LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A SHORT WAY WITH THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
[ToTHR EDITOR OF THR " SPICCIATOE."1 SIR,—In the January number of the Fortnightly Review, Mr. Swift McNeill has propounded a short way with the House of Lords which besides being short is also constitutions'. That Charles I. should be the example to be copied, is scared,- a guarantee either of its constitutional nature or of the wisdoe of its policy. Charles I., in his struggle against the Englisu Parliament and the English people, proposed to use the Irish as the means of subduing his Parliament. One of the in- cidents in this struggle was the refusal of a writ of 811131111ons to Lord Bristol, a Peer who had made himself distasteful to Charles. Lord Rosebery and the Gladstonian party, in a belated but equally dangerous attack on English liberties, rely on the Irish Nationalists to force a distasteful Act on the unwilling representatives of Great Britain. Foiled by the House of Lords, Mr. Swift McNeill suggests an imitation of Charles's policy by refusing writs to those Peers who are opposed to Home-rule,—" obstructing the People's will," he calls it.
Mr. McNeill admits, with Lord Brougham, that the diffi- culties in the way of swamping the House of Lords by fresh creations are so great as to make that plan impossible. He therefore proposes to make use of the prerogative of the Crown, to be used for the people instead of against the people. The Ministers of the Crown are to refuse writs to all those Peers opposed to their policy. Presumably, the House of Lords is to consist, during a Home-rule Ministry, of the thirty faithful Gladstonian Peers, and no others. Mr. McNeill appears to have a well -founded suspicion that Charles I. is not the best of constitutional authorities. He accordingly quotes Mr. Freeman as saying, "It is hard to see how, except when they have been taken away by Act of Parliament, any powers that were exercised by Edward I. can be refused to Queen Victoria!" Mr. Freeman was some- thing of an antiquarian in his views of the Constitution. Every one knows that the Constitution has changed since the time of Edward I., and that the prerogative of the Crown has been modified in many ways other than by actual enact- ment. The single instance of Cabinet government is sufficient to show it. No one knew better than Mr. Freeman that the constitutional practice and the prerogative of Edward L is very far from being applicable at the present day.
There is not space for an examination of Mr. Swift MeNeill's constitutional arguments, but they seem very inconclusive. He says all Peers are not Lords of Parliament. All Peers of England and the United Kingdom, however, are Lords of Parliament. Scotch and Irish Peers other than representative Peers, it is true, do not receive writs of summons to Parliament, but this is in accordance with statute, and is regulated by the Scotch and Irish Acts of Union. In the same way a Peer who is a bankrupt under the Bankruptcy Disqualification Act does not receive a writ of summons, but this again is a statutory disqualification, and is very different from an arbitrary exercise of the prerogative advised in the article. A Peerage of the United Kingdom as such, confers a right to a seat in Parliament which cannot be refused unless for some definite reason laid down in an Act of Parliament. Acts of Parliament, however, are the very things the Irish Nationalists and their allies wish to avoid. O'Connell, who is quoted as saying that there are resources in the English Constitution for great national occasions, simply gives a list of successful revolutions, such as the dethronement of Richard II., of Henry VI., of Charles I., and of James II. But the whole point of the present situa- tion is that the Home-rule party have got neither sufficient faith, zeal, nor strength to make a revolution. They have not got enough popular feeling behind them to pass even a statute curtailing the powers of the House of Lords. The Home-rulers are consequently reduced to attempts at " Gerry- mandering " the Constitution by such obsolete uses of the prerogative as were discredited and defeated so long ago as the reign of Charles I. Such expedients Mr. Swift McNeill considers politic, constitutional, and popular.—I am, Sir, &c.,
MORPETH.
Brooks's, St. James's Street, December 25th, 1894.
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