House of Peers

“ But, gentlemen, the charge against the House of Lords is that the dignities are hereditary, and we are told that if we have a House of Peers they should be peers for life. There are great authorities in favour of this, and even my noble friend, (Lord Derby) near me the other day gave in his adhesion to a limited application of this principle. Now, gentlemen, in the first place let me observe that every peer is a peer for life, as he cannot be a peer after his death ”

“ On the other hand, in England, the families of peers have never been 14 exempt from their share of the public burdens. The “peerage,” or hereditary right to sit in the House of Lords, belongs only to the head of the family; all the other members of the family are commoners, though some may be addressed by courtesy titles. During the formative period of modern political society, from the fourteenth century onward, the sons of peers habitually competed for seats in the House of Commons, side by side with merchants and yeomen. ”

“ It is beyond doubt that the immense inequality of wealth and credit,—in a word, of power and social importance, which existed between the great barons and the other political classes of the nation, whether freeholders or burgesses, was in England the sole cause of the institution of the House of Peers. ”

“ It is needless to speak of the Upper House, which, as has been sarcastically remarked of our House of Peers, is merely a "High Court of Registry"—it remains to be seen whether an elective chamber would possess greater vitality and independence. ”

“ The landed interest and the law are, indeed, the only ones that have any great party in the House of Peers; but then the House of Peers seldom interferes in matters that concern the interests of the others. ”

“ The Peers are noble—that is, remarkable, illustrious; but are not necessarily, nor in every instance, persons of high birth. This House therefore is not, in any sort, the representative of what is called in France the Noblesse—a particular cast of the nation;—nor is it a junction of the proprietors of the great fees of the Crown, as such;—for many, very many, of the greatest baronies are in the hands of those we call Commoners.—They sit as the King's Counsellors, or as Judges.—Therefore the members of our Upper House are not swayed by the prejudices of any class of the citizens. ”

“ Moreover, English people like old institutions; this House of Peers, therefore, is not only kept on, but is rendered popular by the continual infusion of new blood—the continual election to the House of new men with no family connection or influence. Among the recently made Peers there are successful men of business: engineers, physicians, manufacturers. Tennyson, Lister, Leighton, Kelvin, show that a peerage is at last open to literature, science, and law.
Again, it is objected that the House of Lords can oppose a popular measure. So can every Upper House. ”

“ By aristocracy I do not now mean merely the peers and their heirs, but that class which is identified by blood, intermarriages, possessions, and authority in the government, for you are never to forget, though the House of Commons does contain a few members who are exceptions, that the controlling majority of that body is, to all intents and purposes, no more than another section of the interests represented by the peers. ”

“ Under these circumstances, it appears to us that some alteration in the constitution of this noble House is a mere question of time. In the famous debate of April, 1866, upon Lord Russell's project of reform, Mr. Lowe, in one of the cleverest speeches ever delivered in the House of Commons, used the following words:—
'Let us suppose democracy established more or less in this country: with what eyes would it look upon institutions such as I have described—what would be the relation of this House to the House of Peers? I shall call a witness who will tell you. ”

“ The private entrance to the House of Peers is in the centre of the Old Palace Yard front, and there is another from the south-western angle of St. Stephen’s Hall. The entrances to the House of Commons are by the Star Chamber and Cloister Courts, and by an archway on the western side of Westminster Hall. Each House has its lobbies, corridors, and refreshment rooms, with ready access to its committee-rooms and libraries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The House of Lords was a second-rate force, even when the peers were a first-rate force, because the greatest peers, those who had the greatest social importance, did not care for their own House, or like it, but gained great part of their political power by a hidden but potent influence in the competing House. ”

“ The worst enemy our grandfathers supposed they had in England, throughout their Revolution, was the ministerial majority of that House of Commons, made up of placemen sitting for rotten boroughs, the sons of peers, and the country gentlemen, who belonged to a caste as much as their first-cousins who sat by titles in the House of Lords. ”

“ Having ensured the influence of wealth by seizing the land, and substituting in its possession the son for the father, by virtue of the right of primogeniture, it has given the legislative power to the proprietors of the soil, through the medium of a House of Peers, whose prerogatives and domains pass to the eldest son, and of a House of Commons, the right to elect whose members is centred chiefly in the tenants of large proprietors. ”

