THE DEBATE ON THE REFORM OF THE LORDS. T HE debate
in the House of Commons on Friday week, on the subject of the reform of the House of Lords, is, to our minds, more impressive and important in relation to the light it throws on the new levity of the Liberal Party, than in relation to any of the special views expressed. In reference to the abstract question of whether or not there should be a Second Chamber,—a genuine and weighty Second Chamber, we mean, and not a mere revising body to call attention to small mis- takes and secure legislative reconsideration,—we have always held, and often said, that it seemed to us a matter of con- siderable doubt whether the additional weight of responsibility cast upon a single Chamber by the knowledge of the finality of its judgment, might not more than compensate the advantages to be derived from a rival Chamber which might excite the jealousy of the more democratic Assembly, and spur it on into excesses otherwise likely to be as unpopular as they would be unwise. Of course, that does not apply to such a body as the Senate of the 'United States, which has, fortunately for the great country in which it exercises so important an influence, attained an authority almost unprecedented,—much the kind of authority which used to be aimed at in ancient days when national laws and institutions were attributed to some mysterious sanction which even posterity would fear to violate. A. great revolution, entered upon in a period of high excitement and peril, such as that which com- menced in the Declaration of Independence, burned into the hearts of the American people a feeling for their new institu- tions which it is impossible to create at a time of ordinary and cold-blooded reform. And, with all our respect for Mr. Rath- bone's intentions, we feel something approaching to complete incredulity as to the success of any such proposal as his for founding in the United Kingdom a Second Chamber,— a graft upon the present House of Lords,—which should take root and flourish as the Senate of the United States has taken root and flourished. To effect such a pur- pose as that, you want to have the public mind at a white- heat, and at a white-heat in regard to precaution against demo- cratic dangers, no less than at a white-heat of courage in regard to the repudiation of old abuses. Nothing could convince us more profoundly that the public mind in this country is not in that condition, or in anything like that condition, than the debate of Friday week. In the first place, it was brought on by the one politician whom no one takes seriously, and who does not take himself seriously. In the next place, it came out that the leaders of the Liberal Party, instead of feeling, as they ought to have felt, that they had enough, if not too much, on their hands already, and that in the very responsible position in which they have placed themselves as sponsors for a vast constitutional change in the relations between Great Britain and Ireland, they should decline to toy with other reforms of rival magnitude, only thought of restoring Mr. Labouchere to good- humour after the double snub which Mr. Gladstone has lately administered to him, and had persuaded their great leader to stay away, while they committed the front bench to the abstract principle of a reform such as ought not to be adopted by them at all till it can be put into a practical shape for which they are willing to be responsible, and submitted to the country with a full sense of its grave importance. We would rather by far have seen any proposal with regard to the Second Chamber, or even with regard to the abolition of a Second Chamber, brought forward with a due sense of its serious- ness by a Liberal leader as the chief proposal of the Liberal Party, than have had such a proposal as Mr. Labou- chere's, after being vaguely discussed in debating-society fashion by the House of Commons, approved by Mr. Morley and triumphantly advocated by Sir William Har- court, without even the slightest vestige of that deep sense of statesmanlike responsibility which should attach to the new attitude assumed. They threw over Mr. Gladstone's wise and deliberate counsel of two years ago, never to propose an abstract resolution on a weighty matter of this kind without being prepared to give early practical effect to it ; and they threw it over without even the pretence of being agreed on the most important elements of the question. So far as we can judge from Mr. Morley's speech, he himself is rather inclined to abolish the House of Lords without substituting anything in its place. Sir William Harcourt carefully eschewed any judgment on this most important of all the points,—the one point which, as Lord Hartington justly said, should have been determined upon before going any further,—though he gloried in the defiance he was throwing down to the hereditary principle defended by Mr. Gladstone himself two years ago, and assumed all the airs of a leader who was making a deliberate appeal to the floating discontents of the country. And yet both of these ex-Ministers spoke in a tone so far less cautious than that of Mr. Rathbone, that it must have been visible to all the House that the front bench were determined to carry the left wing of the party with them, whether they satisfied the main body of the party or not. Indeed, it is to us a matter of the deepest surprise that Mr. Rathbone found himself able to vote with Mr. Labouchere after he had heard how much more revolu- tionary was the position taken by Mr. Morley and Sir William Harcourt, than the position which he himself had endeavoured to make good. We say it is this ostentatious levity of the leaders which shocks us indefinitely more than any opinion as to the ultimate solution of the House of Lords question which either of these leaders let fall. There was no sense of responsibility about their speeches. Committed as they were already to one vast constitutional change, they are, nevertheless, not satisfied to press that on its merits, but must send out a sort of general invita- tion to all the restless politicians in the country to flock to their standard, without even defining what that standard is to be. Practically, their action will be taken as proving their inten- tion to patronise inflammatory politicians, and to declare to the world that they throw over their old leader's view on all
subjects that are not likely to be settled while he is at their head. Sir William Harcourt, indeed, virtually said that an opinion pronounced by Mr. Gladstone as head of the Govern- ment two years ago, must be regarded as simply obsolete, for he jeered at Lord Hartington as a retrograde politician only because he wished to take his stand upon it.
