asked for the business for Thursday and Friday.

:replied that the first business on Thursday would be the Board of Trade Estimates, About 8.30 that evening the Home Office Vote would be taken for the purpose of a certain discussion which had been promised, and it would after that be withdrawn and brought up again on a later day. On Friday the Bills would be taken in the following order:—British North America Bill, Committee; Telegraph Money Bill, adjourned debate, Second Reading; Australia Constitution Bill, Second Reading; Evidence (Colonial Statutes) Bill, Second Reading; Criminal Appeal Bill (Expenses), Committee; Companies Bill, Second Reading; Motion for a new Judge. He put in at the end his usual et cetera—" other Bills."

:reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee A (added in respect of the Leeds (South Parade Chapel) Charity, the Kingswood (Whitfield Tabernacle, Schoolroom, etc.) Charity, the Longton (Caroline Street Chapel) Charity, and the Board of Education (Huime Trust Estates Educational) Confirmation Bills): Mr. Leicester Harmsworth; and had appointed in substitution (in respect of the said Bills): Mr. Dobson.

:in asking leave to introduce a Bill to provide for the heating of National Schoolhouses in Ireland, said that he always deprecated legislation for one part of the United Kingdom if it was possible to avoid it. His excuse for asking leave to introduce this Bill was the very peculiar and characteristic circumstances which prevailed in Ireland at present in regard to the heating of schoolhouses. The measure was entirely non-Party and undenominational, and he trusted it would be considered as uncontroversial. The conditions which prevailed in Ireland were very different from those which existed in England. In Ireland no funds were provided by the State for providing lighting, heating, and ventilation of the national school buildings, and the Bill dealt entirely with the poorer classes of national schools throughout Ireland. One special claim he had to make was that owing to the decreased rents which landlords were receiving from their land, and the fact that large numbers of them had left the country and others were in process of selling their estates, it had become impossible for them to contribute for this object in the same generous measure as they had done in the past, and unfortunately in the remote parts of Ireland there was no other way in which they could approach the subject of heating school premises except by asking the National Board of Education to take the matter up, and with the assistance of the County Councils to provide proper heating for the various class-rooms. In answer to a question last year the late Chief Secretary informed him that the total cost of carrying out the scheme would be something like £24,000, which, divided between the county councils and the National Board, would mean their finding £12,000 each in one year. That was independent of the voluntary agencies which had lent a certain amount of assistance. One of his objects in introducing the Bill under the ten minutes rule was to try and enlist the generous sympathies of all Members of the House, for if the Bill was slipped in in the ordinary way and blocked there would be no chance of its becoming law, and he was anxious, that something should be done for the poor children of Ireland before the bad weather came. The fact that the children were compelled to travel miles in wet weather over mountains and bogs, and on arrival at the school find nothing but white-washed walls, and in many instances not even a piece of burning turf, could not fail to appeal to them. In confirmation of what he had said, he would quote the Report of the North Dublin Inspector, who declared that it was not an extravagant supposition that a large part of the sickness amongst the children in the country was brought on by badly ventilated school-houses, combined with want of due warmth in the cold and wet weather. The Inspector for the Galway District declared that it was painful to see little groups of poorly fed boys and girls, miserably clad, trying to make their way on a winter's morning to the neighbouring schools. In such cases one hoped that the schoolroom when reached would make these poor children warm and comfortable, but unfortunately that was not the case. His experience was that the school in most cases was a cold and cheerless apartment; some clods of turf had been placed in the hearth and lighted, but they gave out no heat, only smoke. He was examining, this same Inspector continued, in such a cheerless room in January when the children came in and sat down, cold and miserable, while he had to keep his overcoat on, though he had the advantage of walking about. All these reports tended in the same direction. Seeing that the Boards which looked after the welfare of the working classes insisted upon a certain temperature being maintained in rooms where work was carried on, it seemed to him that the State should also insist upon a certain temperature in the school buildings throughout the country. In the large towns where there might be wealthy people prepared to put their hands in their pockets and pay a certain amount per annum towards this laudable object the cases were not so severe as those he had mentioned, but it was neither fair nor humane that the children in the poor districts in the south and west as well as the north of Ireland should be asked to sit in cheerless rooms and receive instruction. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had already stated that he intended to spend his autumn holidays in Ireland studying the great University question, about which many of them held there was no urgent necessity, if any necessity at all. He would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should begin at the bottom of the ladder instead of at the top, and remedy some of the glaring evils at present existing among the poorer classes, one of the foremost of which was the evil he had been discussing. When the teachers found it was impossible to obtain any heating material, they had often, rather than see the poor children suffer, to put their hands in their pockets and pay for material themselves. He had been asking several questions lately of the heads of the various Education Departments in the United Kingdom in order to ascertain whether Irish teachers were really able to bear this burden, and he contended, from a comparison of the salaries of school teachers in Ireland with those in Scotland and England, that both in the higher and lower grades it was impossible to expect so poorly a remunerated class to carry out the heating of the schools. The Bill, therefore, which he asked leave to introduce, would have the double effect of saving a little out of the miserable salaries of school teachers and of spreading the cost of this small but important improvement over the whole of Ireland, which was quite able to bear it. He hoped that the Government would give the Bill their support, and so do something for the real welfare of Ireland.

