THE " MODERATION " OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
THE House of Lords is going to be as moderate as Mr. Fawcett expected. Lord Salisbury does not advise his followers to throw out the Irish Land Bill, and speech after speech which condemns with the utmost bitterness every prin- ciple of importance contained in the Land Bill, concludes with the recommendation to let it pass. Nevertheless the " modera- tion " of the Peers fills us with alarm, not, indeed, on account of the practical reasonableness with which they propose to act, but because they not only permit us to see, but vehemently declare, that that moderation is not in the least moderation of opinion, but is rather a profound reluctance to act upon opinions which they openly avow to be anything in the world but moderate. Take Lord Salisbury, who is the leader of the great majority in the House. What did he openly tell us of his view ? He says the object of the Bill is to "cheat " the landlord, in order to give something to the tenant, —though it is possible, he adds, in a moment of excessive candour, that "cheating," as expressive of intentional fraud, may be too strong a word. He quotes the opinion of the Ripubligue Francaise that the object of the Bill is to embody in our Irish land-law a " decided Socialism," and this judgment Lord Salisbury enthusiastically accepts. He says that from this time forward, the landlord will look upon the Imperial Parliament and the Government as one of his most formidable dangers, as a source of new earthquakes, from which it will be impossible to preserve himself and his property, and the date of which it will be equally impossible to foresee ; that he will for the future feel, and justly feel, like an Armenian peasant who expects the Government at any time " to send down and take away part of his rights." And having said all this, Lord Salisbury advises their Lordships to pass the Bill. The Marquis of Waterford goes further. He not only considers the measure to be one of " confiscation pure and simple," and certain to result in nothing but " dire and de- sperate disaster in the future ;" but he announces his belief that " the intention of the Chief Secretary for Ireland must have been " the ruin of the Irish landlords,"—otherwise, he said, he would not have waited, for fear of frightening his followers, till the measure was nearly passed to "throw off the mask," and accept Mr. Parnell's clause empowering the Court to delay judgment in cases at issue between landlord and tenant till the Commission had decided the question of a fair rent. The Marquis of Waterford, therefore, not only thinks the Bill wholly bad and ruinous, but one animated by a bad purpose ; and yet he, too, declares it to be a " necessity " to give the Bill a second reading. Lord Lytton considers the Bill " a step, and a long step," to either "a dissolution of the nation," or else " civil war;" but he, too, deprecates not passing the second reading. The Duke of Argyll holds it to be a Bill for establishing one institution which is " eminently ridiculous," and another institution which is "eminently unjust ;" that it " deprives all the landlords of Ireland of their privileges," and " releases them from their duties ;" but he assumes its passing as a matter of course. Even Lord Cairns, who has evidently a much better secret opinion of the Bill than the rest of his party, charges the Government with having, by their negligence and incapability, created the circumstances which render it essential to pass the Bill, but still hopes that it may be passed without any amendment " which would alter its main lines and features."
