[To TEE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—As to "mending or ending," like Wordsworth's "scholar pale," " I also have my own conceit ;" and, like Mr. Brooke, in " Middlemarcb," I offer the forces of my mind honestly to the nation." That when they "deliver on some great question those stately academical discourses which," says Sir Edward Strachey, "we all hear or read with so much pleasure," that in their great debates the Lords are, at least, not inferior to the Commons, is (though not by Sir Edward), I think, generally allowed. The scandal is that of the votes at such times the overwhelming majority are those of men whose habitual non- attendance at all other times proves plainly their want of turn or taste for their work as legislators.
With certain exceptions, then, let any Peer who in the last pre'.. ceding Session of Parliament has not attended on at least two- thirds of the whole number of days on which the House has met, be incapable of voting until in the current Session he-has made, say, fifty attendances. Would not that method be one of natural selection with survival of the fittest P—I am, Sir, dr.c.,
[Mr. Harper fails to see that the objection is not to an idle majority, but to a majority that is always hostile to one party, and always favourable to the other. His proposal would ba perfectly nugatory.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
