LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE DOUBLE CHAMBER IN VICTORIA. (To ram EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.") Sui,—Curiously enough, on the very day that the letter from "A Colonist" appeared in your columns, speaking 'so disrespect- fully of the Upper House in Victoria, I was, in company with another old colonist, looking over the details of the last month's legislative proceedings in the colony, and discussing the relative position of the two Houses. And we were agreeing as to the useful and honourable work that the Legislative Council had been
engaged upon, and saying to each other how good a thing it would be, both for themselves and for England, if the British House of Lords would, in the same earnest and faithful spirit, dedicate a little of their spare time to the preparation and due elaboration each session of two or three good, wholesome, legislative measures.
To two Bills under the consideration of the Legislative Council 'we were particularly referring,—one for putting down with a stern band that rowdy spirit of the growing youth which, tending to annoy harmless passers-by, is so apt to make our streets impass- able, and to develop, in his most flagrant form, the brutal "rough " of whom we hear so much. Another Bill upon which our Council bad been engaged was the Criminal Court and Practice Amend- ment Bill, a measure designed for the more perfect administration of justice in the country districts.
What should we not owe to the House of Lords, if they mani- fested a similarly faithful spirit?—in each year offering to the House of Commons in a deferential manner two or three good -useful measures of this nature ; relieving the Lower House of some portion of its overwork, and relieving themselves from the scandal of being reported day by day breaking up at the dinner-hour, and rarely coming together in any sort of effective form till towards the end of the session,—too frequently to spoil or destroy some measure in which the people are interested, or to assist at that sad if not wicked process usually if playfully described as the 4' Slaughter of the Innocents?"
The Legislative Council of Victoria is probably very far from being such a House as the best friends of good government would wish it to be. Its members are not quite sufficiently numerous, and the property qualification is too high ; but still, I can assure you, it has done and is doing good work, and scornfully as it is too apt to be spoken of, there are few things that would give such a shock to sound political feeling in the colony as the de- structive tampering with this House. Nothing would tend so greatly to check public confidence, or be so likely to lead to a complete stampede of the owners of all property of a portable character.
Your correspondent writes in glowing terms of the composition of the Victorian Assembly. When it is remembered that under the benign influence of manhood suffrage and equal electoral districts that Assembly has long been pledged to an anti- immigration policy and to a protective system of commerce, gradually assimilating one of the finest and most progressive countries in the world to a position of exclusiveness worthy of Japan in its worst days, you will perhaps be able to form some Idea of the value of the eulogy passed upon it by your corres-
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