I have been forced to the conclusion that there are many who are in doubt as to whether or not this Resolution should be treated seriously, and who are inclined to treat it with a levity which I am sure must be depressing to its authors. I am aware that no less an authority than the Prime Minister has described the merriment with which it has been received in some quarters as "mirthless laughter." The right hon. Gentleman might have completed his fanciful picture by saying that it had been received by his own followers with hollow jubilation. At any rate, if the mirth on our side is forced, and if the gloom on his side is feigned, then the occasion has revealed a wealth of histrionic talent which has lurked hitherto unsuspected in our midst. But I propose to treat the Resolution with all seriousness and with that respect to which its long period of gestation and the responsibility and dignity of its sponsors entitle it. The Resolution itself is of very little consequence, of course, were it not for the legislative proposals which arc to follow it, and we respect it not so much for itself as for the display of physical force which we must assume is marshalled behind it. Until the Bill is introduced the Resolution itself is hardly worth the attention of the House. It is merely in the nature of an I O U issued by the Government in acknowledgment of its debt to its more truculent and impatient supporters, or it may be likened to a lurid and eye-arresting poster, with which the theatrical managers of the Party are placarding the hoardings in order to distract attention from the failure of the piece that is now running, and to excite anticipations of a more successful melodrama in the coming season. The wording of the Resolution is curiously involved: it seems to exhibit what scientists call "irregular crystallisation," a phenomenon which generally results from a state of extreme internal tension. That makes it all the more interesting, and I think, therefore, it is worth while examining it a little carefully. The first two lines, if intended to suggest that the present House of Commons is a true reflection of the will of the people, are singularly misleading. The Prime Minister yesterday quoted Burke, who he said had eulogised the House of Commons as being the "express image of the nation." I hope the Prime Minister does not consider the House of Commons was the express image of the nation in Burke's time, nor is it anything like it to-day. Even immediately after the last election the composition of the House of Commons bore very little relation to the true state of Parties in the country, and it bears even less resemblance to it now. This is no mere expression of opinion on my part, it is a question of arithmetic which may be demonstrated by the contemplation of half-a-dozen figures. Liberal votes (including constituencies in which there were no contests) showed a majority over Conservative votes, at the general election, of only 13 per cent., but in the House of Commons there is a Liberal majority over Unionists of 60 per cent. There are 387 Liberal Members to 158 Unionist, or a majority of 229, whereas, according to the number of voters, the Liberals are entitled to a majority of only seventy.

Are you including the plural voters?

