TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PUERILITIES OF THE LORDS.
AIR. GLADSTONE'S firmness and sense have got us out 111 IL of one difficulty caused by the rashness of Lord Salis- bury and the intellectual docility of the House of Peers ; but another quite as great remains, and is, moreover, a mere illustration of the permanent constitutional difficulty caused by giving an authority co-ordinate with that of the House of Commons to an Assembly which well knows that it can never either agree with the people, or afford to express persistently its difference with them. It is in everybody's mouth that the Lords must, to vindicate their own independence, veto the Ballot Bill at least once. When you ask to what end,— whether it is to give the country an opportunity of ex- pressing its wishes more clearly, or even to save the coun- try from the ultimate passing of a measure it disapproves, no one will answer either question in the affirmative. This journal is as stoutly opposed to secret voting, and as convinced that it has not gained, but rather lost something even in pope- larity during the last twenty years, as any Conservative journal; but yet we know and admit, not gladly, but completely, that the only result of the veto of the House of Lords would be to secure for next year a very much more deci- sive expression of popular opinion in favour of the Ballot than we have now. Had Mr. Gladstone remained hostile to the Ballot, we believe we might have been spared it till secret voting had lost all its charm for the people ; but as he has adopted it while it is still, on the whole, a decidedly popular measure, we all know perfectly that a vote of the House of Lords rejecting it would not only not diminish by one iota the certainty of its affirmation by the popular voice, but that it would sueround the ballot- box with an adventitious halo of popularity. The vote of the Lords rejecting the ballot would endear the ballot to the country ; and the only conceivable effect it could have on the Legislature would be to cause the wasting of a great part of another session in the framing of a new bill like unto this. And not only is this BO, but the House of Peers are perfectly well aware that it is so. Nobody knows better than they that an adverse vote would produce no conceivable good effect,—in the Con- servative sense of good effect,—except, if that be a good effect, a slight sense of puerile gratification to their own pride and self-importance. They have got into that morbid condition of mind in which a fussy paterfamilias who knows that his authority is all but nil, and who cannot bear to know it, may be often observed to be,—a state of punctiliousness in which they think of nothing but how to secure some visible sign of the reality of their authority,—to persuade themselves, according to Mr. Trollope's happy phrase, that they are com- Telling the country "to know they are there." This they find in rejecting, as often as they dare, every legislative change desired by the country. There has been, we may safely say, nothing of the smallest magnitude which the country has desired for a generation or two, which the Peers did. not heartily dislike till long after they had been com- pelled to accede to it. They are, however, perfectly aware that after one or two rejections of the bigger changes desired by the people, and five or six rejections of the smaller changes of the same kind, they must give way. And what is more, they know very well, in most of these cases, that they are gaining nothing by delay, except delay. Nay, delay so inter- posed even irritates the popular feeling and diminishes sensibly the political prestige of the Peers, and yet it must be interposed for the gratification of their pride. How should the country "know they are there" unless they conspicuously snub its wishes two or three times in every session ? How can they afford to pass, the very first time it is presented to them, a measure they dislike ? "I will be treated with respect," says the weak father, whom none of his children could ever manage to respect at all. And that is what the House of Lords is always saying, and that is the only reason why it vetoes bills which it is perfectly well aware it must pass next time or the time after. It is not for the country's sake, but for the sake of its own sensi- tive feelings, that these tine-and-strength-wasting negatives are passed by the House of Lords. And what a wealth of condemna- tion there is in such an admission as this,—an admission which would, we are very sure, be privately made by almost every oan3id member of the House of Peers itself. What is the political value of!. House of Legislature which feels frequently compelled to think more of its own dignity and importance than of the end
for which it exists, namely, the good government of the country It would even resemble closely those hollow concerns which
declare dividends out of capital in order to keep up the prestigo. of the company, except that, while such dividends can be paid,. their tendency really is to keep up the prestige of the company, while the only tendency of these showy flourishes of power by the Lords is to diminish their own reputation for wisdom', while vindicating their power. It would be hard to contrive tt, more mischievous constitutional device than a co-ordinate. legislative Assembly which always feels differently from the governing Assembly, and therefore deems itself obliged to. thwart the whole country periodically, in order to assert itself.
And these puerile displays of power become really, dangerouri when you consider that they proceed from the very body which, if it is to serve any purpose at all, ought to serve the purpose. of infusing a vein of prudence and caution into our legislation. It is like the abuse of turning the fine knife-edge on which a balance is intended to be suspended, to the purpose of wounding and slaying, to transform the revising Assembly from the organ of the nation's finer discretion into a mere duellist always, ready to draw for defence of its honour. Seriously, what can be more mischievous than that, in the place of a thoughtful, scrutinizing, delicately weighing Coun- cil of experienced men, we should have thrust upon/ us an Assembly whose yearly difficulty it is to determine which of a variety of measures known to be inevitable it shall reject,—not because there is less certainty in its case than in that of any of its companions that, sooner or later, some such measure must be accepted, but solely because the HOW30 of Lords, like the legendary Minotaur of Crete, demands a yearly victim as a sort of tribute to its pride ? Of course the result is that the House of Lords does a vast deal more to stimulate innovation, or even revolution, than the House of Commons. The Assembly which should represent our highest statecraft and maturest prudence, is every year tempting and irritating the people into new agitation. Instead of the ripest national judgment, we have the rashest class-insolence. Instead of wisdom warning us to take forgotten precautions, we have puerile outbreaks of wounded self-importance. Instead of sympathetic but clear-eyed help in going the way the, nation is resolved to go with the fewest blunders, we have taunting scorn childishly forbidding us to move at all; under penalty of the wrath of a petulant class. It ia. really hopeless to look for a Conservative popular feeling while the House of Lords continue to flaunt their foolisla threats before our eyes. Of all the institutions we now have, the Lords as led by Lord Salisbury is the most dangerous, the most revolutionary. A Council of revision,—and that ie the proper function of an Upper House, if there is to be an Upper House,—whose first great problem every year is to determine on the least dangerous sacrifice to. its sense of dignity which it can extort from the nation at largo, is simply self-condemned. If it cannot substantially agree in the general aim of the whole people, it cannot be any- thing but an incendiary element in our legislature. And the, most remarkable feature of the existing House of Lords is, that it not only cannot so agree, but cannot even conceal for a moment its essential distaste to every aim the people set before them, oven when it contrives to suppress that diatn,ete so far as to swallow an unwelcome measure. Nothing is more certain than that it is the first necessity rather of this Conservatives, than of the Liberals, to reform our House of Lords.
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