Mr. Chamberlain replied to Lord Salisbury's Sheffield address by a
very lively speech, delivered on Wednesday night at a dinner of the Devonshire Club. He remarked on Mr. Goschen's exhortation to us all to be moderate in the face-
of the extreme pretensions of the House of Lords, and said it reminded him of the advice given recently in the Philadelphia Ledger, to any lady who might happen to find herself in flames,
to keep as cool as possible. Still, he thought the advice excel- lent, but hoped it would be followed by both parties; and he did
not think it would conduce to moderation that Tory speakers should suggest, as they were suggesting, that without violence in popular demonstrations there could be no real earnestness. If the Conservatives were to cast contempt on popular demon- stratIons because they are so orderly and so good-humoured, the moderation counselled would hardly be preserved. Mr.
Chamberlain urged that if Liberals are to refrain from all threats against the Lords, surely Tories should refrain from threats uttered in an opposite sense, such as those of Mr. James Lowther and Mr. Chaplin, who told the House of Lords, at their party meeting, that unless they persevered to the bitter end in the struggle from which those doughty champions had themselves shrunk away, the Upper House would lose the con- fidence of the Tory Party. Mr. Chaplin resembled the hero of the anti-Jacobin ballad :—
" Poor John was a gallant captain, In battles much delighting ;
He fled full soon, on the first of June, But bade the rest keep fighting."
Lord Salisbury's theory of the position of the House of Lords, —that it is the fly-wheel of the Constitution,—was marked by that supreme ignorance of all machinery, except political, which characterises him ; for the function of a fly-wheel was not, as he supposed, to prevent excess of speed, but to equalise the motion,—sometimes to retard, sometimes to accelerate it. Now,
what example could Lord Salisbury produce of the House of Lords ever accelerating the sluggishness of the Commons,—
willing as they always are to retard still further even its most. sluggish pace
Previous page
