TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND THE LAND BILLS.
THIS, brute is most ill-tempered. When attacked it defends itself." The naturalist's famous descrip- tion of the badger is recalled by what the ordinary official Liberals- and Radicals are saving just now in regard to the action. of the House of Lords. In the Press and in the lobbies. Of. the House of Commons the utmost indignation and surprise are expressed that the Lords should have dared. to act so stoutly in the matter of the Scottish Holdings 'Bill, and should have refused to let their pro- ceedings.' be controlled by the desires of the Government. According to Ministerial writers and speakers, a properly hehavecIllouse of Lords—a House of Lords mindful of its own, weakness and double dose of original sin—ought to ao one of two things. Either it ought to throw out Bina altogether, and so make itself an easy and obvious objeCt'fOr the oratorical fury of Recess orators, or else it ought `to accept with humbleness and docility—in fine, viithoUt serious amendment—any Bills that are sent up to -it.' Instead of adopting either plan, the Lords have had the temerity to postpone the second reading of the Scottish Bill till the English Bill is before them. Furthermore, they are credited, and we do not doubt justly credited, with the intention of passing the English Bill as on the whole a fairly satisfactory measure, but incorporating with it provisions which will make it apply to. the Lowlands of Scotland. This done, it will be quite possible for the House of Lords to restrict the Scottish gill to, the Highlands, that is, to the crofting districts, in regard to which a certain case may be made out for legislation. In this way the House, of Lords will prevent very great and serious injury being done to agriculture in the Lowlands, while at the same time freeing itself from the accusation that it is refusing to allow the GOvernment to see whether it will not be possible to do by their legislative schemes what we all want,—to increase the number of small cultivators in the United Kingdom.
Hardly any pretence is made by the Government's sup- porters as to the ground of their annoyance with the Lords. What they really complain of is not the refusal to crofterise the Lowlands, but the wickedness of the Lords in daring to think and act for themselves. A little reflection, however, must surely show these indignant Liberals that this sudden independence which so much annoys thorn is in truth the direct outcome of their own vehement campaign against the Peers. They cannot have it both ways. They cannot threaten the Peers with the destruction of their legislative powers, which is, in fact, what is going to be proposed next Session, and at the same time expect them not to use those powers of legislation while they still possess them. If you tell a man with certain rights of fishing in a stream that in your opinion he has misused those rights, that they ought never to have belonged to him, and that at any rate you are going to deprive him of them next year, it is only in human nature that he will fish those waters " for all he 'is worth " while they are still in his possession. If the Lords had been told that, granted they did not narrei With the Commons this Session and thus show themselves in the eyes of Liberals still capable of elerciaing legislative functions, they would not be destroyed, they might have had some ground for passing tlin • Government Bills even if they did not approve of t hem. Since, however, they know that the attack is to fall upon them whatever they do, they very naturally are dete'rmined to die game. " One may as well be hanged 'for a sheep as a lamb " is a maxim which appeals to all mankind. The Peers feel that they can now hope for: no mercy from the Liberals. All that they have .got to think . of then is how to justify themselves before. the country—how to justify their existence as that ,second . and revising chamber which all reasonable men admit the nation, as a whole, desires as a check upon the House of Commons. But the Peers know well enough that the way to do this is not to acquiesce dumbly in all that is .proposed by the House of Commons. They remember, instead, that the role of the revisers is to revise. We have said enough to show that we consider that the plan of campaign developed by the Lords was an inevitable result of the attack made upon them by the Prime Minister. In the circumstances their obvious course was to defend themselves by the form of counter-attack which they have adopted.. Beyond this, however, we are convinced that they are justified in their treatment of the Scottish Bill purely on the merits of the case. It is said that they would not have dared to do what they have done had not Lord Rosebery, an ex-Liberal Prime Minister, been found to lead the opposition to the Bill. That suggestion is ingenious, but by no means adequate. No doubt Lord Rosebery's speech had a very marked effect upon the situation, but we are inclined to think that the effect produced was due, not to Lord Rosebery being a Liberal, but to the fact that he is admitted by Peers and Commoners to have an unrivalled knowledge of Scottish affairs and also of Scottish public opinion. The Peers, naturally enough, do not want to put Scotland as a whole against them. But when they found Lord Rosebery prepared to vouch for the fact that the .best Scottish opinion is by no means on the Government side, they naturally regarded such an assurance as of prime import- ance. An even stronger factor, however, in producing the result which was no doubt produced by Lord. Rosebery's speech, was the circumstance that the weight of argu- ment was unquestionably with him. He was able to show with merciless commonsense how inopportune at the best, and how injurious at. the worst, are the major part of the Government's proposals. His speech made it abun- dantly clear that the Scottish Bill is a bad Bill, so bad, indeed,. that even its most ingenious defenders are in- capable of making out a case for it. Lord Rosebery's speech, in short, produced. the effect it did, not because he was a Liberal opposing a Liberal Government—such action on his part has been discounted by his previous opposition to the Ministry—but because be is recognised as the greatest living expert on Scottish affairs, and because his criticisms tore every shred of defence from the measure. No doubt Lord Balfour of Burleigh's wise mind and pro- found experience of Scottish administration, and also of the Scottish people, tended to exercise a, similar influence on the House ; but by the nature of things his opposition was less moving. As a strong, Conservative, as a member of the late Government, and, again, as a determined Free- trader, who does not keep his Free-trade views purely for external exchanges, his opposition to the Bill was inevitable, and contained no element of surprise. On the other hand, Lord Rosebery's indignant refusal to assent to the chief proposals of the Bill was in the case :of the majority of the Peers unexpected, and therefore all the more striking.
What line the Government mean to take in regard to the Lords' plan of campaign remains to be seen. Are they prepared to refuse to allow the English Bill to be applied to the Lowlands, or to let the Scottish Bill be turned into an extension of the Crofter Act ? Unless we are greatly mistaken, what they would like to do would be to refuse to extend the English Bill to the Lowlands alleging that it is not applicable thereto, and then to abandon the Scottish Bill altogether, using this abandonment as part of the case against the Peers. We are inclined to think, however, that sufficient pressure will be put upon them by those of their supporters who are more concerned with getting actual legislation passed than with filling up the cup, to accept the compromise of the Peers. We expect, then, that the Lords' policy of revision will in substance be accepted, though with much outcry and malediction from the Government and many threats of the terrible things which they will be compelled to say against the Peers in the autumn. agitation. As, however, they were going to say those awful things in any case, such threats leave -us, and we expect other defenders Of the Second Chamber also, quite cold. The demonstrations against the House of Lords will go forward. in any case, and, unless we are . very much mistaken, . they will prove to be of that purely mechanical and caucus-produced kind which invariably fails to move the mass of the electors. Bonct-fide political movements do not require to be organised. They spring from the ground like the larks from the furrows.
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