Lord Hugh Cecil made a strong speech at Greenwich on
Monday in support of Mr. Benn, the Unionist and Tariff Reform candidate. He could not admit that the Lords had acted unconstitutionally in rejecting the Budget. At the same time, he was strongly in favour of reforming the House of Lords. He did not, however, agree that it was necessarily improper to have the hereditary principle in their political machine ; otherwise he could not support the Monarchy. What they wanted was not to diminish but, if possible, to increase the powers of administration of the Second Chamber. "It was essential that the Second Chamber should be preservative, and they could not have invented a Second Chamber which could have been less hostile to the present Government." Of all the issues before the country, Home-rule was the most threatening and dangerous to the national safety, and if they once abandoned the Second Chamber no safeguard remained against its establishment.
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