TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE INSUPERABLE OBJECTIONS TO TWO ELECTIVE CHAMBERS.
AMONGST the many views which are current for the reform of the Lords, there are, of course, not a few which propose to meet the difficulty by giving to the Second Chamber a genuinely representative character, whether by simple election, as in the case of the French Senate,—or'by election from amongst the class of existing Peers, so as to make the Upper House still a House of hereditary caste, but of hereditary caste re-enforced by the choice and approval of the people. Our contemporary, the Economist, we observe, lends its justly great authority to the latter view, and speaks of an Upper House simply nominated by the Crown on the responsibility of the Government as a retrograde proposal which would be at once a sham and a dangerous increase of what it calls the one-man power. As this view, however plausible, seems to us to rest on completely erroneous concep- tions of what we want in a Second Chamber, we wish to devote this article to the exposition of the reasons for rejecting the theory of independent election for the revising Chamber, if a revising Chamber is to be retained, as we think it is certainly the wish of the moderates of all parties that, for the present at least, it should be retained.
Now for what purpose, in the case of such a State as the United Kingdom, is a revising Chamber needful ? It is not needful, it is not desirable—and this we wish emphatically to insist upon—in order to discover either the general tendency or the final resolves of the popular mind and will. Whatever we propose to delegate to a Second Chamber on that head, we must take from the popular Chamber ; and as we understand the present situation, what the people have resolved upon is precisely this,—that the House of Commons shall, for the future, be regarded as the only final gauge and expression of .the mind and will of the people of the United Kingdom. We hold, then, that what is desirable in a Second Chamber is a small Assembly composed largely of select men, not for the purpose of expressing in any degree the tendencies and resolves of the people at large, but for the purpose of carefully reconsidering how far the decisions of the House of Commons do carryout the popular will, for the pur- pose of pointing out accidental errors, for the purpose of rectify- ing oversights where some important point had not been brought before the mind of the Lower House, and finally, for the purpose, in a few rare cases, where the action of the Lower House itself suggests hesitation or a growing inclination to change its own attitude, of compelling a little delay and a reconsideration of the issue. That is, as we understand it, the ground on which a Second Chamber is desired by the moderates of all parties ; and it will be to satisfy, or at least to dissatisfy as little as may be, the moderates of all parties, that the statesmen, when they bring forward a plan for the reform of the House of Lords, will certainly devote their best efforts. Now, it will be observed that what is wanted for a revising Chamber of this kind is not a representative character, which, however you give it, must more or less detract from the authority of the true Representative Chamber—the House of Commons— but rather impartiality and sagacity in interpreting the drift of the popular mind as represented in the House of Commons, and, further, keen critical faculty in considering how far that drift has been rightly embodied in the measures and the policy of the Government. In short, what we want in the Upper House is, first, a safeguard against accidental error and misconstruction of what the people really want ; and next, weight sufficient to ensure respectful consideration of its own criticisms, and to carry a certain authority in the rare cases in which it might determine that the popular will had not really been decisively announced, and that there was ground for enforcing a little delay and one more reconsideration of the issue.
