Mr. Haldane, whose a )sense from the political arena owing
to illness has been a matter of general regret, has issued his election address. It is happily free from the strident accents with which we have become so painfully familiar of late, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in the passages dealing with the House of Lords. There is no question, he emphati- cally asserts, whether there should be one instead of two Chambers. " We Liberals greatly value our unwritten, and therefore elastic, Constitution." But the Peers have " violated the body of Constitutional usage, the observance of which could alone have rendered its existence tolerable in a demo- cratic system," and forced the Government to " undertake a process of Constitutional reconstruction which will require time, and also the closest and most careful consideration." The object of this reconstruction is to render the Second Chamber "responsive to public opinion, which it is not at present," and to bring this about " we must take the pre- liminary step of making unwritten usages binding by legisla- tion." But Mr. Haldane explicitly states that " we need a Second Chamber." The moderate tone of the address and its insistence on leisurely and careful methods are difficult to reconcile with the views of those Liberal politicians who are setting the pace of the party. Mr. Haldane wants careful and well-considered reconstruction of the House of Lords, while they are clamouring for its speedy destruction.
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