Philip Vernon Smith

“ But it is objected that the House of Lords is founded on the principle of hereditary descent, and that that principle is inconsistent with the ideas of our day. Inconsistent with the ideas of our day! It might as well be said inconsistent with the moving principles of human nature; for it is in that hereditary principle that the appeal to many of men's highest instincts lies. A man toils not for himself, but for his son; for him he spends his life, and strength, and energy, as on him he pours out his affections ”

“ The glory of our Constitution is that, though never committed to paper, it has been maintained almost inviolate from generation to generation, developing with the development of the nation, and changing just as much as the changes in the condition of the nation require, and no more. In the course of this development and change the House of Lords, which was originally the chief legislative assembly of the country, has come at length to occupy the position which is assigned by all the best political writers and thinkers to a Second Chamber, namely, that of being a check upon the Lower House. ”

“ Then it was the party of reform who pressed upon the Peers "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." Now it is the Peers, who, in requiring that the plan for the extension of the franchise shall be accompanied by the scheme for the redistribution of seats, are insisting on the measure, the whole measure, and nothing but the measure. On the other hand, the motto of the Government policy is in fact, at present, "the part, the little part, and nothing but the part."
It is not difficult to decide on which side lie right and reason. ”

“ Of course, among ourselves it is out of the question. We cannot form either the 5,000,000 electors whom we are to have, nor even the present 3,000,000, into a legislative assembly; and, therefore, we are obliged to have recourse to the inferior method, and constitute our House of Commons by representation. But small States, such as ancient Athens, and Rome, in her early and palmy days, would never have dreamt of recourse to representation, while all their citizens could personally attend the assembly. ”

“ For who has ever become a great mathematician without careful training in figures in his youth, if not in his boyhood? Yet we admit among the ranks of our statesmen men like Mr. Chamberlain, who have spent their early manhood in enriching themselves—shall we say at the expense of their fellow-countrymen?—well, at any rate, with the help of their toil, and have only taken to politics at the age of thirty, or perhaps later. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to decide whether a man is a truly sound and wise politician as whether he is an accurate mathematician ”

“ For it has been shown above that if every born Peer were a born legislator, the result, instead of being beneficial, would be disastrous to the nation. We should, then, indeed, have too many cooks spoiling the broth of the country's affairs. There are plenty of functions for public men to discharge outside the walls of Parliament; and we may be content if the hereditary principle gives us a certain number of statesmen, of whose services the country would not otherwise have had the benefit. ”

“ And, similarly, while the number of our Peers is less than that of the House of Commons, it would be the height of unwisdom to substitute a system of representation for their individual political responsibility. It would not only unnecessarily deprive the nation of the counsels of individuals, whose occasional presence in the deliberations of Parliament is of the greatest service, but it would deal a heavy blow on the present broad and democratic character of our Upper House. ”

“ I believe that if, like reasonable men, and not like children, carried away by every breath of rhetoric, we look dispassionately at the whole course and conduct of the House of Lords for many generations back, the verdict will be that that House has shown often more liberality, very often more wisdom than, and always as much patriotism as the House of Commons.
The revolution of 1668 was as much due to the English aristocracy and the House of Lords as to any man or men in the country. ”

“ It is obvious' that the working of a Senate so elected furnishes no criterion as to the probable working of an elected Upper House among ourselves, when the mode of election, whatever it might be, would certainly be completely different from that which exists in America. The more influential nations of Europe have not adopted an elective Upper Chamber. In the German States, including Austria, some of the members are hereditary, and the rest are nominated for life, or become life members by tenure of office. In Italy, all the members, except the Royal Princes, are nominated for life. ”

“ But, if the House of Lords is Conservative now, the reason is plain. It is the present Government that has alarmed the House, and has driven over from the Liberal to the Conservative side men who, from father to son, have been Liberal. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of craving after imaginary improvements, which a closer inspection reveals to be impracticable of attainment, and, to say the least, of but questionable benefit if we could attain to them, let us inquire whether there are not, after all, advantages in the state of things which we actually have. If we do, we shall discover benefits in the much-maligned hereditary constitution of the House of Lords which escape the superficial survey of the Radical mind. ”

“ The evil must be endured in the Lower House, because it is a physical impossibility that the voice of the people can be heard in that House otherwise than by representation; but why introduce it into the Upper House when no necessity exists for the importation into it of the representative system? ”

“ Lastly, if, out of deference to the House of Commons, the Peers consent to pass a measure of which they do not thoroughly approve, they are sneered at by the Prime Minister as wanting in courage and chivalry, [5] while if they do maintain their opinions against those of the Lower House, when they have all right and reason indisputably on their side, an outcry is raised that their powers must be curtailed, or even their House itself abolished. ”

“ Of course, if the continuance of these powers is fatal to the best interests of the country, we must not be deterred from endeavouring to abolish or restrict them by the risk that we may at the same time damage the political fabric of the Lower House. But the existence of this risk is an additional reason why, before joining in the campaign against the Peers, we should pause and ask ourselves seriously and anxiously whether by doing so we should be taking a course calculated to further the welfare of the nation. ”

“ The whole current of modern practice has been against the principle of nomination, and to entrust the composition of the Second Chamber to a succession of Prime Ministers, enjoying for the time the confidence of a majority of the nation, is a plan which no sane politician would seriously propose. ”

