TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SEGREGATION OF THE LORDS.
WE wonder if the existence of the House of Lords does increase the sum of the Conservative forces within the United Kingdom. It is almost always assumed, both by Tories and Liberals, that it does, but there are grave reasons for doubting, if not for peremptorily denying, the assumption. It is, of course, true that the Peers do much to delay some changes, and that many minor proposals, presumably Liberal, would become substantial projects but for the conviction of politicians that they could not be embodied in any measure which would "pass the Lords." As regards serious changes, however, this is in no way true. As we have repeatedly pointed out, the effect of the Lords' action in grave crises is not to turn aside or drive back the stream of revolution, but to bank it up, till the ultimate overflow sweeps away everything, good and bad, which stands in its way. It is the mental habit of Englishmen to grow fearless of a change as they grow accustomed to consider it, to let their minds widen as they ponder new proposals, and at last, apparently without effort, to do things on a scale which would at first have horrified them. If they are allowed to act without waiting, they will accept a Sliding-scale ; but if they wait, and ponder, and discuss, the Corn Laws will be abolished at a sweep. The Lords, by their resistance, secure them just the necessary time for their convictions to gather momentum, and to change a tentative and feeble measure into a far-reaching innovation, or even a revolution. That was the way in which the Peers brought about the revolution of 1832, in which they developed the Irish Disturbance Bill into the Irish Land Act, with its endless consequences, and in which they are now enlarging a wish for a very simple Franchise Bill into a demand for a sweeping Constitutional change. Their resistance accustoms men to consider and discuss the proposition resisted ; and Englishmen, once fairly through their first emotion of startled hesitation, invariably enlarge their plans, sometimes even beyond the limits of the practicable. Fifteen miles an hour was impossible yesterday, but to-day everybody believes that sixty miles an hour can be made the ordinary speed, whereas thirty or forty is the limit. If ever a sweeping change is made in the ownership of land, it will be because the Lords resist some petty attempt to give more security to the little tenant. This argument, however, is as old as it is unanswerable, and to-day we wish to discuss a different one. Is it not true that the imprisonment of so many of the natural chiefs of Conserva- tism in a separate and comparatively powerless House weakens instead of strengthening that great force ? Mr. Percy Greg, who is, if any man in the world is, a trustworthy Tory, in a thoughtful paper in this month's Fortnightly, argues that the value of the hereditary principle is proved by the extraordinary number of able men whom the great families have evolved. He puts in very striking words an eulogium constantly repeated in more abject phrases :—" By the practical confession of both the great parties," he says, "one-half the available political ability of the State is found among four or five hundred hereditary legislators. Parliament, necessity, and usage account perhaps for the number of Cabinet places filled by Peers, but not for their character. The Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, and, as a rule, the Lord President, must be Peers, as the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary must be Commoners. But when working offices are given by prefer- ence to Peers, it is not as Peers, but as Members of Parlia- ment. If better men were to be found in the Lower House they would be preferred. In the present Cabinet, the most Radical that England has known, how are the great working offices distributed ? Besides the Premier, the chiefs of two great departments, finance and home government, are neces- sarily seated in the Lower House. The Lord Chancellor alone of the greater Ministers is necessarily a Peer. There are five great offices of equal rank with these, which can be filled by Peers or Commoners at the option of the Premier; the Foreign, Indian, and Colonial Secretaryships, and the head- ships of the two great spending departments, the Army and Navy. But, on no other ground than that of fitness, Mr. Gladstone has given four of these five offices to Peers, and the fifth to the heir of a dukedom. This is a confession that more than half the available statesmanship and administra- tive capacity, even of the Liberal Party, is found among our hereditary legislators." The option of the Premier is further limited by positive statute ; but we do not want to discuss that now. Nor are we anxious to push Mr. Greg to the logical outcome of his argument, and ask whether he thinks the ability of a man by itself constitutes a claim for him to legislate for his fellow-men, or why, if it does, the kin- ship of a fool to an able man should likewise constitute a claim. We recognise quite fully that it is hardly fair to use logic as a weapon against a principle which is logically so in- defensible as the hereditary descent of power. We grant for the moment Mr. Greg's facts; and then we ask him, and those who agree with him, why they never notice that all these able men are debarred by law from exerting their full power? The Representative House, which Mr. Greg will not deny is the practical depository of supreme power, is deliberately gutted of this great force, of this group of five hundred, which contains on the hypothesis half the available ability of the kingdom. Legislation is the greatest political work ; able discussion in the Commons is the most useful political work ; yet the caste which is asserted to be ablest—so able, that each member of it is as able as, say, 