The Government of England (Vol. I)

by A. Lawrence Lowell

Position of the House in Forcing a Referendum.

A cabinet never thinks of resigning on account of the hostility of the Lords; nor is its position directly affected by their action. Indirectly, however, it may be very seriously impaired, if the peers, claiming that the government is not really in accord with the electorate, reject important measures, and thereby challenge a dissolution of Parliament. By doing so they may reduce a ministry, that is not in a condition to dissolve, to a state of political impotence, both in fact and in the eyes of the nation. This was true of the Liberal administration in 1893-94, when the peers rejected the Home Rule Bill, and made amendments that struck at the root of the Parish Councils and Employers' Liability Bills, changing the latter in a manner so vital that the government finally withdrew the measure altogether. The Liberals protested that the House of Lords thwarted the will of the people, and ought to be ended or mended. The alliteration helped to make the phrase a catchword, but the cry excited popular enthusiasm so little that at the dissolution in 1895 the country upheld the same party as the House of Lords, and returned a large Unionist majority to Parliament.

For the Lords to appeal to the people at a moment when the people were of their party was naturally not an unpopular thing to do, and for some time after the fall of Lord Rosebery's government they rather gained than lost ground in the esteem of the public. The Conservatives, indeed, declared that the House had renewed its youth, and had become once more an important organ of the state by asserting its right to appealing from the cabinet and the majority in the Commons to the nation itself. The Lords were said to have attained the function of demanding a sort of referendum on measures of exceptional gravity; but useful as such a function might be, if in the nature of things a possible one, the existing House of Lords cannot really exercise it, because their object in doing so is essentially partisan. In attempting to appeal to the electorate, they act at the behest of one party alone. Thus in 1893 the Lords were quite ready to force the issue whether the cabinet retained the confidence of the country; but in 1905 when a series of adverse by-elections made it exceedingly doubtful whether the Conservative government had not lost its popularity, nothing was further from their intention than to cause a dissolution.

Now, a power to provoke a referendum or appeal to the people, which is always used in favour of one party and against the other, however popular it may be at a given moment, and however much it may be permanently satisfactory to the party that it helps, cannot fail in the long run to be exceedingly annoying to its rival; nor is it likely to commend itself to the great mass of thinking men as a just and statesmanlike institution. The House of Lords is a permanent handicap in favour of the Tories, which is believed to have helped them even in elections for the House of Commons. The workingmen have been told that although the Conservatives promise them less, they are better able to fulfil their promises than the Liberals who cannot control the House of Lords. These things must be borne in mind in discussing a possible reform of the upper House; but before coming to that question it will be well to look at the Lords under some other aspects—at their non-partisan activity, their treatment of private members' bills, and of private bill legislation, and at the personal influence of the leading peers.

Non-political Legislation.

So far we have considered only government bills, backed by the authority of a responsible ministry, which the upper House must treat with circumspection. The Lords do not feel the same restraint in regard to private members' bills sent to them from the Commons. These lie beyond the immediate range of party conflicts, and although they may occasionally deal with important subjects, neither the cabinet nor the parties take sides officially upon them. The Lords can, therefore, amend or reject them without fear; but it has become so difficult for a private member to get through the Commons any bill to which there is serious opposition, that this function of the upper House is not of great use. Still less vital is its power to initiate measures. In order the better to employ the time of the Commons the government introduces some of its secondary bills first in the Lords;[412:1] but measures proposed by individual peers have little chance of success. It is hard enough for a private member of the Commons to put his bill through its stages in that House, with all the sittings reserved for the purpose in the earlier part of the session; and it is even harder to pass a bill brought from the Lords at a later date. The result is that of the few private members' bills enacted each session only about one sixth originate with the peers.

Private Bill Legislation.

The relation of the House of Lords to private bill legislation is very different, for bills of that kind are in a region quite outside of politics. In their case, as already observed, the action of the Lords is, if anything, even more important than that of the Commons; and, in fact, the private bill committees of the upper House inspire in general a greater confidence, because the members are men of more experience.[412:2] While, therefore, the House of Lords occupies a subordinate place in regard to public measures of all kinds, and a position of marked inferiority in the case of government bills, in private and local legislation, which in England is of great importance, its activity is constant and highly useful.

Personal Influence of the Peers.

The personal influence of the Lords is far greater than their collective authority. With the waning of the landed gentry the respect for the old territorial aristocracy has been replaced by a veneration for titles, and this has inured to the benefit of the peerage. One sees it even in business affairs, although the Lords as a class are little qualified by experience for dealing with matters of that kind, the nobility having until recently been debarred by tradition from commercial life. One of the devices of that arch promoter Hooley for inducing the public to embark in his schemes was to include a number of peers in his list of directors—guinea-pig directors, as they were called, because their most visible function was to pocket a guinea for attendance at each meeting. The Hooley revelations some years ago checked this practice; but the fact that it should have existed shows the confidence that titles were believed to inspire among a large class of investors.