EARL RUSSELL ON LIFE PEERAGES.
EARL RUSSELL'S Reform Bill for the House of Lords is a very small measure, and unless greatly amended in Committee will prove a very useless one. As if stands, it will enable the Ministry of the day to seat a few Judges who are not rich enough to accept Hereditary Peerages, to reward a few officials who have done work in the Colonies or India, and perhaps to decorate a man of letters, a sculptor, or a professor, but that is all ; and it is hardly worth while for such ends to create a new caste and begin a constitutional innovation. Before it was introduced, it was supposed that the main object of the Bill would be to increase the strength of the House of Lords, but the draftsman has carefully provided against any such result to the measure. The number of Life Peers, in the first place, is limited to twenty-eight, just enough to neutralize the Bench of Bishops, but not enough to secure the new men decided weight in the House, and they are only to be appointed at the rate of four a year for the next seven years. A limit is necessary, but surely four life peerages a year might be granted without reference to the number in the House ? They could never exceed 120, or one-fourth of the House, even then, and probably would never reach 100. Then, although, as Lord Salisbury showed, the greatest defect of the House is the absence of variety in its members, a sameness of tone which almost precludes debate, it is carefully provided that the Life Peers shall be as like the Hereditary Peers as it is possible to make them, shall represent just the same ideas and careers and habitudes of social life. The highest prerogative of the Crown, its right to select those it deems worthy of honour, is suppressed, in order to limit its choice by law to the classes who are already most fully represented. The House needs nothing so much as the presence of a few men of business, who really understand affairs, and the way in which the action of Government affects the prosperity of the people ; but no banker, or merchant, or financier, or manufacturer, or master of labour, or colonist, or shipowner, or philanthropist can be admitted under this Bill, unless he has sat in the Commons for ten years, and has therefore a tolerably safe seat which he will be unwilling to give up. After such men, trained administrators, chiefs of departments, men who know from experience where the difficulties of action lie, where such and such a measure is likely to break down, how such and such an administrative reform could be made without endangering the machine, would be most valuable, but they are excluded unless they have served abroad. Sir Charles Trevelyan, for example, could only be admitted because of his Indian failures, his English successes being accounted so many disqualifications. The usefulness of such men would be all the greater, because they, like the Judges, are precluded by law from sitting in the Commons, and the benefit of their immense experience is thus entirely lost to debate. The clergy, again, who might be invaluable as counterpoises to the Bishops, whose inutility in debate is mainly caused by the restraint of their offices, are excluded, as are all Catholic Bishops,—everybody, in fact, who could bring distinctive knowledge or exceptional experience or representative force to add to the reality of the Peers' debates. The new dignities are confined by law to six classes, most of which are already amply represented. Scotch and Irish Peers, for example, are qualified by right of birth, a proviso which would be grotesque, were it not really intended to deprive Lord Derby and the Duke of Buccleugh of their existing monopoly in the distribution of representative seats. A few more Judges might, no doubt, be acquisitions, and one or two of the highest Colonial and Indian officials ; but they will only slightly increase the Capacities already existing in the House, and will not widen their range. As to soldiers and sailors, we doubt if either pro
fession will thank Earl Russell for depriving them of the pensions which are now the best of their scanty rewards, and even if they fail to detect that consequence of the change, the gain to the House of Lords will be quite illusory. Soldiers and sailors of eminence, if too poor to accept peerages, will also be too poor to renounce the active duties of their profession, which, in nine cases out of ten, will be inconsistent with their attendance in the House, and it is there, not abroad, that the Peerage wants the services of recruits. Of passed members of the Commons the House has already too many, and the only really new elements introduced are the persons defined as "eminent in art, science, or literature,"• classes whom it might be well to honour,—though we believe they would lose rather than gain by seeking such honours,—but who would rarely, in their distinctive character, add much to the strength of the House. Of the three examples usually quoted, Lord Macaulay was essentially a politician who used literature to propagate certain political ideas, Lord Lytton rose to the Cabinet before he became a Peer, and Lord Houghton belonged essentially by fortune, position, and connections to the hereditary aristo cracy. No doubt the House would be the stronger for the admission of such men as the late Mr. Hallam, or Mr. J. S. Mill, or Mr. Kinglako, but it is not necessary for their saketo limit the prerogative.
This appears to us the point of the whole matter. An addition of twenty-eight Life Peers will not change the constitution of the Lords as it needs to be changed, if it is ever again to be an effective body ; but still oven twenty-eight strong men would increase its apparent energy, and that is so much gained. But the way to obtain such men is to leave the Minister of the day unfettered in his choice, not to tie his hands by restrictions which limit his selection to the older men in certain departments of the public service, to worn-out members of the House of Commons, and to the best known members of the literary class, for that is the real meaning of the adjective "eminent." There may be persons in all those classes who would be welcome additions to the strength of the Upper House, but a Minister is not the more likely to choose them because lie is debarred from selecting from other classes besides. It may be said that if left unfettered he would job, but we fail entirely to perceive how jobbery can be his interest. Men of mere wealth will not seek the Life Peerages while hereditary peerages can be obtained with so much less pressure—for wealth being granted, the public does not rigidly scrutinize the qualifications of new Peers,—and no other interest can be so pressing with the parties as that of securing able debaters on their own side. Even the Tories will feel this, for with all their secure majority, they do not like to be hopelessly distanced in debate, and for the Liberals the ability of their supporters in the Lords is matter of life and death. They have no hope of a majority, and unless they can win by argument, or at least give their opponents fair excuses for non-resistance, they are powerless in the Upper House, and even now they are casting about on all sides for recruits. So far from limiting the choice of Ministers, we believe it would be well for the country if they could exercise it without the social restrictions which in any case will weigh so heavily, and could make of these life-seats a substitute for the old nominee boroughs, stepping-stones by which men of promise, unable to enter the House of Commons, could obtain their places in public life. There would be animation enough in debates then, we may depend on it ; and it is animation, life, variety, eagerness, pugnacity which the House of Lords needs to reinvigorate it,—an infusion of new blood, not an addition to its usefulness as a distinguished retreat for the successful. Lord Salisbury sees this, and says it ; but he will not obtain what he wants by making the House, as he advises, still more representative of the rich. He is longing, as he admits, for a fight ; but ho will not get it out of the millionaires, who are at heart just Peers in all things but their courage, their independence, and their tone of men of the world. Whether he can get it at all, whether the day for the reform of the Lords has not gone by, may be doubted ; but clearly its only chance of increased influence is the display of increased energy, and the way to secure that is to rely on the self-interest which will move the Premier of the day to strengthen his intellectual position in the House of Lords. Even without the restrictions, the reform will be a small one ; but with them it would simply add a new and not very attractive order to the Peerage.
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