“ It is owing also to the wealth and dignity of those ancient families, who would be styled noble in any other country, and who give an aristocratical character to the popular part of our legislature, and to the influence which the peers themselves, through the representation of small boroughs, are enabled to exercise over the lower house. ”

“ While, therefore, the occasional creation of a large number of peers, either hereditary or for life, might, at a sacrifice of the self-respect of the House of Lords, produce for the moment a greater similarity of views between the two branches of Parliament, a constant political harmony could be attained only by such additions to the upper House by each new set of ministers as would make it a mere tool in their hands. ”

“ But on some occasions the House of Lords, even under all these disadvantages, is in some sense representative. When all the peers flocked together to vote against Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill, for instance, those who said that the peers represented the English people, were perfectly right. All those dear old men who happened to be born peers were at that moment, and upon that question, the precise counterpart of all the dear old men who happened to be born paupers or middle-class gentlemen. ”

“ In the House of Commons, Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, Lowe, and Gathorne Hardy distinguished themselves above all others. But the palm for oratory, as has so often been the case, was borne off by the House of Lords. That House presented a brilliant spectacle during the debates on the second reading of the Bill which the majority of the peers detested so heartily. The speaking against the measure was far more effective than that in its favour. ”

“ All these new Peers who compose the higher House, receive nothing but their Titles from the King, and very few of them have Estates in those Places whence they take their Titles. One shall be Duke of D—— tho' he has not a Foot of Land in Dorsetshire; and another is Earl of a Village, tho' he scarce knows where it is situated. The Peers have Power, but 'tis only in the arliament House. ”

“ The House of Peers, throughout the war,
Did nothing in particular,
And did it very well:
Yet Britain set the world a-blaze
In good King George's glorious days! ”

“ The rule excluding peers is sometimes a hardship on a rising young man transferred by the death of his father from the active battlefield of politics in the House of Commons to the dignified seclusion of the House of Lords. ”

“ But if a change in the composition of the House of Lords would be very unlikely to raise its political position as a whole, it might well reduce the personal influence of individual peers. If the House came to be regarded as mainly a collection of persons holding seats for life, the social position of its members might be very different from that of an hereditary nobility. A radical reform in the composition of the House might also very well produce a change of another kind. ”

“ The Roman Catholic peers, by prematurely attempting to force their way into the Privy Council and the House of Lords, might lose their mansions and their ample estates, and might end their lives as traitors on Tower Hill, or as beggars at the porches of Italian convents. ”

“ Nevertheless, the parliamentary machine could not, and did not, run smoothly, the passions of that time being too hot; so that the work of the Speaker was, on the one hand, to forward such reforms of procedure as were possible, and, on the other, to carry on the life of the House of Commons from day to day. ‘Theoretically Peel was the servant of the House. There were occasions when a stranger might almost have regarded him as its master. ”

“ Looking to the hill, crowned with its picturesque ruin, he sees the mansion of a noble citizen united with himself in zealous obedience to an equal law,—the peer who in the higher, or the burgess who in the lower house of parliament, consults for the weal of the community, and derives his own value and importance most from the trust reposed in him by his fellow-townsmen. ”

“ It is his duty as a member of the ruling class to interest himself in public behaviour. The House of Lords has been shorn of much of its powers, but the influence of its members remains."
"As the son of a peer, my dear Arthur," said Mr. Perry, "you are quite right to stand up for your order, and if every peer were like your [Pg 231] father there would be no objection to their claiming such rights as Lord Potter, for instance, claims—to have free entry into every house, in order that he may satisfy himself that its occupants are behaving themselves as they should do. ”

“ If it happens that any member of the Commons should be so bold as to speak to the prejudice of the House of Lords, he is called to the bar of the House to be reprimanded, and, occasionally, to be sent to the Tower. ”

“ The traveller, entranced by the power and eloquence of these leaders, could scarcely have failed to feel that the House of Commons was the most glorious assembly on earth, the incarnation of the highest political wisdom, the theatre and school of the noblest energies, worthy to instruct and guide the English nation, or any other nation in the world. ”

“ Those who look on and do not participate see more apparent confusion than exists in reality. The disorder that often appears on the floor of the House grows out of an earnest, active spirit possessed by members coming from all sections of the United States, and indicates in high degree their strong individuality and their great zeal in trying to secure recognition in the prompt discharge of their duty. No more conscientious body of men than compose this House of Representatives, in my opinion, ever met. ”