I am taking the facts as they are according to the present franchise; the hon. Member would surely not wish me to establish a new franchise for the purposes of my own calculation. I say that the present position of the House of Commons was a caricature of the state of political feeling, even at the time of the general election, and it is even more so to-day. The second part of the Resolution is not a very ingenious or honest paraphrase of the Government's intention to introduce single chamber government; no pretences at qualification can possibly make it anything else, and there is, I believe, not the slightest chance of the country being deceived as to the real issue by any of these verbal disguises or by parading the Prime Minister's illusory safeguards for the protection of the people. The Government have had various possible alternatives for dealing with this problem. They might have effected a reform of the constitution of the House of Lords—a course which I myself believe in—but then they would be faced by the fact that the reformed and reconstituted House of Lords would necessarily be a stronger and more influential body than the present House, and would demand and be entitled to a larger share in the Government of the country. It is obvious, therefore, that that line of procedure would not commend itself to them. Then there arc various alternatives which may be generally classed under the head of the "referendum." We listened to a very interesting speech last night from the Under-Secretary to the Home Office, in which he condemned the referendum as impracticable because, he said, the people would be quite unable to understand the legislative proposals of the Government. And yet this is the Government which claims to be interpreting the will of the people in the measures which it is introducing! But the Prime Minister condemned the general principle of the referendum on quite different grounds, because he said it gave to the Lords a right they should not possess of demanding that any question in dispute should be submitted to the people; he said, in effect, that it amounted to a usurpation of the Royal prerogative. I should like to ask how many times the House of Lords has forced a dissolution, at any rate since the Reform Bill of 1832. As far as I know, no such case has occurred, and at any rate this usurpation of which the Prime Minister complains has not existed in his lifetime or that of most hon. Members of this House. Then the Under-Secretary made considerable play on the argument that it was a strange coincidence that the House of Lords had never rejected any Conservative measure during the last thirty years, and he asked if this was a case of "telepathy." Well, I do not think it necessary to seek any such elaborate explanation as that. I am not in the secret of Cabinets, but I think the natural explanation is that when the Unionist Party is in power it is the habit of the Leaders of the Party in the Commons to consult the Leaders of the Party in the Lords as to their views before introducing Bills. [Ironical cheers.] I am aware that hon. Gentlemen opposite think the other House has no right to have views in regard to legislation brought before Parliament. But that opinion does not prevail on this side of the House, and that is possibly a simple explanation of the phenomenon to which the hon. Gentleman referred. Then the Government had another obvious alternative, and that is the swamping of the Unionist majority in the House of Lords by the creation of a sufficient number of Liberal Peers. That is the policy not of abolishing, but of replenishing the House of Lords. It has been, I believe, the policy of the Liberal Party in the past. Since the Reform Bill successive Liberal Prime Ministers have created 250 fresh peerages, considerably more than the Conservatives. The result has been most disappointing. It has been like pouring water through a sieve. Out of that band of stalwart Liberal Peers fifty or less have remained true to the faith of their creators. The present Government, however, commenced by renewing this process of creating peers, and up till now the sieve has held water. At the same time the policy of replenishment is not generally popular on the other side of the House, although I believe there is a small, but influential section of the Prime Minister's supporters—gentlemen who have spared no effort or expense to prove their devotion to the cause—who strongly hold the view that it would be a brilliant and artful stratagem to introduce them into the Upper Chamber so that, like the Greek warriors secreted in the horse before the walls of Troy, they might issue forth to harass the enemy from within. It is unfortunate, but a little significant, that this debate has been so timed as to be concluded before the auspicious occasion of Friday next, as before that date it will be impossible for this House or the country to judge whether the urgent advice of these deserving gentlemen has or has not prevailed. Personally I hope it will have, because it is always refreshing to see merit rewarded. At the same time I think that the hesitation of the Prime Minister is only natural, and I understand, for example, he only hesitates to promote the hon. Member for Sutherland to the other House because of his fear that by some subtle process of alchemy his stalwart principles may by his passage into the rarer atmosphere of the House of Lords be transmuted into some vicious form of Toryism tainted with militarism, extravagant finance, and goodness knows what. I do not think the Government is likely to proceed far with this policy of replenishment. The only remaining solution is the abolition of the House of Lords and the establishment of Single Chamber government. That is the course to which the Government have definitely committed themselves. They may pretend that their Resolution does not say this, but it means it, and even though they are proposing to embalm the corpse instead of cremating it, it will none the less be dead, and they will have secured full control of the property of the deceased. What it comes to is this, the House of Commons has only got to say twice or thrice that it wants a certain thing and it is to become law. This is quite a new theory, that because a foolish demand is repeated twice or thrice it thereby becomes endowed with wisdom and invested with inviolable sanctity. The Prime Minister in his outline of the proposed legislation told us about these periodical conferences which are to take place before a Bill will be re-introduced, but I venture to say that these are not safeguards—they are mere banderillos which the Government propose to stick into the House of Commons Bull, in order to excite it to the requisite pitch of fury before it is let loose in the national china shop. And, moreover, this power increases as Parliament draws near to its latter end, so that the further the House is out of touch with the electorate the more omnipotent it becomes. During its final session a House of Commons would have unfettered power to decide on the spur of the moment, and with an eye to the general election, what shall prevail. Could anything be more dangerous to the Empire or the community than the giving of such a power to the House of Commons when in the throes of dissolution? The Government's proposed remedy is perfectly intolerable, but you say the grievance is real and must be redressed. What is the grievance after all? It is that the House of Commons is not allowed to have its own way in everything. What popularly elected Chamber in the world has its uncontrolled way in any important country? I have heard it stated that in no democratic country would the people tolerate the limitations placed upon the power of the House of Commons by the Upper Chamber. The Prime Minister yesterday dismissed the analogies of Continental Parliaments and said they were not really democratic Parliaments.

I said there were some autocratic Governments in which the autocracy had supplemented itself with an ornamental representative body.

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman can apply that commentary to the case of what is generally looked upon as the greatest democracy in the world, the United States. In the United States the House of Representatives has far less power than the House of Commons under present conditions, and yet it is far more representative of the people. In the first place, it has to be re-elected every two years. There is an automatic scheme of redistribution consequent upon the increase of population and there is also payment of members, which hon. Members opposite think would be productive in this country of more democratic representation. But is this democratic people's House in America entrusted with unrestrained power? No; its every action is subjected to the revision and approval of the Senate. It has not even the financial independence possessed by this House. It is true that Financial Bills must originate in the House of Representatives, but they can be amended, and are frequently amended, in the Senate, and the Senate itself can initiate Pension Bills and Bills dealing with salaried officials. It may be said that the Senate is a democratic body. It certainly is an elective body, but its political complexion does not necessarily agree with the political complexion of the House of Representatives, and it is not democratic in the ordinary sense.

