LETTE KS TO THE EDITOR.
REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE ..sescraron."] ST,—The Education Bill seems likely to raise seriously the question of the House of Lords, one which, being vital to the whole commonwealth, ought surely to be settled, if possible, not by passion or party, but by statesmanship in its calmest and most deliberate mood. The House of Lords, as we who are not Home-rulers think, by its last memorable act saved the unity of the nation. But hereditary legislation belongs to the put. The history of the House of Lords for a long time back will be found to be one of obstruction, over- come, not by reflection, but by fear. If the Lords could have prevailed, there would have been no important reform. In its resistance to reform of Parliament it brought the nation to the verge of revolution. The anomalous union of a judicial Court of Appeal with a Legislative Assembly marks the feudal origin and character of the institution. It is a relic of the time in which the legislative, executive, and judicial functions lay enfolded in the same germ. In its native era the House of Lords, though feudal, was not obstructive. The Baronage carried the Great Charter. The task now proposed to British statesmanship is in effect that of converting an estate of the feudal realm into a Chamber of legislative revision, or Senate. A. slight move- ment in that direction has been made in bestowing peerages on such men as Lord Blachford and Lord Hobbouse. But wealth to support hereditary title must still be a requisite, except in the case of the childless. A special reason for prompt attention to the question is that the House of Lords has now lost in great measure that support of a strong territorial party in the House of Commons to which it largely owed He remaining
power. The list of the Privy Council as it stands would almost furnish that of a Senate. That a Second Chamber, or something equivalent to it, is needed only unlimited faith in democracy can deny. Wisdom herself must sometimes be beholden to a second thought. Moreover, the rivalries of class, now becoming marked, call for mediation. There must be some- thing to prevent injustice being done by the class that has many votes to the class that has few. The claims of party were once waived on a question incident to Parliamentary reform. Is it possible that on a question of infinitely greater and more lasting importance to the nation they should be
waived once more ?—I am, Sir, &c., GOLDWIN SMITH.. Toronto.
P.S.—The Whip of the Labour section of the Liberal Party has just been my guest.. Does not the sectional title suggest that party government, the offspring of the struggle between the Hanoverians and the Stuarts, as well as the hereditary principle, is superannuated, and that the parties are in course of dissolution ?
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