Now, ivhat are we to say of the fitness of an assembly to revise legislation in the interests of true " moderation " which thinks thus of it at heart ? What would Pope have said to an edition of the " Dunciad " edited by Dennis ? What would the Cobden Club say to submitting their publications to the revision of Sir Edward Sullivan ? What would the Charity Organisation Society say to offering a veto on its operations to a Committee of Begging-letter Writers ? We do not see that any of these arrangements would be much more dangerous in principle than asking any assembly whatever to exercise its moderation by the revision of a measure which it thinks deliberately a Socialistic proposal, intended to cheat one class and benefit another, and regards as a fatal source of moral earthquakes and oppression ; which it -brands as one of confiscation pure and simple, certain to result in dire and desperate disaster, nay, absolutely intended by at least one of its authors to be the ruin of the Irish landlords ; which it conceives to be one carrying us a step, and a long step, to either a dissolution of the nation or civil war ; which it declares to contain principles eminently ridiculous and eminently unjust, depriving a
great class of its privileges, and relieving it of its duties ; finally, one the responsibility for which ought to be laid on the Government as a species of indelible guilt. Now, is it in the power of any class of men so to enter into a measure which they think wholly bad in principle and origin, as to improve it ? Of course, all " improvement " must, in the mind of a great popular assembly animated by such feelings, take the form of striking at the heart of the thing to be improved,—must, in fact, go just as near to improving it off the face of the earth as the improvers dare go. This was what the House of Lords did with the Disturbance Bill of last year, to the great injury of Ireland, and with the result of rendering the Coercion Acts of this year absolutely necessary in the belief of a most reluctant Liberal Government, as well as of aggravating enormously the urgency of the measure which has just passed its second reading in the House of Lords. The present Bill, the Lords, with one accord, tell us that they dare not improve off the face of the earth ; but is there a question in any man's mind of the absolute and dominant prepossession with which they set themselves to gulp down as much of the nauseous medicine as they must, and to pour away as much of it as they dare ? The metaphor is not ours. Lord Lytton explicitly declares the remedy of the Government to be composed of " the most nauseous and suspicious ingredients ;" and after such a confes- sion, who can doubt for a moment that all who share his opinion,—and they are the great majority of the House of Lords,—will ask themselves how much it is neces- sary to retain, and how much it will be tolerably safe to throw away ? In other words, the moderation of the House of Lords will consist, not in the least in the careful revision of the principle of legislation from an independent point of view, but in the amount of fear to which they yield, that is, in the disposition to panic which induces them to accept, against their will, a certain dose of this unpalatable remedy which they regard not as a cure, but as a most dangerous stimulus to the virulence of the disease.
We can hardly imagine any sort of moderation less likely to result in good to the State, than moderation which is nothing but an excess of fear restraining a redundance of hate. True moderating influence starts from sympathy with the end proposed, but balances that sympathy by due consideration for other ends, which are also good, though more or less at cross- purposes with this end. In that sense, old men moderate the hopes of the young,—experienced men moderate the zeal of the inexperienced,—and wise men moderate the one-sidedness of enthusiasts. But when moderation is no- thing in the world but the bridle and curb which timidity and terror impose on hatred, it is not necessarily a principle of wisdom at all, and may be a principle of folly ; for there is nothing more certain than that the attenuation of a good thing may often turn a good thing into a bad thing, while even the attenuation of a bad thing may easily turn a bad thing into a worse. There can be no doubt at all now that the water with which the House of Lords diluted the Irish Land Bill of 1.870 tended, even in the opinion of many of those who helped to supply it, to extinguish the good of the remedy it- self, and to hasten the need for doing something much stronger. And, again, there is no doubt in our minds that the attenu- ation of a Maine Liquor Law into an Alliance Law, such as Sir Wilfrid Lawson advocates, would, by substituting the caprice of each particular locality for the vote of a whole nation, turn a bad principle into one at once much weaker and much worse. Nothing can be less true than that the attenu- ation of what is good renders it less dangerous in the sense of those who think it bad ; or than that the attenuation of what is bad will, even in the sense of those who think it bad, make it less mischievous, rather than more. If you do not carry out the principle on which a measure is founded, you give what is good in it no fair chance, and yet you may easily give whatever is bad in it much more chance than before. Lord Dunraven, who did not make either a very wise or a very consistent speech, was at least wise in this,—that though he inveighed strongly against the Irish Land Bill and those who introduced it, he yet exhorted the House of Lords not to cripple it, not to turn it into a half-measure, but to give it all the extension of which it was capable. Lord Cairns took the same wise line when he asked that the Bill might be passed without any amendment altering its main lines and features. But are the Lords capable of such self-restraint as this to- wards a measure which they positively loathe ? We confess we look with the greatest alarm on the moderation of an assembly which begins with detesting what it dare not resist. That moderation will sometimes involve even a worse mischief than
the most flagrant and open hostility. Even if, by accident or providence, it does not result in this in any particular case, it is impossible to imagine a worse body for revis- ing a measure than one which detests its very principle, and only acquiesces in it at all from a feeling of fear, untem- pered by even the least grain of sympathy.
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