If this be the true object of a Second Chamber, as we believe it to be, every attempt to engraft the principle of election upon it would, we believe, be a serious blunder. On what basis is election to go V If you place the election on the same basis as that of the House of Commons, if you appeal to the householders, you provide for yourself two co-ordinate authorities of equal weight. You encourage, you almost require the Second Chamber to pit its authority as a representation of the people's mind and will, against the authority of the House of Commons. You pro- vide carefully for rivalry on the one point on which rivalry is
fatal to the main object in view ; you ensure rivalry between the claims of each of the two Assemblies to regard themselves as expressing the mind of the country. If, on the contrary, you place the election of the Second Chamber in the hands of a higher and more wealthy class than the house-. holders, you take pains to secure the existence of the very difficulty which we have encountered so seriously in our Colonies, the deadlock between property and numbers. You invite crises in which one Chamber shall say that it represents the great majority of the nation, and the other Chamber shall say that it represents the prosperity of the nation, and that the victory of the Lower House will mean the victory of the incompetent and the reckless over the capable and the cautious members of the community. We can imagine no more disastrous result than either of these. We ought so to choose our suffrage for the Representative Chamber—the sole Representative Chamber—as to provide against the danger of excluding the caution and the disciplined experience of successful men from the political influence they ought to com- mand; and that is, we believe, the object of the Liberal Party. But it would be ruinous, first to provide for a true Representative Assembly, and then, for questioning its right to express the mind of the nation, by creating another pretender to the same function, and a pretender, too, who could quote the express provisions of the Con- stitution in favour of the plausibility of his claim. This is the very evil against which we are now fighting. We find Con- servatives deliberately asserting that the House of Lords is far more representative of the people of England than the House of Commons. Here is Lord Carnarvon, again, assuring us that it is. by far the most popular institution in England. Well, we can laugh at all that rhodomontade now. But could we laugh at it if we had deliberately provided an elective basis for the Second Chamber, and had given it the right to say that it was the expression either of the mind of the people —in the sense in which the House of Commons claims that it is the expression of the mind of the people —or even of a class of the people so essential to the people's welfare that the Constitution had secured for it a separate and independent voice ? Surely, when we are trying to escape from deadlocks, it will never do deliberately to contrive for ourselves future deadlocks ? Surely, when we are protesting against the attempt of the House of Lords to undermine an& defy the representative character of the House of Commons,. we are not about to provide a far more legitimate rival to the House of Commons than the present House of Lords can ever be ?
These are our reasons for deprecating most strongly the in- troduction of the elective principle in any form or shape into the constitution of the Upper House. We wish to provide a good Revising Chamber, so long as the most cautious part of the nation believes such a Chamber to be essential to the soundness of our Constitutional methods. But we do not wish to provide a Second Representative Chamber of any kind what- ever. We desire to see the House of Commons regarded as the only Representative Chamber. We desire its decision, whenever that decision is clear, conscious, and deliberate, to be final. We do not wish to give any Second Chamber the smallest excuse for saying that it knows the mind of the people better than the House of Commons knows it. We are not ourselves by any means convinced that a Second Chamber is an essential element of a sound Constitution. But we believe that the most cautious and moderate men of all parties are, on the whole, strongly inclined to that view, and the last thing we desire is to shake the confidence of the most cautious and moderate men of all classes in the stability of our Constitution. Yet we are fully persuaded of this, that even the most cautious and moderate men desire to see the representative character of the House of Commons asserted in the fullest and most final form ; and that what they desire in a Second Chamber is simply a Chamber of Revision,—one which shall closely study the attitude of the representatives of the people, which shall carefully consider how far that attitude is clear and positive, and how far the legislative measures sent up adequately em- body the wishes of the people's representatives. What the cautious and the moderate most earnestly deprecate is a Second Chamber which should challenge the clear decision of the representatives of the people on any point on which that decision had been deliberately and confidently delivered.
This being our view,—and we are well assured that it is the view of the great majority of the people,—we expressly desire to see a Second Chamber that is not likely to put forth any such challenge to the House of Commons, that is certain to defer to
the deliberately expressed opinion of the House of Commons, and to insist on a reconsideration only when the House of Commons itself is obviously undecided and vacillating. We believe that a small House of Lords selected by the Queen, on the responsi- bility of a Government which has the confidence of the House of Commons, would fulfil these conditions ; though, as we have often said, we advance no scheme dogmatically, and are pre- pared to follow the statesmen, whenever they give us a sound working scheme. Far be it from us to be captious on any of the smaller differences between one proposal and another. But on one point we do feel clear,—that the Second Chamber must not be allowed to stand in the position of a rival to the House of Commons, of a pretender to the rights of the House of Commons, as speaking the voice of the people of the United Kingdom. We want no more .quarrels as to which is the real Simon Pure of the national choice. That is the evil which we are endeavouring to get rid of, and the worst thing imaginable is that we should restore it in a new, a more plausible, and more impressive form.
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