SECOND CHAMBERS.*

MR. MARRIOTT'S book appears at a most opportune moment; in fact, at so opportune a moment that he feels obliged in his preface to protest against its being regarded merely as a livre de eireon,stance. In this protest he is completely justified, for the last charges that could be brought against his work are those of superficiality or partisanship. The greater part of it is occupied by a presentation of fact which is admirable for its impartiality, and the same judicial spirit characterises the final chapter, in the course of which the author arrives at his conclusions. " With the abstract considerations for and against a Second Chamber," says Mr. Marriott, " I am not greatly concerned. They have long since become the common- place of the debating society. But their appeal leaves both the student and the statesman unmoved The only satisfactory appeal, I venture to submit, is the appeal to history ; the only safe guide, that of experience." We find, therefore, in this book what many newspaper-readers must have longed for during the last few months,—namely, an historical and descriptive account of the Second Chambers in the principal States of the world, and particularly of their relations with the other instruments of government.

Mr. Marriott begins by giving a history of the develop- ment of the House of Lords, and a suggestive description of the adventures that befell the English Constitution during the years of the Commonwealth. With the lessons to be derived from these events our readers will be familiar ; and we may therefore pass to the central division of the book, which describes chiefly the Second Chambers of the United States, Germany, and our own oversee Dominions.

Of all Second Chambers, the American Senate, Mr. Marriott tells us, is perhaps the strongest and most efficient :-

" Its legislative authority is, except in regard to finance, co- ordinate with that of the House of Representatives, and is exercised with a freedom to which many Second Chambers are

strangers Finance Bills must originate in the House of Representatives, but the Senate enjoys and exercises the same powers of amendment and rejection in regard to these, as in regard to other Bills."

Much of this power would doubtless have been found hard to tolerate had it not been possible to point to a raison d'etre for the Senate clearly different from that of the Lower House. "The Senate," we are told, "came into being primarily as a preservative of the rights of the smaller States It represents not the peoples, but the legislatures of the con- stituent States of the Union." Mr. Marriott enlarges in an interesting paragraph on the importance of this " popular intelligibility " :—

" The House of Lords is of course conspicuously fortunate in this respect. Its position rests on a principle which if no longer generally accepted is at least clearly intelligible. But the American Senate is at no disadvantage here. It also, as I have shown, is the result of a natural and native evolution, and it rests on a principle which is not less intelligible than hereditary succes- sion. Further, it is a principle which differentiates it from the House of Representatives just as clearly as the principle of birth differentiates the hereditary House of Lords from the elected House of Commons. And to secure an intelligible differentia for a Second Chamber is, as publicists are never weary of insisting, a point of immense importance and immense difficulty in constitu- tion-making. That difficulty has been a great stumbling-block in France, and hardly less so, as we shall see, in the case of our own colonial constitutions."

The German Bundesrath is similar to the American Senate in so far as it is essentially federal in character. But its members are appointed not by the Legislatures but by the Executives of the constituent States. " The true conception of the Bundesrath," says Lowell, "is that of an assembly of the sovereigns of the States who appear in the persons of their representatives." Moreover, its powers are very much greater than those of the Reichstag, for " most Bills (including Finance Bills) are initiated in the Bundesrath, and all, after receiving the approval of the Reichstag, return to it before passing into law."

• Sectrnd Chamlrers an Inductive Study in Political Science. By J. A. B.. Marriott, M.A. Orford at the Clarendon Press. [5s. net.]

The first of the Colonies to be dealt with by Mr. Marriott is Canada, where

"the Constitution declares that money Bills must originate in the House of Commons, and must be recommended to that House by the Governor. As to the Senate's right of amendment or rejection, the Constitution is silent."

Deadlocks between the two Houses do not occur in Canada, for the simple reason that nominations to vacancies in the Senate are made by the Governor-General on the advice of his Ministers. The Upper House thus gradually assumes the political colour of the majority in the Lower House. It is no doubt partly in consequence of this fact that the Canadian Senate " has so far signally failed to attain the prestige which has long since accrued to the American Senate."

In Australia the power of the Senate is

" drawn from precisely the same source as the Lower House, and it is drawn, as Mr. Wise points out, ' in the concentrated form of support from large constituencies,' with the result that it is the only Upper House in the world which is less conservative than the Lower The Chamber,' says Mr. Brand, ' which is usually supposed to act as a drag on revolutionary legislation has largely occupied itself in passing academic resolutions in favour of the nationalization of all means employed in the pro- duction and distribution of wealth and other projects of a Socialistic character.' "

The Constitution provides that Money Bills must originate in the Lower House, and that the Senate may reject but may not amend them. If the Senate rejects a Bill passed by the Lower

House twice in three months, there is a dissolution of both.

Houses ; and if after this the Senate rejects the Bill a third time, the two Houses sit and vote together, and the Bill thus

passed becomes law. A similar arrangement is made by the new South African Constitution. But here the joint meeting is summoned after the Bill has been rejected in two successive Sessions, without the intervention of a General Election. " In the case of a Money Bill the procedure is even more stringent ; for the joint sitting may be convened during the same Session in which the Senate ' rejects or fails to pass such Bill."

But all the Second Chambers which we have hitherto mentioned differ from the House of Lords, as Mr. Marriott himself points out, in the important respect that they represent the federal principle in federal States. This being so, it is perhaps to be regretted that he has not dealt at greater length with the Upper Houses in " unitary " Constitutions.

He devotes considerable space, however, to the French Senate ; and gives a short account of the conditions in other countries. We may quote a part of his summarised information :—

" The hereditary principle—at least as an exclusive principle— has been on every hand abandoned. Austria, Hungary, Spain, Russia, and Prussia retain it in conjunction with others, but Hungary is the only State except England where the hereditary Peers command a majority. The nominee system, pure and simple, has been adopted in Turkey, Italy, Portugal, and Canada ; and in part, in Austria, Hungary, Spain, Denmark, and South Africa ; the elective system sans phrase in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, the Australian Commonwealth, the United States of America, and the South American Republics. Several Upper Houses, such as those of Spain and Prussia, combine the elective principle with one or both of the others."

In his last chapter Mr. Marriott, after passing in review. the evidence which he has collected, discusses its bearing upon the practical question of the future of the House of

Lords. With his conclusions we cannot here deal; but we may remark that he agrees in general with the Report of Lord Rosebery's Committee, though he is anxious, by the admission of representatives of the Dependencies, to give to the House of Lords the federal character possessed by so many of the Second Chambers which he discusses. We will

content ourselves with selecting a passage which his opponents will find difficulty in answering:—

"Fortune has provided this country with a Second Chamber

which has many merits and some obvious defects. Putting mere party tactics on one side, is it the part of political wisdom either to endeavour to destroy, or to refuse to amend it Should this question evoke an affirmative answer, the argument of this book will have been elaborated in vain. But I venture to submit that it is in reality impossible to resist the conclusion to which that argument points. The world, by a sober and con- sidered and unanimous verdict, has affirmed its belief in the necessity of a Second Chamber. Uni-cameral experiments have been tried and failed."

May the politician learn to profit from the lessons taught in this volume by history and common-sense!