50,000 householders—is refused permission to exert its fullest strength in the most effective direction. It is shut up in a gilded chamber, where its best powers perish of inertia ; where, if, as Mr. Greg says, the Upper House rejects no great measure, the group is comparatively useless, and where its debates are carried on so late that they do not influence the decision of the House of Commons at all. Let us take Mr. Greg on his own ground, and admit that there are, say, seventy political Peers who are abler than any seventy men in the Commons not in the very front rank. Is there a doubt that if there were no House of Lords these seventy would be elected to the Lower House, would supersede seventy very ordinary and rather dull county Members, and would, in the stimula- ting life and controversy of the Commons, become greater men than they are ? They would join in the debates which the people read ; they would face or support the actual rulers of the country ; they would directly influence the only votes which make and unmake Ministries. Lord Salisbury, instead of dropping little drops of vitriol on Mr. Gladstone's re- putation—drops which make no holes in that ample surface—would contend with him face to face, rapier to rapier. Lord Cairns would arrest Sir W. Harcourt's Bills on their entrance, instead of after acceptance ; and the Duke of Richmond, instead of criticising and passing Tenancy Bills, would show all Tory Members why they must be strenuously opposed. The effective Conservative Party would be led by its chiefs, instead of being guided by its chiefs' messages, based often on imperfect information ; and on Mr. Greg's theory, at all events, would be far more powerfully led. Imagine what the debate on the Franchise would have been like with the front Bench on the Liberal side fairly matched and daringly resisted by men whom the Commons were certain to hear, certain to treat also with even more respect than their ability warranted !
No one, indeed, we believe, denies that such a sub- stitution would improve the tone of debate, or enlarge, to a most acceptable and beneficial degree, the reservoir of mind-force within the Representative Chamber. And this would be only a part of the gain to the Conservatives. We have never questioned in all this controversy the popu- larity of individual Peers, the distinct and separate hold many of them have upon the imaginations of the people, the liking which even now makes of so many eldest sons the most. promising of candidates. The People are not raging at the Peers, but only at the legislative corporation called the House of Lords. The great Peers would be the most dangerous of electioneerers, and that in the great boroughs as well as the counties, and might and would draw out classes which cannot now be induced to go regularly to the polls. One country is not another, but we should not forget that in Italy any city left to itself chooses for its Podesta some great noble. The Peers in the Commons would be the bones of the party ; and this, be it remembered, without forfeiting in the smallest degree their pretensions to office, which they could hold as members of the Commons as easily as Peers. Lord Northbrook would be no less First Lord because he sat for Sussex. We do not believe with Lord Carnarvon that the Peers are representa- tive, for if they were they would at least occasionally produce a Liberal majority ; but we do believe that a House of Commons with the entire Ministry in it, and seventy great Peers among its Members, freshened and en- lightened by contact with constituencies, would be a more venerable and stronger body than it has ever yet been, and more truly representative of this strange people, among whom Democratic ideas and Republican purposes are for ever dash- lug with aristocratic methods and likings for a recognised hierarchy of society. That being so, and our opponents will hardly deny our postulates, we want to know why men like Mr. Greg never regret the losses they thus sustain, why they never even acknowledge that the exclusion of Peers from the strong House, and their careful imprisonment in the weak House, is an injury to their cause. Radicals acknowledge it readily enough, and one of the silent forces which protect the Upper House is their fear that if it were away Conserva- tism would be invigorated, would be better led, more wisely controlled, more courageously employed in resistance ; and why do not the Tories make the same admission, even if they add that the loss for reasons of State must be endured ? Is it not because they are averse to change for its own sake, and fear that the admission, if made, may remove a prejudice which, while it lasts, acts as a bulwark of that Constitution in King, Lords, and Commons which so many of them believe to be above reason, and if not a revelation from above, at least a perfected result of evolution ?
Let us not be misunderstood. We are not arguing that because the Lords would be a stronger Conservative force in the Commons, therefore there ought to be no Second Chamber. We may by hypothesis want such an institution, even if the Revisers are inferior men to the Revisees, the necessity being not more wisdom, but more conflict and delay. We are only pleading that the general notion that a House of Lords is a Conservative force has no solid foundation, is indeed in many ways the exact reverse of the truth, the Peers, under the pre- sent system, being carefully cut off from the most effective public career. If they are as able as is said,—and though there is exaggeration in Mr. Greg's statement, official Peers being often chosen for other reasons than ability, there is truth in it too,—why be so frightened at the idea of letting them out ? When the Dalai Lama claims to rule by right of capacity, is it not odd of his votaries to lock him up ?
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