It is Republican.

Yes, it has been Republican in its politics for a long time past, but it is a wealthy body and has even been somewhat irreverently styled "the Millionaires' Club." It is elected certainly, but by the State Legislatures, and if hon. Gentlemen opposite are in favour of a Second Chamber I would like to ask if they would like one elected or nominated by the county councils, for that would be the analogy. In the case of the American Constitution even the two Houses together are not invested with full power, because all their Acts are subject to the approval or the veto of the President. This is no mere form, because this veto has been not infrequently exercised in recent years, and although it may be over-ridden by a two-thirds vote in both Houses that expedient has seldom been put into practice. The President's veto, like the veto of the House of Lords, is of a purely negative character. But beyond all this there is a further safeguard in the shape of a check upon rash legislation. Above all, and above Congress and the President is the Constitution, that Magna Charta of American liberties, under which any individual, or any section of opinion which considers itself aggrieved by the legislative action of Congress, can appeal to the Supreme Court. Even if the action of Congress is unanimous that individual or section of opinion can go to the Supreme Court, and if that Court finds that the Act of Congress is contrary to the Constitution it becomes null and void. Perhaps I may be permitted to tell the House of a somewhat interesting case which occurred in my own personal experience at the instance of a near relative of my own. It occurred some years ago when the United States Congress instituted the income-tax. The right to levy that tax was contested by this relative of mine. He went to the Supreme Court, and that tribunal by means of arguments which I neither appreciate nor understand, decided that the tax was contrary to the Constitution and was therefore null and void. The result was that the American Exchequer was compelled to refund 45,000,000 dollars which it had collected up to that time. Think of any individual citizen in this country having the power to appeal to the Courts against the decision of both Houses of Parliament and getting a tax repealed and the money refunded. It may be said that this too rigid Constitution of the United States can be revised, but in practice it cannot be revised. I remember discussing this question with the celebrated speaker of the House of Representatives. Mr. Thomas B. Reed, and he said that although the Constitution of the United States can never be changed it can be stretched. It has been stretched by the Supreme Court when the national interest demanded it. A legal alteration of the American Constitution cannot be made except by the votes of three-fourths of the States in the Union. That is indeed an elaborate safeguard. But the Prime Minister now proposes to remodel our ancient Constitution and give us the embryo of a written one, which he proposes to write himself, and all on a wintry June afternoon. It is the most amazing proposal ever made in the history of the British Parliament. The American Constitution may have been badly designed, but it was at any rate deliberately designed after full consultation and with the advantage of a clean slate on which to write. If the Single-Chamber Government which the Prime Minister now proposes is so democratic and so desirable in the interests of a free people, why did the founders of that great Constitution so emphatically reject the idea? Why has every other country since also rejected it? The hon. Member for Denbighshire the other day quoted a passage from an American newspaper condemning the House of Lords. I propose to quote a somewhat higher American authority, that of a man who is perhaps the greatest statesman that country has ever produced. I refer to Alexander Hamilton who, when speaking against a single Chamber at the Convention in Philadelphia, said—

"Give all power to the many, and they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few and they will oppress the many. Both, therefore, ought to have the power, that each may defend itself against the other. To the want of this check we owe our paper money, instalment laws, etc. To the proper adjustment of it the British owe the excellence of their Constitution. Their House of Lords is a most noble institution."

[Ironical NATIONALIST cheers.] Hon. Members below the gangway may ridicule that, but it was made by a statesman belonging to a country to which they do not hesitate about appealing when they require assistance for their cause. [An HON. MEMBER: What is the date of that speech?] The date is 1783. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh, oh ! "] The Prime Minister yesterday quoted Burke, and if he was justified in falling back upon the opinions of the past I am sure hon. Gentlemen opposite will not deny me the same privilege. Let us see what Alexander Hamilton's argument is. He says—

"Having nothing to hope for by a change, and a sufficient interest, by means of their property, in being faithful to the national interest, they form a permanent barrier against every pernicious innovation, whether attempted on the part of the Crown or of the Commons. No temporary Senate will have firmness enough to answer that purpose."

If hon. Members opposite think that the wisdom of Hamilton is a little out of date I would appeal to another well-known authority who makes this interesting statement—

"It is an interesting commentary on the tendencies of democratic government that in America reliance is coming to be placed more and more (in the nation, in the State, and in the city) upon the veto of the executive as a protection to the community against the legislative branch. Weak executives frequently do harm, but a strong executive has rarely abused popular confidence. On the other hand, instances where the executive, by the use of its veto power, has arrested mischiefs due to the action of the legislature are by no means rare. This circumstance leads some Americans to believe that the day is not far distant when in England some sort of veto power or other constitutional safeguard must be interposed to protect the people against a hasty decision of their representatives."