In the current number of the Nineteenth Century, to which we called attention last week, Mr. Morley defends himself not unsuccessfully from a charge which we have expressed our regret to see brought against him, that he is disposed to sym- pathise with the French Jacobins, to whom he has devoted so careful, and on the whole, perhaps, so much too appreciative a. study. We quite agree with him that there is not much analogy between the advocacy of a quasi-federal and decentralising policy, and the advocacy of a centralised Jacobin democracy. Nor should we have had any fault to find if in this debate on the reform of the House of Lords, he had declared the subject much too great for abstract treatment, but had said that, if ever the resolution to concentrate the substantial power of the British Legislature in a single Chamber should be adopted gravely, with guarantees for the embodiment of a strong conservative element in that Chamber, and for enforcing on it in the most effective way the sense of its responsibility, that solution might perhaps turn out as safe as one conceived on the theory of checks and balances. We do not, indeed, believe that the English people are either prepared, or likely within any calculable period to be prepared, to accept such counsels ; but if Mr. Morley really holds that view, as
his speech seems to indicate, we should have attached no blame to him for indicating it with due reserve, had he but explained his deep sense of the importance of the change under discussion, and his desire that the Liberal Party should reject peremptorily all premature resolutions on a matter
demanding so much grave deliberation and so much careful. exercise of joint responsibility before any line could be decided. on. But so far was Mr. Morley from taking this line, that, in our opinion, his speech of Friday week will do a great deal more to justify the distrust felt of him as a statesman, than anything to be found in his early studies of the Encyclopa3dists and the Jacobins. He acted just as he might not improperly have acted had he been an independent Member, instead of a responsible ex-Minister. He appeared to be quite unaware of the danger of appealing to the restless advocates of momentous political change without having made up his own mind, or taken long and serious counsel with his colleagues as to the extent of the change he is prepared to recommend to the nation. He bids for the support of such a feather-headed politician as Mr. Labouchere, without even a word to show how serious is the new departure thus taken. For our parts, we believe that his speech will frighten away the more moderate Home-rulers from his leadership far more effectually than anything that he has said in defending himself against the charge of Jacobinism will reassure them. To beckon all the foes of the House of Lords to his standard, without even pledging himself to the leading features of the change he is prepared to advocate, may increase the mob behind him, but will not increase the disciplined force of political thinkers on whom, in the end, he must rely. Had he been wise, he would have said that the question is far too large and difficult to raise only in order to beat up recruits to the
policy of Home-rule, and that he would far rather plead the cause to which he is already fully committed as a sedate and responsible statesman should, than rally to his aid a mass of ill-digested Radicalism which does not really know its own mind, and is sure in such a country as ours to arouse a great deal more suspicion and dislike than it will bring him. political confidence or support. What can be said of an ex-Minister who, with a great cause like Irish Home-rule on.
his hands, virtually pledges the Liberal Party to get rid of the
hereditary principle in the Legislature, before he and his friends have made up their minds whether, when that principle has been condemned, there is to be any Second Chamber at all, or whether there is to be none Anti-Jacobin though he be, that is not the course of the grave and conscientious statesman, for whom we have hitherto taken Mr. Morley.
Previous page
