[404:1] May, 204, 205.
[404:2] Ibid., 206.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CABINET AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS
Effect of The Reform Act of 1832.
By sweeping away rotten boroughs, and giving representatives to new centres of industry, the Reform Act of 1832 made a great change in the position of the House of Lords; not by lessening its power—for since the Great Rebellion the Lords as a branch of the legislature has never had much power—but by the change in the composition of the House of Commons which opened a door to conflicts between the two bodies. In the old unreformed days the Lords and Commons were in general accord, because both were controlled by a territorial aristocracy whose chief members were peers. That element remained, no doubt, strong in the Commons after the Act of 1832, but it was no longer overmastering, and it had to use its authority in a more popular spirit, so that the two Houses ceased to be controlled by the same force. By bringing about this result the Reform Act drew attention to the fact that an hereditary body, however great the personal influence of its members, could not in nineteenth century England be the equal in corporate authority of a representative chamber. It became apparent that the House of Lords might on important issues differ in opinion from the House of Commons, and that in such cases an enduring desire of the nation, as expressed in the representative chamber, must prevail.
Power of the Lords Thereafter.
This did not mean that the House of Lords must submit to everything that the Commons chose to ordain; that it was to become a mere fifth wheel of the coach; on the contrary, in matters not of great importance, or on which the Commons were not thoroughly in earnest, it exercised its own judgment, sometimes in cases that caused no little friction between the Houses. In 1860, for example, it rejected the bill to repeal the duties on paper; in 1871 it refused to concur in the abolition of the purchase of commissions in the Army; and in 1880 it rejected the bill to compensate evicted Irish tenants. In all these cases the policy of the House of Commons was ultimately carried out; and the peers recognised fully that their action on great measures was tentative; that they must not go too far; and that if public opinion was persistent they must in the end give way. As Mr. Sidney Low well says: "The House of Lords, ever since the struggle over the great Reform Bill, has been haunted by a suspicion that it exists on sufferance."[406:1]