That is not the statement of Alexander Hamilton but a quotation from the work of a democratic statesman who until a few months ago adorned the Front Bench opposite and who is now His Majesty's representative at Washington. The framers of the American Constitution foresaw and provided against the dangers of the popular House grasping at supreme control, and the policy of the framers of that Constitution has been endorsed and strengthened by the spirit of the American people to-day. I do not advocate the copying of the American Constitution in this country. I believe it is much too rigid. I believe it gives insufficient power to the people's House, but if it represents the extreme of caution on the one hand, I am justified in saying that the Prime Minister's proposals represent the extreme of recklessness on the other. In this Resolution and the Bill that is to follow it the Prime Minister is grasping at supreme and uncontrolled power in the State. By virtue of his position he necessarily at present controls the majority of the House of Commons. He is now endeavouring to cancel and destroy all existing checks on the action of that transient majority. He told us yesterday in an eloquent passage that he and his Party needed no shelter from the people. I think that possibly he may later on. But that is not the point. It is the people who need shelter from him. He is endeavouring to deprive the people of their last safeguard against the caprices and depredations of an uncontrolled popular House. This is the naked essence of the Prime Minister's proposal, and when it is understood by the people, as I earnestly trust it will be—[Cheers]—that is a wish which is apparently shared on both sides of the House—when it is understood by the people I believe they will reject it with an emphasis which will scatter the Liberal Party to the four winds of heaven. We on this side, therefore, will, I think, be the last to complain of this Resolution, or of the reckless enterprise on which the Government is embarking, because I do not believe there is any issue upon which we can appeal to the judgment of the country with so much confidence or greater certainty of success.

The hon. Member who has just sat down in his concluding words spoke the language of prophesy. The Liberal Party are to be scattered to the four winds of heaven, and in some remote future he foresaw a new function for the Party of which he is a member. They are to save the people of this country from a Liberal Government which has been elected to represent them. The Prime Minister is to be prevented by the hon. Member and his friends from acting treacherously towards those who have elected him to office. The hon. Member detained us at some length with a review of the American Constitution. Among all the various checks which the United States have set up against an arbitrary democracy his researches did not lead him to the discovery of any chamber enshrining the hereditary principle. While the hereditary principle remains a dominant factor, or, at all events, a strong, if not a dominant, factor of our Constitution it will be hard for the most ingenious constitutionalist to find any parallel between the written Constitution of the United States and the slowly evolving modern developments of the Constitution of this country. The hon. Member tells us that we ought not to proceed by Resolution.

I did not say so.

