[To THE EDITOR. 07 TEE "BrEcreroa."3 Sin,—Mr. Elliot endorses, with
strong approval, the statement 'of Mr. Henry Hobhonse that the Lords by their action have "upset the balance' of the Constitution," but I submit that this is an inversion of the true state of the case. " The Constitution subsists only by virtue of its equilibrium," and in the constantly varying circumstances of our political life equilibrium can only be maintained by reverting to the general principles on which precedents are based, and one of .these principles is that neither the Sovereign nor any one of the estates of the realm shall be predominant. When the Commons established their power over Supply they were struggling against a Sovereign, and Ministers appointed by him, who exercised the right of initiating expenditure, and even claimed the privilege of levying certain taxes without the consent of the Commons. The Commons were in fact protecting the taxpayer from having to pay to an extent and in a manner of which he did not approve, or to which he had had no opportunity of giving his approvaL The power of granting taxes thus acted as a safeguard against the power of initiating them ; but both these powers are now vested in one body, nominally elected by the people, but practically, during their term of office, acting autocratically and secretly. If equilibrium is to be maintained at all, there is even more need of a check now than there was in the time of Charles I. If there is to be no check on the action of the Cabinet, we are now already under a one-Chamber system, with this added danger, that there is a Second Chamber which exists in name only, and is not to be allowed to act in a crisis ; for there must he no mistake about the fact that what is aimed at by the extreme Radicals is destruction of the power of the Lords, not merely over finance, but over all legisla- tion._ To say that the recognition of a power of veto over financial Bills in the Lords is to attribute to them the sole power of " governing " seems to me a strange misconception. Nobody can govern without the power of initiation, and this the Lords do not claim in financial matter', The whole contention may be likened to the case of a man who, on buying a very powerful motor-car, refuses to have a brake on it for fear lest he or some of his friends should be tempted to apply it in such a way as to prevent the chauffeur driving the car at all. Lord Morley said the other day that he could imagine a case in which the Lords would be not only justified in rejecting, but morally bound to reject, a " wild-cat " financial scheme. The speeches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer have shown him to be not a statesman who is conscious of the dignity of his office and of his responsibility to and for all classes of the community, but an emotional and harum-scarum politician, deeply tinged with violent partisan prejudices, who is incapable of producing anything but a " wild-cat " scheme.—I am, Sir, &c., 50 Albemarle Street, W.
JOHN MURRAY.
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