St. Ives, Thirsk, Wareham, Chippenham, and Cardiff; would furnish a supply of irresponsible legislators every way as worthy and popular as Lord ASHBURTON or Lord LYNDHURST. From this plan, it will be observed, responsibility and present elec- tion by the people are carefully excluded. It is scarcely worth this brief notice ; and we should not have mentioned it, except to com- plete our catalogue of the various schemes which have been laid before the public for reforming the Peers.

Let each and all of them be carefully considered. It may hap- pen, as we hinted last week, that in the fulness of time, and rather suddenly after long-enduring patience is worn out, the House of Commons, finding the House of Lords stopping the passage of some earnestly-desired measure, may remove the obstruction at once, by declaring the consent of the Peers unnecessary to the

validity of a law. But we must not calculate on so summary an

issue ; and therefore, when, in the course of two or three months, our Representatives reappear before us for election, it will be well if we are prepared to talk with them about the various modes of preventing a recurrence of that which made the last session, as Lord LYNDHURST insultingly tells us, productive of "nothing."