“ Moreover, when the workman laments that he cannot get through his job, and yet never resorts to the sharp edge which he himself forged for the purpose, the suspicion cannot help being awakened that he is purposely abstaining from using it with a view to persuade a credulous nation that he requires a yet keener weapon, with which they would be unwilling to entrust him unless they were persuaded that it was absolutely essential. ”

“ At present, however much any of the Peers may in fact represent the opinions and sentiments of their fellow-countrymen, they can make no claim that they do so, and though responsible to public opinion in general, they are not so to any constituencies in particular. Recognising, therefore, that the will of the commons of England must ultimately decide all public questions, they invariably defer sooner or later to that will when expressed through the representatives of the commons in the Lower House. ”

“ Peers, sitting in the House on behalf not only of themselves, but also of their fellow Peers who had elected them, would of necessity be far more jealous of maintaining the power of their own order and anxious for its interests, and far less able to take up an independent position in politics, than they are at present, when they can all form and express their own opinions, and adopt their own line of action, without being responsible to other members of their body. ”

“ It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the beneficial effect of this feature of our Constitution in banding all ranks together, and preventing the growth of an exclusive nobility out of sympathy with the rest of the nation. ”

“ It was foreseen that it involved the danger of the Peers becoming crystallised into a narrow oligarchy, and that the country would sustain a positive loss if deserving individuals could not be raised to the peerage whenever their own merits or the public welfare rendered it desirable, without the necessity of waiting till a vacancy should occur in the ranks of the Lords by the extinction of a peerage. ”

“ Whilst, then, I say now, as I have often said before, that I would refuse consideration to no wise or well considered proposal which would give strength or greater efficiency to our second chamber, it needs little knowledge of human nature, of History or statesmanship, to understand that they, who lightly discard the principle of hereditary descent, may find that they have cast aside that which even under the freest and most popular institutions may have a value little dreamed of by modern Liberals. ”

“ The Government were, in fact, fully alive to this contingency, and their attitude towards it furnishes a further and most complete justification of the course adopted by the House of Lords. We have actually heard from the lips of Ministers themselves, what in the absence of their own confession we should hardly have ventured to impute to them, that they deliberately intended to use this risk as a means of forcing their redistribution scheme down the throats of a reluctant Parliament. Mr. Gladstone first threw a ray of light on this point. ”

“ The French also have wisely taken warning from the rapid fate of their First and Second Republics, to which the system of having only one Chamber no doubt largely contributed, and have in their present Third Republic constituted two Houses, a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. It requires no small stock of credulity to believe that all the nations, beginning with the United States of America, which have thus copied the composition of our own Parliament, have been in error in doing so. ”

“ The son of a mathematician has special opportunities for becoming himself a mathematician. Sir John Herschel would probably never have been what he was if he had not been the son of Sir William Herschel. Darwin largely owed his attainments as a natural philosopher to his early training under his scientific father; and similar instances might be multiplied without number. But the heir to a peerage has not only peculiar facilities for becoming a politician, he has also special inducements to do so. ”

“ Again, one opponent censures them for retarding the progress of Radical legislation, and introducing Conservative amendments into Radical measures, for discharging, in fact, the primary duties of a Second Chamber. Another attempt to excite odium against them is by dilating on the small proportion of beneficial legislation which has initiated with them, and the scanty deliberation which they bestow on the measures sent up to them, regardless of the fact that it is not their function to initiate legislation on what are all called the burning questions of the day. ”

“ The first principle ensures the independence of the House, the second provides for the continual influx into it of new blood and new ideas, and gives the opportunity of retaining for the country the benefit of the counsels of distinguished men who have served their time in the more exhausting scenes of contested elections and the House of Commons, or may be for various reasons unable to enter into those scenes. ”

“ Foreign practice no precedent. It may, however, be urged that an elected Senate has worked admirably in America. Granted that this is so; but the American constitution, by its peculiarities, admits of a mode of electing a Senate which would be impracticable in our own country. The Senate of the United States is not elected by the citizens at large, but by the State legislatures, two senators being returned by every State. ”

“ But now that the constituencies, one and all, expect their members to take an active part in the proceedings of the House, by asking questions, if in no other manner, and the members do not disappoint their constituencies, the wheels of public business are inevitably retarded. ”

“ The truly reasonable view of the matter is that, although the hereditary principle does not ensure that the heir to a peerage shall be a statesman, yet it gives him special facilities for becoming so. ”

“ But the common sense of mankind has preferred to be guided by experience in the matter, and has decided with tolerable unanimity in the opposite direction. In the Republics and Constitutional States of ancient Greece, among the Ionians, Æolians, and Dorians alike, at Athens, at Thebes, and at Sparta, we find during their best epochs the government divided between the Boule or Gerousia, which corresponded with the Roman Senate, and the Agora, or popular assembly. ”

“ Already, two years ago, we have had the Parliamentary session adjourned to the autumn for that special purpose; but Mr. Gladstone is careful, whenever the opportunity offers, to express, in replies to deputations and correspondents, his conviction that the labours then bestowed on the matter were a failure, and that the mode of conducting business in the Lower House requires to be reformed in a yet more trenchant manner.
There is an old proverb which directs us where to assign the blame when a workman complains of his tools. ”