Well, I gathered that the hon. Member said so. It has been suggested that a Bill should be at once tabled. If the hon. Member does not take that view, it is certainly a criticism which has been made. I know no other constitutional method of proclaiming the constitutional privileges of this House except by Resolution. It was adopted in 1678 and it was renewed in 1860, and unless you suggest a Bill which either House may throw out, there is no machinery by which we can express our opinions as to the limit of our powers other than that which the Government has now adopted. The hon. Member has revived the suggestion which was made, I think, by some of my hon. friends on these benches that the difficulty might be obviated by a reform and a strengthening of the House of Lords. Let me point out that the language of this Resolution is entirely consistent with any measure which has for its object the strengthening of that House. You may strengthen the House of Lords as much as you please, but you do not, by increasing its power, obviate the danger of friction with this House. You rather increase the tendency to difference of opinion and the obstinacy with which that opinion may be held by the other Chamber, if you give it representative elements or strengthen the way in which it is composed. This Resolution does not propose to introduce any remedy for such a state of things. It contemplates a division between two Members of the Constitution for which there is no other solution proposed for the consideration of this House except that embodied in this Resolution. [Cries of "No.",] Well, I think I shall establish that proposition to the satisfaction of murmuring critics later on. First of all, what is the source of this difficulty? The British Constitution is a compact which has two marked peculiarities. In the first place, the first member has no voice in our legislature until the other two members are agreed, and in the second place there is no arbitration clause by which these other two members can be brought into harmony. You, therefore, have an element of discord with regard to legislation for which there is no solution provided. There is no ground on which they can meet, and from which their united voice can be expressed, before legislation can be obtained. The hon. Member for the Fareham Division has already referred to the various schemes which have been put forward in order either to bring this House to submission, or to enforce acquiescence upon the House of Lords. Either there must be action against us at the instance of the House of Lords, or there must be action against the House of Lords. It has been said that within the sphere of legality, this House supporting a Minister with the approval of the Crown, might increase the Members of the House of Lords sufficiently to enable the controverted legislation to pass. It has been sail on the same advice that the Crown might refuse to issue writs to the majority of the Peers who would otherwise be entitled to take part in the deliberations of that House. There is still a third and more desperate remedy darkly hinted at by Constitutional writers, namely, that this House might refuse to grant Supply. Well, these methods violate the practice of the Constitution. Lord Lyndhurst in the House of Lords pointed out that it would be well within the province of the King to call up a troop of His Majesty's Guards and confer a Peerage upon every Member of that body. But he indicated that it would be unconstitutional, because, although strictly within the limits of legal right, it would be entirely against the spirit and practice of our Constitution. The same observation applies with equal force to the other two expedients I have, suggested. Therefore, the remedy of bringing pressure on the House of Lords does not solve the difficulty or remove the friction, because there are constitutional safeguards which prevent that remedy being adopted. A short time ago I was addressing my constituents in Leeds. I indicated those revolutionary methods as a last and desperate resource of a popular body which is being kept in check by the hereditary Chamber. You may have unconstitutional action defended where it is a reprisal against unconstitutional action that has been adopted; and against unconstitutional action of the Lords in regard to the popular House there might be much to be said in defence of conduct equally unconstitutional on the part of the people defending their constitutional rights. I was subjected to newspaper criticism which took the form of sensational headlines, providing attractive posters, and no doubt increasing temporarily the circulation of the organs that resorted to that method of criticism. I take no notice of such criticism, but even the Leader of the Opposition affected the view that the Liberal Government seriously advocated a revolutionary policy in regard to this question, and he paid me the doubtful compliment of drawing a parallel between myself and one of the most odious and sanguinary of the statesmen of the French Terror. It may be that his estimate of myself was just. If I am a fit agent for revolution, I think he is an ideal instrument for putting one down. If he contemplates with satisfaction my officiating at the guillotine in Palace Yard, acting against the aristocracy which is warring against popular rights, I can contemplate with equal certainty the right hon. Gentleman turning the artillery against the people at the barricades who are seeking to assert their rights against the House of Lords. Our view in regard to this matter is that the true line to adopt is not the line of menace or of violence, but the line of constitutional action. In the long struggle between a privileged House and a popular Assembly there has been a series of victories which, step by step, have involved concessions by the aristocracy to the people which have slowly made us the freest democracy in the world. I have pointed out one solution, a solution involving the straining of the constitution in order to bring pressure to bear upon the House of Lords. What is the alternative solution? If the Lords mutilate the Bills of the Commons, or cast them out without consideration, if they allow themselves to be actuated by Party feeling, then their action is unconstitutional. What is the basis upon which the House of Lords rests on the constitutional theory? Is it that they possess an inherent legislative wisdom? Is it that there, is a kind of hereditary transmission, a kind of aristocratic faculty for legislation? If that is not the true view, what is the true view? Lord Coke tells us that when the King issues his writ to a Commoner and that writ gives him a right to sit in the House of Lords his blood becomes ennobled. But if he were ennobled for life only, he had no right to sit in the House of Lords and therefore did not get legislative endowment. Historically, as the hon. and learned Member for Oxford University said, the House of Lords is representative. He said it was representative now, but the only reason he gave for that opinion was that it was a body of rich men who had seen something of life. But in earlier days in our history the House of Lords was truly representative. It was then an Assembly of the great feudatory lieges of the Crown; when you had Earls who were not mere Peers, but who held great offices of State, with wide powers of territorial administration; when you had Barons who were charged with the defence of the realm; when you had Bishops and Abbots possessing wide jurisdiction, and in that way acting on behalf of large sections of the population; when the burdens of the community were cast directly upon those great feudatories and indirectly upon the large classes under them; then the House of Lords had something more than the mere blood-ennobled theory to justify their exercise of legislative rights. They acted in a high sense as a representative body. But where is that title now? The hon. Member for Salford made an amusing speech in order to establish that the present House of Lords to a large extent consisted of the recipients of rewards for political services or of the favours of a Minister and of their descendants. The peerage was hereditary because the descent of land was hereditary. Even the offices in State and Court in those days were hereditary. The King's cup-bearer, steward, butler, and even the scullions in the Royal kitchen were hereditary posts. We only hear of these hereditary offices on such occasions as a Coronation. The House of Lords has entirely changed its character in recent years, and one looks about in vain to find any solid justification in reason or in constitutional theory for the position which, by some process of survival, they still hold in our Constitution. