THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.
(TO THE EDITOR 07 THE "SPECTATOR."] Siu,—Mr. Asquith, addressing his constituents on the House of Lords, charges us with thinking that a Second Chamber is part of the order of Nature. History, he says, does not bear out that view. The moment, he says, that it was realised that the predominant power in the State was the will of the people, the notion that the House of Lords could be a co-ordinate Chamber with equal authority becomes not only a paradox but an anachronism. If this is the frame of mind in which the members of the Government are approach. ing a vital and irrevocable change hi the Constitution, your prospect of a wise solution of the Lords question is not bright. Who says or thinks that the House of Lords, or a Second Chamber of any kind, is part of the order of Nature P What a good many people, including the founders of the. American Republic and of the principal Constitutions of Europe, have held, and not a few still hold, is that, deliberate action being desirable in great affairs, two Houses are better than one. But there is a superstitious belief which has full possession of many minds. It is the belief that the will of the people—that is, of masses necessarily half informed on questions of State, apt to be carried away by the passion of the hour, and exposed to the wiles of the demagogue—is
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