TOPICS OF THE DAY.
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THE LORDS AND '11111 BILL.
IT this rumour be true,—which we do not believe,—that the Conservative Lords have made up their minds to the exercise of the liberum veto on the nation's work, there was real aristocratic nonchalance in the discussion of Thursday night on the effect of adding two life peers and a half or so to that House annually. A man who when just going to submit to a probably fatal operation, sends a careful order for some choice dried fruits from the East Indies, might be supposed to be keeping up his own heart by carefully dwelling on the most trivial details of a prolonged existence ; but we could not credit the Lords with so much eagerness to live as this, and should sincerely believe that they were so intrepid, so utterly reckless of extinction, that it pleased them better to dwell on even the finest minutiae of their own possible future, than on the coarse conflict into which they had made up their minds to plunge. This intrepidity would be very touching, but it would also be a most natural characteristic of the rashness which had resolved on such a conflict, and so far rather corroborates than invalidates the hypothesis that they contemplate a violent and extreme course. It is barely even possible that they aro in the dark as to its violent and extreme character. They all know that a Bill passed in the last House of Commons by majorities of 60 and upwards, has been passed, in a stronger form, in this, by majorities very nearly double ; that the statistics of the new House of Commons show a majority of about 40 for England and Wales,—of about 40 for Scotland, and about 26 for Ireland in favour of the Bill ; that there is no separate constituent element of the kingdom, therefore, which has not given its voice decisively for the Bill ; and that the only result of the impertinence of affecting that the Peers of England are really a fully coordinate power with the whole remnant of the nation, would be to make that remnant of the nation show the ease with which it could crush, and the indifference with which it would do so. But that is the least part of the mischief. If the Lords are really weary of a power so much hampered by the growing pretensions and strength of the national assembly,—if they think, as they may well think on good grounds, that they will have more substantial power as elected members of the Commons than as members of a paralyzed branch of the Legislature,—well and good. We have no objection. But let them at least recollect that their power in the Commons, if extinguished as a separate order, will be purely conditional on their adoption of a new creed, —a creed such as English constituencies will ratify,—and that they cannot inaugurate the attempt to earn such power worse than by doing their best to kindle civil war in Ireland,—i .e., by insolently vetoing the policy which the whole nation,—themselves excepted,—has deliberately endorsed.
The House of Peers has recently rung with reproaches directed against the Ministry for two Irish acts, the liberation of a few Fenian prisoners of no note, whose impotence was the apology for their release, and whose utterly subordinate character, as the tools of other and more guilty men, was the excuse for their crime ; and also for the supposed avowal by distinguished members of the Government of sympathy with loose Irish ideas on proprietary rights in land. We have been told again and again that thismistaken leniency towards crime, and still more mistaken sympathy with revolutionary ideas, was exciting Irish passions to a white-heat. Well, then, we ask, what could we say of the act of men who, knowing in their own hearts that they have no power at all to prevent this measure, should idly reject it to gratify their own vanity ? Will not that stir Irish passions to a white-heat ? Leniency, even if it be too great, does not usually stir up resentment. Hope in the justice of England, even on the land laws, is not the sort of motive from which we should expect to reap a crop of agrarian crimes, and we for our parts utterly disbelieve that the two phenomena have any connection whatever. But what is it natural to expect from the idle interference of a body of hereditary landowners to avert a great act of justice to Ireland I Lord Derby has avowed that he does not venture even on his own Irish estate to carry out fully his own ideas of a proprietor's rights and duties. What does he, or any other of the great Irish landowners in the House of Peers, expect to be the result of a cynical attempt on behalf of their body to reject the prayer of Ireland, and thwart the resolve of Great Britain I Do they suppose that they can do these things an4pot aggravate a thousandfold the hatred felt by Ireland for English land laws and English landowners Will it not be said at once that they are acting, not on behalf of a Church for which they care little, but of proprietary interests for which they care everything ? If agrarian murders multiply, would those titled Conservative& keep an easy conscience in spite of the useless and wanton insult they had cast upon Ireland f We should not condemn this act if the Lords could even pretend to hope that their action would be effectual. If they could even fancy they had the real power to defeat the measure, they would be justified in acting on their conscientious view of it. But, as they well know, they have not. This act would be simply the act of madmen,—the act of reckless men, who are willing to risk not only their own existence, but countless evils of a far more serious character as well, if they may only spare themselves the mortification of saying, ' We surrender.'
We do not really believe the rumour we have discussed. But if there is even sufficient ground for it to render discussion useful, it is quite necessary to warn the House of Lords that it is not their own existence only they would be periling in this matter,—to that they might have a right. They would be casting gunpowder on already heated and smouldering fuel. They would be idly and yet deliberately exciting the Irish animosity against land laws and landlords into fury which we may not soon be able to extinguish.
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