Mr. Asquith, speaking at Leven on Tuesday night, dealt with
the House of Lords. Was it the last word of political wisdom, at the end of the nineteenth century, that the deci- sions of the representatives of the people should be subject to being indefinitely postponed or persistently thwarted by a body in whose selection they had no voice, but who sat there by the arbitrary dictate and uncontrollable law of hereditary succession P Unless this is mere rhetoric, it is an absolute condemnation of the hereditary principle. Yet Mr. Asquith's leader not a fortnight ago strengthened that
principle in the persons of four new Peers. The troth is, the Home-rule party is hopelessly at sixes and sevens on the question of the Lords. One section wants to be made Peers, another section wants to abolish all titles, a third is for life- peerages and a strong Second House, a fourth is for a single unchecked Chamber. The only person who is not keenly in love with his own scheme is poor Lord Rosebery. He once was a strong Second Chamber man, but now he halts irreso- lute, and waits for a mandate.
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