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London told us that the House of Lords has no absolute veto, acting in their own wisdom, upon the legislation of this House, but a sort of judicial function to step in between the representatives of the people and the people who sent them to ascertain what really is the popular will. I should like to know where is the constitutional authority for such a doctrine. We say that the people's wishes are what we interpret them to be. "No," said the right hon. Gentleman, "nothing of the sort. The House of Lords is entitled to step in and decide whether what you do or do not do expresses the wishes of the people." I say again, that there is no such constitutional doctrine. How can the right be defended to interpose between the people who send us here and ourselves some alien authority? Who made the House of Lords a judge and a ruler over us? The right hon. Gentleman said that what the House of Lords has to discover is not the popular will at any particular moment of time, because the popular will changes. He told us that we represented the interests of generations unborn. We are the heirs of the ages and the fathers of time. Then said the right hon. Gentleman, every elector whose will they wished to ascertain must act and speak, not only for himself and the interests of his time, but apparently in the interests of posterity, for whom he is a trustee. That creates a sort of political entail with a life estate subject to the most amazing restrictions ever yet known in conveyancing law. Curiously enough, the hon. Member for the University of Oxford, who is a constitutional lawyer of considerable repute, and has written works of high authority on the Constitution, adds to the difficulty of estimating the period during which the popular will must be gauged, because he told us that it changed every three weeks, and that this House does not represent the constituencies for more than three weeks after a general election. Well, it is impossible to resist the comment that, if that is true, there must have been a long era of misrepresentation before the last general election. What I want to know is, by what alchemy are the Lords to find out what the popular will is? What are the arts, what the necromancy, that they are to use? My right hon. friend the Prime Minister hinted at the difficulty. In the first place, there is no authority for the proposition; in the second place we are not enlightened as to the method by which that inquiry is to be pursued; and in the third place the House of Lords is conspicuously lacking in those qualifications which one would look for in an Assembly charged with a duty of that kind. Is this function to be intelligently performed? If so the House of Lords will have to approach it in a judicial spirit. Justice is represented blindfold. Does anybody suppose that the House of Lords are not very wide awake to the interests of their own friends? Justice holds the scale; but, with the Tory Party in one scale and Liberal legislation in the other, what chance has Liberal legislation? I can imagine the tribunal which would have to settle that question and decide the issue aye or no. Do the people want this Bill? I can imagine their mooting in one of the committee-rooms of the House of Lords known as the Moses Chamber because it is associated with the name of a great lawgiver. There they would have Lord Lansdowne, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London, and probably the principal Conservative Whip, whose moderate expressions on politics entertain us, and whose stimulating Whips add to the gaiety of politics. That admirable judicial tribunal will solemnly meet together to decide the issue, aye or no. Do the people want this Liberal Bill? Is there any doubt about the result? Why, it would be a tribunal for the massacre of Liberal legislation under the forms of justice and law. I can think of no parallel except a committee of some secret society. It can be demonstrated that the action of the House of Lords in regard to that issue has been, must be, and would be influenced by Party considerations; and Party feeling is a dangerous solvent of the judicial faculty, We are asked to entrust to the House of Lords the decision of a question which ought to be solved in a spirit of strict impartiality, with a wish to be guided by true wisdom and justice, although the history of last session and the principles of human nature satisfy us, that, instead of those fine qualities being present in such an inquiry, the issue will appeal to all the weaknesses of human nature, and be determined by the inclination to assist the political interests of the majority of their body. We were told that the House of Lords in passing the Trade Disputes Bill and rejecting the Plural Voting Bill showed that they were above Party spirit. There is a Member of the House of Lords for whom I have the profoundest respect. He is the late Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, and I had the pleasure of listening to a speech of a very vehement character by the noble Lord, in which he denounced the Trade Disputes Bill. In his peroration he told us that the Bill would enthrone tyranny and strangle liberty. But he concluded by saying that he would not vote against it. Why? Was it because he thought the people wanted it, or because it was a useful measure? No. It was because if he voted against the Bill he would separate from and cease to be acting with his own political friends who had not divided against the measure when it was in the Commons. The House of Lords is acting in precisely the same way. It is Party spirit which has invaded them. They are within the organisations of Party, and the effect of placing in their hands judicial functions of this kind can only lead to injustice and produce results which will be resented by the people of the country. What is the scheme of this projected Bill? We are told that the result of it will be to create one Chamber only. I strongly quarrel with that construction of it. I say that the result of it will be simply to declare the true Constitution of this country, and the true constitutional position of the House of Lords. Look at what the great writers on the Constitution say upon this subject. Great writers on our Constitution, in defining the true sphere of the Upper Chamber, have said that it has the power to amend, the power to check, the power to correct, the power to delay, and the power to secure that there shall be full consideration and deliberation before a proposed measure passes into law, and there the definition ends. This Resolution provides ample scope for the exercise of those functions, and so it simply defines what is the true constitutional practice. Twice the House of Lords will have a Bill before them three times they will have a conference. During that period we shall all be in touch with our constituents and the newspaper Press, in so far as nowadays it is intelligent and impartial, will be discussing the question whether or not the Government are justified in forcing this measure after its rejection, and whether or not there is a strong popular feeling in its favour. The position of a Bill after it is once rejected will be very different from that of a Bill when it is first introduced. The question for the Ministry of the day will be whether they are justified in pressing the Bill upon the House of Lords after they have expressed a strong opinion against it, and their decision will be taken after they have ascertained what is the real trend of popular opinion on the subject. I submit that the machinery of this Resolution provides ample opportunity for such steps to be taken as will enable the representatives of the people to come to a conclusion whether or not they will be straining their mandate in forcing a Bill through; and if they face that responsibility there ought to be no power in the Constitution to control their giving effect to that conviction. If they act wrongly they can be called to account, and if the period of the life of a Parliament is reduced to five years they will have to give an account of their stewardship within a shorter time than at present. This provision shows that in bringing this Resolution forward it is our sincere and anxious wish to provide a practical solution for this question. There is precedent after precedent which shows surrender of power by the House of Lords and the acquisition of power by the popular Chamber. Throughout history the tide has ebbed from the House of Lords and has set towards the House of Commons. The House of Lords can no longer make or unmake Ministries. No statesman when he accepts service under the Crown pauses to consider whether he will have the confidence of the House of Lords or not. No Ministry thinks of resigning because the Upper House has censured its action. While the House of Lords are heaping compliments upon Lord Milner and are approving his policy, the House of Commons are giving a Constitution to the Transvaal and beginning the repatriation of the Chinese. The House of Lords cannot preserve a single tax, however necessary they may think it. They struggled hard to keep control over the Press by means of the paper duty, and the Press to-day are subservient enough to support them in this struggle against the popular Chamber. The House of Lords cannot resist a tax which may reduce their resources enormously—almost to penury. They have already lost control over financial legislation. We are told by the hon. and learned Member for Oxford University that they have given up the right to initiate legislation of first importance. It is only one step further to ask them to give up the right to veto it. This Resolution has been introduced in no unfriendly spirit towards the House of Lords. It does not seek to destroy the Upper Chamber or its position in the Constitution—it seeks to define its sphere in a way that will tend to its preservation. It seeks to indicate the lines upon which it may long exist and may long discharge useful and legitimate functions as a Chamber of review. But if the Resolution is not approached in the spirit in which it is proposed, those who attack it must face the responsibility. If they flout it, if they disparage the motives of those who have introduced it, if they turn contempt upon the representatives of those in whose name the Government are acting, then the future of the House of Lords will far more probably be indicated by the Amendment which is to be moved below the gangway than by this Resolution. I and I believe my colleagues are anxious that the House of Lords shall retain a position in which it can exercise its functions usefully and pay proper respect to the behests of the popular will. If this view actuates the more sober and prudent counsels of that body then this Resolution will tend to harmony and will put an end to friction. But if it is not treated in that spirit, then history may read in the language of this Resolution the handwriting on the wall of the Upper Chamber, and the handwriting will be that of the House of Lords itself.

