REFORM OF THE SECOND CHAMBER.
I AST week we had not space to do more than refer briefly to the preliminary Report of the Conference on the Reform of the Second Chamber, which was issued in the form of a letter from Lord Bryce to the Prime Minister. Our readers probably have in memory the outlines of the scheme. Let us, however, describe it very shortly. It is proposed that the reformed Second Chamber shall consist of two sections. One of these would include two hundred and forty-six persons elected by panels of members of the House of Commons distributed in geographical groups. [In fixing this number of two hundred and forty-six, the majority of the Conference were not contemplating the immediate inclusion of Ireland. If Ireland were included, the number would be raised to about two hundred and seventy-three.1 The other section would consist of persons chosen by a joint Standing Committee of both Houses, and their number would be about a Older" of the whole Second Chamber, excluding ex-officio members. As for the persons Who Ire to be elected by the joint Standing Committee, it is proposed that in the first instance they shall be selected from among holders of hereditary peerages and Bishops holding diocesan Sees. At the second and third elections, not less than half of the vacancies are to be filled on each occasion by holders of hereditary peerages or Bishops. In subsequent elections the choice shall be unrestricted, except that the number of Peers and Bishops chosen shall together not fall below thirty. As for disputes between the two Houses, it is proposed that when a Bill passed by one House has been rejected by the other, either House may demand what is called a Free Conference. Thirty members from each House would. take part in this Free Conference. We cannot go into all the details of the working 'of the Free Conference, or into a discussion of what further steps might be necessary if the Free Conference failed to bring about a settlement. It is evidently hoped that in the vast majority of cases the Free Conference would settle a dispute finally by bringing about either the acceptance or the lapse of the till under dispute. The summary which we have given above must necessarily be very inadequate, and we advise all those who are interested in the fascinating subject of Constitutional reform to study Lord Bryce's lucid and interesting letter, which is sold as a Parliamentary paper. We think, however, that we have mentioned what is new in the proposal, and certainly we have mentioned enough to make it plain that the Conference came to the conclusion that a reformed Second Chamber must be a body of consider- able political and personal strength. What is proposed is really that our future Second Chamber should be of what may be called the Continental type, in spite of the fact that in his letter Lord Bryce more than once points out that there ought to be no political rivalry between the. two Houses.
The substance of our objection to any such Second Chamber as the majority of the Conference approved may be expressed in a single sentence; You cannot have a really strong Second Chamber in such a democracy as ours because the House of Commons will not permit it. The House of Commons will not yield any of its powers. In a true democracy every scheme for a Second Chamber that has ever been invented, or is ever likely to be invented, comes up against the difficulty that if the Second Chamber is representative of many of the strongest elements in the nation, it is bound to set itself up as a rival to the other House. It matters very little whether the Second Chamber be directly or indirectly elected. If it feels conscious of its strength, and is vested with political functions very like those of the other House, there is bound to be legislative contention. When the Second Chamber sees the other House behaving foolishly, as is sure to haprea sooner or later, its members will say : " We cannot possibly look on and behave with the restraint and moderation which, you say are necessary to our position while you lead the country to perdition in this idiotic manner. After all, we are as good as you are, and if the truth were told, a good deal better and a good deal wiser." Look where you may among the Second Chambers of Constitution-makers, this difficulty exists. The French Senate has far more power than the British democracv would tolerate in the House of Lords. As for the United States Senate, the almost absolute power of veto which it possesses over foreign policy is enough to take away the breath of a British democrat. Yet for all its great power, and the great amount of ability which it notoriously embodies, the American Senate does not really enjoy the esteem it intrinsically deserves in its own country, if we may judge from the attacks which are continually being made upon it. The greater the ingenuity which is brought to bear by Constitution-makers on schemes of Second Chamber reform, the more complicated the schemes are sure to be.
The proposal for which Lord Bryce has made himself re- sponsible is by no means the least complicated in a long series of cognate inventions. Yet if a wise man were asked what was the real essential in adding new inventions to the practical workings of our British Constitution, he would answer in one word—Simplicity. We are reminded of Burke's words in his " Letter to a Noble Lord " :— " Abbe Sieyes has whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitu- tions ready-made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered, suited to every season and every fancy : some with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some with the bottom at the-top ; some plain, some flowered ; some distinguished for their simplicity, others for their complexity ; some with 'directories, others without a direction ; some with councils of elders and councils of youngsters, some without any council at all ; some where the electors choose the iepresenta tines, others where the representatives choose the electors-; adore
long cloaks and some in short cloaks ; some with pantaloons, some without breeches • some with five-shilling qualifications, some totally unqualified."
