II. A REPRESENTATIVE UPPER HOUSE.
In most historical attempts at government by the people it has been recognized that legislation is better balanced if there are two chambers in the law-making body, one directly elected by the people, the other indirectly chosen and representing important vested interests that are likely to make its members conservative. The initiative for legislation comes, as a rule, from the direct representatives of the people, while the upper chamber represses radical law-making or sudden changes in legislative policy, yet does not hamper too much the progress of democracy.
PART OF LETTER OF POPE INNOCENT III. MENTIONING GREENLAND.
During the last few years a crisis in English politics has led to a very general demand for a modification of the status of the House of Lords, while almost similar conditions have led to the beginning at least of a similar demand for the modification of our Senate in this country. Both these upper chambers have come to represent vested interests to too great a degree. The House of Lords has been the subject of special deprecation. The remark is sometimes made that it is unfortunate that England is weighted down by this political incubus, the House of Lords, which is spoken of as a heritage from the Middle Ages. The general impression, of course, is that the English House of Lords, as at present constituted, comes down from the oldest times of constitutional government in England. Nothing could well be more untrue than any such idea.
The old upper chamber of England, the medieval House of Lords, was an eminently representative body. Out of the 625 or more of members of the English House of Lords at the present time about five hundred and fifty hold their seats by heredity. Only about seventy-five are in some sense elective. At least one-half of these elected peers, however, must be chosen from the hereditary nobility of Ireland and Scotland. Nearly nineteen-twentieths of the membership of the House of Lords, as at present constituted, owe their place in national legislation entirely to heredity. Until the reformation so-called this was not so. More than one-half of the English House of Lords, a good working majority, consisted of the Lords spiritual. Besides the Bishops and Archbishops there were the Abbots and Priors of monasteries, and the masters of religious orders. These men as a rule had come up from the people. They had risen to their positions by intellectual abilities and by administrative capacity. The abbots and other superiors of religious orders had been chosen by their monks as a rule because, having shown that they knew how to rule themselves, they were deemed most fitting to rule over others.
Even in our day, when the Church occupies nothing like the position in the hearts of the masses that she held in the ages of faith, our Catholic Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, both here and in England, are chosen as members of arbitration boards to settle strikes and other social difficulties, because it is felt that the working class has full confidence in them, and that they are thoroughly representative of the spirit of democracy. In England Cardinal Manning served more than once in critical social conditions. In this country we have had a series of such examples. From these we can better understand what the Lords spiritual represented in the English House of Lords. There were abuses, though they were not nearly so frequent as were thought, by which unworthy men sometimes reached such positions, for men abuse even the best things, but in general these clerical members of the House of Lords were the chosen intellectual and moral products of the kingdom. Since they were without families they had [{435}] less temptation to serve personal interests and, besides, they had received a life-long training in unselfishness, and the best might be expected of them. For an ideal second chamber I know none that can compare with this old English House of Lords of the Middle Ages. How much it was responsible for the foundation of the liberties of which the English-speaking people are deservedly so proud, and which have been treated in some detail in the chapter on Origins in Law, would be interesting to trace.