The Lords and the Birch Because something under 7 per
cent. of the House of Lords has so determined the whipping of juvenile offenders is not to be prohibited. The House of Commons has twice decided without a division that it should be, but their Lordships' House has twice decided, the second time by a vote of 41 to 33, that it should not ; and since a prolongation of the controversy in the last week of the session would endanger the Bill, the Commons have reluctantly acquiesced. The matter is of no great importance, for magistrates need not order whippings unless they like. But from a constitutional point of view the spectacle of forty-one members of a non- elected House whose benches are habitually empty overruling the considered decision of an elected House whose benches are habitually full suggests certain reflections very forcibly.
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