You may elect men to the Second Chamber directly, or you may elect them indirectly by means of " Colleges " ; you may elect them through county Councils and Municipalities, as has been proposed before now, or through groups of the House of Commons, as Lord Bryce and his friends propose ; you may elect such persons as will correct a tendency to too much politics " or too many lawyers " in the House of Commons by introducing the good sense of commercial men, or the cold sense of men of science, or the historical sense of men of academic distinction—but whatever you might do, you would only be choosing some variation of Burke's top of the pattern at the bottom," or " bottom at the top." Oliver Cromwell experienced the bitterness of it all. If he had con- sented to the proposal that he should become King, he might no doubt have roped in the existing aristocracy. As it was, the existing aristocracy would not obey his upstart writ to the House of Lords when he summoned them in order to get rid of the horrible tyranny of single-Chamber rule. He therefore proceeded to create a House of Lords of his own. Macaulay has ridiculed the shoemakers and draymen who seized the opportunity to acquire social greatness. Really the House contained men drawn from excellent and sincere classes of the nation, and, so far as its composition went, it might have worked perfectly well. But the nation ridiculed it, and the House of Commons flatly refused to recognize it. That was the famous occasion on which Cromwell swept into the House of Commons in a passion, washed his hands of its doings, dismissed it, and told the members that God might judge between him and them.
In our view, the Second Chamber we need has a single and very simple democratic function to perform. It is its business to see that the will of the people shall in all cases prevail—that and nothing more. For this purpose it is desirable that a Second Chamber should be as little like the House of Commons in aspect and composition as it can possibly be. As we have said, in his letter Lord Bryce refers more than once to the danger of rivalry. But that danger seems to have been lost sight of in such words as the following : " Three important requisites for the strength of the Chamber would be found in its having popular authority behind it, in its opening to the whole of ''His Majesty's subjects free and equal access to the Chamber, and in its being made responsive to the thoughts and sentiments of the people." The danger of rivalry seems once more to have been lost sight of in the following words, which are put forward as the contention of those who agreed to the plan of electing members of the Second Chamber by groups of the House of Commons : " What was necessary was that it [the Second Chamber] should be as far as possible a representa- tive body." Much the most practical plan, as it seems to us, is to keep the hereditary principle of the House of Lords as it exists now, but to screw it up to a higher capacity by certain fresh exactions and limitations. We described our scheme in two articles in the Spectator of November 24th and December 1st, 1917. The main principle of our proposal is to harness the Peerage to public service. The Peerage is an existing fact, and there is no proposal that it should be abolished. Why then not use it, pledging it to public service ? We have not space even to Summarize the details of our scheme, but the gist of them was that no Peer should receive a writ unless he could produce proof of having performed satisfactory public service in the past. This plan would have the advantage of grafting new conditions on to old traditions. If the Peers are to have a definite political function assigned to them, the reaction upon the choice of every Prime Minister who recommends new Peers to the King will continue to be, or at all events ought to be, entirely beneficial. A Prime Minister who recommends a man for a peerage knowing that that Peer will have a political duty to discharge will be more careful in making his choice than he would be if he were merely bestowing an empty honour. If the Peerage ceases to have a definite political function con- nected with it, a large part of its raison d'elre will disappear, and ultimately we should have to look forward to finding the hereditary principle in our limited Monarchy existing in isola- tion. It would become like a fly in amber. But a qualified House of Lords, a House proved by the tests of public work done, would be wholly unlike a House of Commons, and would yet be perfectly able to discharge the one office which is really required of a British Second Chamber. That one office is not to set its will against the will of the House of Commons, but to secure that in cases of doubt the will of the people shall prevail. We would leave the. Parliament Act, with its principle of three presentations of a disputed Bill in two years, as it is but we would assign to the House of Lords the duty of demanding a Poll of the People when no settlement could be reached. In order to prevent the danger of collusion between, say, a reactionary House A Commons and a reactionary Peerage, we would further invest the House of Commons with the power to demand a Poll of the People if more than, say, one-third of the total number of the House of Commons agreed to that course. No self-governing community of English-speaking people has ever been able to exist politically for any length of time without the power of veto residing somewhere. In our own country the King no longer has it ; the Lords no longer have it. We want formally to give that power of veto to the people by means of the instrument which allows them to say Yes " or " No " to the simple question whether they do or do not want a particular Bill. A clarified House of Lords, as we are imagining it, could perform perfectly the comparatively humble office of ensuring that the will of the democracy should prevail.
Previous page
