Whether, however, this backing represented a reasoned view of the Constitutional points involved and of the position, prerogatives, and organization of a Second Chamber in the framework of British Government, whether it implied that our people were really interested in and had deeply pondered the relative merits of the Single and Double Chamber systems, is much more doubtful. "When he was told," said the Duke of Northumberland on August 10th, "that the people of England were very anxious to abolish the House of Lords, his reply was that they did not understand the question, and did not care two brass farthings about it." That perhaps is putting it somewhat too strongly. The country within the last two years has unquestionably felt more vividly than ever before the anomaly of an hereditary Upper Chamber embedded in democratic institutions. It has been stirred by Mr. Lloyd-George's rhetoric to a mood of vague exasperation with the House of Lords and of ridicule of the order of the Peerage. It has accepted too readily the Liberal version of the central issue as a case of Peers versus People. But while it was satisfied that something ought to be done, I do not believe it realizes precisely what has been accomplished in its name or the consequences that must follow from the passing of the Parliament Bill. There are no signs that it regards the abridgment of the powers of the Upper House as a great democratic victory. There are, on the contrary, manifold signs that it has been bored and bewildered by the whole struggle, and that the extraordinary lassitude with which it watched the debates was a true reflex of its real attitude.
CAPTAIN GEORGE SWINTON, L.C.C.
It has been more like a bull-fight than anything else, or perhaps the bull-baiting, almost to the death, which went on in England in days of old. For the Peerage is not quite dead, but sore stricken, robbed of its high functions, propped up and left standing to flatter the fools and the snobs, a kind of painted screen, or a cardboard fortification, armed with cannon which can not be discharged for fear they bring it down about the defenders' ears. And in the end it was all effected so simply, so easily could the bull be induced to charge. A rag was waved, first here, then there, and the dogs barked. That was all.
It is not difficult to be wise after the event. Everybody knows now that with the motley groups of growing strength arrayed against them it behooved the Peers to walk warily, to look askance at the cloaks trailed before them, to realize the danger of accepting challenges, however righteous the cause might be. But no amount of prudence could have postponed the catastrophe for any length of time, for indeed the House of Lords had become an anachronism. Everything had changed since the days when it had its origin, when its members were Peers of the King, not only in name but almost in power, princes of principalities, earls of earldoms, barons of baronies. Then they were in a way enthroned, representing all the people of the territories they dominated, the people they led in war and ruled in peace. They came together as magnates of the land, sitting in an Upper House as Lords of the shire, even as the Knights of the shire sat in the Commons. And this continued long after the feudal system had passed away, carried on not only by the force of tradition, but by a sentiment of respect and real affection; for these feelings were common enough until designing men laid themselves out to destroy them.
Many things combined to make the last phase pass quickly. It was impossible that the Peerage could long survive the Reform Bill, for it took from the great families their pocket boroughs, and so much of their influence. And there followed hard upon it the educational effect of new facilities for exchange of ideas, the railway trains, the penny post, and the halfpenny paper, together with the centralization of general opinion and all government which has resulted therefrom. But above all reasons were the loss of the qualifying ancestral lands, a link with the soil; and the ennobling of landless men. Once divorced from its influence over some countryside a peerage resting on heredity was doomed; for no one can defend a system whereby men of no exceptional ability, representative of nothing, are legislators by inheritance. Should we summon to a conclave of the nations a king who had no kingdom? But the pity of it! Not only the break with eight centuries of history—nay, more, for when had not every king his council of notables?—not only the loss of picturesqueness and sentiment and lofty mien, but the certainty, the appalling certainty, that, when an aristocracy of birth falls, it is not an aristocracy of character or intellect, but an aristocracy—save the mark—of money, which is bound to take its place.
Five short years and four rejected measures. Glance back over it all. The wild blood on both sides, and the cunning on one. The foolish comfortable words spoken in every drawing-room throughout the United Kingdom. "Yes, they are terrible: what a lot of harm they would do if they could. Thank God we have a House of Lords." Think now that this was commonplace conversation only three short years ago. And all the time the ears of the masses were being poisoned. Week after week and month after month some laughed but others toiled. The laughers, like the French nobles before the Revolution, said contemptuously, "They will not dare." Why should they not? There were men among them for whom the Ark of the Covenant had no sanctity. And then, when the combinations were complete, when those who stood out had been kicked—there can be no other word—into compliance, the blows fell quickly. A Budget was ingeniously prepared for rejection, and, the Lords falling into the trap, the storm broke, with its hurricane of abuse and misrepresentation. We had one election which was inconclusive. Then befell the death of King Edward. There was a second election, carefully engineered and prepared for, rushed upon a nation which had been denied the opportunity of hearing the other side. The Government had out-maneuvered the Opposition and muzzled them to the last moment in a Conference sworn to secrecy. It was remarkably clever and incredibly unscrupulous. They won again. They had not increased their numbers, but they had maintained their position, and this time their victory, however achieved, could not be gainsaid. For a moment there was a lull, only some vague talk of "guaranties," asserted, scoffed at and denied, for the ordinary business of the country was in arrears, and the Coronation, with all its pomp of circumstance and power, all its medieval splendor and appeal to history and sentiment, turned people's thoughts elsewhere.
And then, on the day the pageantry closed, Mr. Asquith launched his Thunderbolt. Few men living will ever learn the true story of the guaranties, suffice it that somehow he had secured them. Whatever the resistance of the Second Chamber might be, it could be overcome. At his dictation the Constitution was to fall. There was no escape; the Bill must surely pass. It rested with the Lords themselves whether they should bow their heads to the inevitable, humbly or proudly, contemptuously or savagely—characterize it as you will—or whether there should be red trouble first.
Surely never in our time has there been a situation of higher psychological interest, for never before have we seen a body of some six hundred exceptional men called on to take each his individual line upon a subject which touched him to the core. I say "individual line" and "exceptional men." Does either adjective require defending?
The Peers are not a regiment, they are still independent entities, with all the faults and virtues which this implies; free gentlemen subject to no discipline, responsible to God and their own consciences alone. At times they may combine on questions which appeal to their sense of right, their sentiment, perhaps some may say their self-interest; but this was no case for combination. Here was a sword pointed at each man's breast. What, under the circumstances, was to be his individual line of conduct?
And who will deny the word "exceptional"? To a seventh of them it must perforce be applicable, for they have been specially selected to serve in an Upper House. And to the rest, those who sit by inheritance, does it not apply even more? It is not what they have done in life. This was no question of capacity or achievement. By the accident of birth alone they had been put in a position different from other men. How shall each in his wisdom or his folly interpret that well-worn motto which still has virtue both to quicken and control, "Noblesse oblige"?