The Government of England (Vol. I)

by A. Lawrence Lowell

To Change the Nature of its Power.

The same reasoning would apply to any proposal to alter in character the powers exercised by the Lords. The channels of possible activity of any second chamber are fixed in England by the system itself, and they are not far from the ones in which the House of Lords now moves. The House could, no doubt, be shorn of the remnant of political authority that it still wields, and it could be deprived of its right to take part in private bill legislation; but it would seem that, except by merely reducing their extent, the nature of its powers cannot be very materially changed.

To Bring it into Harmony with the Nation.

Creation of Peers.

During the generation following the Reform Act of 1832, men spoke of the possibility of making new peers as a sufficient safeguard against obstinacy on the part of the upper House. It was felt that a ministry with the nation at its back could, if necessary, force the Lords to yield by advising the Crown to create peers enough to turn the scale. Lord Grey's government proposed to do this as a last resort to pass the Reform Bill of 1832, and obtained the consent of William IV.; but the threat was enough, and the Lords gave way. Such a drastic means of coercion is probably useless to-day; and would be only a temporary remedy. It is really not with the Commons that the House of Lords now comes into serious conflict, but with the cabinet which represents, or claims to represent, the nation, or to be more accurate the major part of the nation; and no creation of peers would be made to force a bill through the House of Lords unless the party in power had a mandate from the people to pass it. This is the real meaning of the saying that the House of Lords can force a referendum, or appeal to the nation, on a measure to which they object. A creation of peers to swamp the upper House would, therefore, not be tried until a general election had proved the persistent will of the electorate upon the measure in question, and then the Lords would in any case submit. Differences of opinion may, of course, arise on the question whether there is sufficient evidence of the popular will or not. In 1893, for example, the Liberals contended that the preceding general election had been carried on the issue of Home Rule, while the Conservatives insisted that it had really turned on other matters; and the same thing happened in the case of the Education Bill of 1906. Such a discussion may be conducted with heat, but especially with the enormous number of peers now required to turn a majority in their House, there is little danger of precipitate action. It is one of many cases where the conventions of the Constitution may appear to be strained, but where one may be sure they will not be broken.[417:1]

Moreover, if the creation of peers were within the region of practical politics to-day, it would be only a temporary remedy for existing grievances. Contrary to the prevalent opinion, Lord John Russell thought that in 1832 the authority of the House of Lords suffered, on the whole, more from the abstention of its members under threat, than it would have from an actual creation of peers that might have brought it into harmony with the people. He remarks that the Tory majority of eighty, hostile to Lord Grey's government, was held back by Wellington, but employed by Lyndhurst to kill unpretending but useful measures.[418:1] Subsequent events have shown the impossibility of maintaining harmony between the Houses by a single creation of peers, for had a batch of Lord Grey's supporters been given seats in the Lords in 1832, the House would have been heavily Conservative again within a generation.

The difficulty to-day is not so much that the peers are permanently out of accord with the nation, as that they are bound to one of the two parties into which the country is divided. A mere reduction in the size of the Tory majority would do little or no good; nor would the difficulty be solved if the majority were transferred to the other party, or even if it shifted at different periods. In a country governed by party as strictly as England is to-day, the majority in the upper House must at any one time belong to one side or the other. If the majority shifted, there would not be permanent irritation in the same quarter; but first one side, and then the other, would complain that the Lords thwarted the popular will. 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. In short, an upper House in a true parliamentary system cannot be brought into constant accord with the dominant party of the day without destroying its independence altogether; and to make the House of Lords a mere tool in the hands of every cabinet would be well-nigh impossible and politically absurd.

Reform in the Composition of the House.

What is true of the creation of peers is true also of any other method of changing the membership of the House. Suggestions for reforming its composition have been based mainly upon the desire to reduce the hereditary element, and supply its place by representative men selected in other ways. The House contains, of course, many drones, who have inherited the right, without the desire, for public work. Either they do not attend at all, or they come only to swell a foregone majority upon some measure that has attracted popular interest. They give no time or thought to the work of the House, and their votes, on the rare occasions when they are cast, are peculiarly exasperating to their opponents. As the regular attendants at the sittings are few, it has been suggested that the English, like the Scotch and Irish, nobility should choose representatives of their own order, and that the rest should have no right to vote. Just as the Scotch and Irish representative peers are solidly Unionist, so a change of this kind would merely result in increasing the Conservative majority of the House, unless some principle of minority representation were adopted, in which case the majority, though numerically smaller, would be equally constant and more subject to party dictation.

On the other hand, it has been proposed to make the House more broadly representative of the nation by a more or less extended creation of life peers, nominated, in part, perhaps, by sundry public bodies in the United Kingdom. It may be doubted, however, whether life peers are needed to increase the eminence or, in one sense, the representative character of the House. The peerage has been opened freely to men distinguished in various fields; and while many men without wealth have doubtless been precluded from an honour that would burden their descendants, many others have come in. The number of hereditary members of the House has increased nearly, although not quite, in proportion to population; and only about one fourth of the present members sit by virtue of titles dating before 1800. A large share of the creations have been made for political service; but others have been conferred in consequence of wealth amassed in commercial and industrial pursuits; the most distinguished lawyers and soldiers have always been rewarded by a peerage; and so in more recent times have a few men of eminence in science and literature. A body that contains, or has recently contained, such men as Tennyson, Acton, Kelvin, Lister, Rayleigh, and many more, can bear comparison in personal distinction with any legislative chamber the world has ever known. Therefore one may fairly doubt whether the defect to be remedied by a creation of life peers is either a lack of brains in the House, or a failure of its members to represent the deeper currents of national life.