LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
HALF OR WHOLE REFORM?
LTO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."1
SIR,—You seem to feel assured that an hereditary House of Lords, with its power reduced to a five years' veto, would suffice to temper the action of the House of Commons, elected as that House soon will be by universal suffrage. Your judgment is better than mine. All over Europe the spirit of revolution is awake, as we should have seen if it had triumphed in Russia. With it there is a general revolt of Labour. The labouring class bankers for forcible transfer of wealth, and for an escape from toil. You have now before you a Bill for old-age pensions, of the probable tendency of which the history of the American pension list gave you warning. General restlessness prevails. Religious acquiescence in the dispensation as ordained of heaven, and the hope of a better life to come, which, dim as it might be, has helped to recon- cile the less fortunate to their lot, are rapidly passing away. Lord Rosebery's advice will be most welcome. But his plan of reform, it is to be feared, in retaining hereditism will retain the dry rot. Hereditism surely is dead. In its own age it was, as was said before, the fief, not the pedigree, that gave the seat in the feudal Assembly. You need, it seems to me, to face the future with confidence, not only a suspensive veto, but a House of undemagogic statesmanship round which the good sense of the nation may rally. Your hope of getting such an institution I admit to be small.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[Professor Goldwin Smith, we presume, means by "you," in the first line of his letter, not the Spectator, but the British public. We have, of course, never expressed the opinion that "a House of Lords, with its power reduced to a five years' veto, would suffice," &c.—En. Spectator.]
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