I recognise in the speech to which we have just listened a strong family likeness to that in which the Resolution was introduced last night by the Prime Minister. They both began with malevolent condemnation of the House of Lords and denunciation of the hereditary principle, and concluded with the assertion that the speakers are in no sense hostile to that Assembly, but merely desire to define its position in the Constitution. The Attorney-General referred to his speech at Leeds and he seemed to feel a little sore because there had been quoted against him a phrase to the effect that the House of Lords cannot be dealt with without a revolution. I cannot think the Attorney-General is wise in rejecting that interpretation of his Leeds speech, because revolutions are not necessarily made with rifles and bayonets. A revolution means a complete change in the Constitution of the country, and I have no doubt that the Resolution submitted to the House by the Prime Minister involves a revolution in the Constitution of the country. The Attorney-General introduces into this question of revolution the connotation that it must be accompanied by menace or threats of violence, but that is not so. The hon. and learned Gentleman made a great attack on the House of Lords because he said, it was completely different now from what it was originally, and he indulged in a very eloquent defence of the feudal system. He said that so long as the Lords were the persons who provided for the defence of the country—

And paid the taxes.

They did not pay the taxes wholly. He makes a great mistake if he thinks they did. He said that so long as the Earls who exercised a kind of military jurisdiction, and the abbots and bishops who had an ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the whole country, attended for those considerations, they were all light and nothing could be said against so admirable a body. It was only when the hereditary principle was introduced that they became indefensible. But that was introduced, I think, in the reign of Edward I., so that they became indefensible some little time ago.

I did not say that.

I do not wish to disagree with the Attorney-General more than I can help, and I agree with him in this, that the House of Lords were originally distinguished because they rendered great public services, Imperial and local, to the country, and it was largely on account of those great services they retained the confidence of the country. Very largely that is true at the present day. [Laughter.] I am glad to hear that laughter, because it shows that hon. Members are attacking men of whose character they are ignorant. No one who knows anything of the country life of this country will doubt that, taking them as a body, the House of Lords have discharged important public duties, discharged them gratuitously, and set an example, in my judgment, to the whole of the civilised world, of gratuitous services rendered because they regarded it as part of the duty they owe to their country. For my part I entirely assent to the proposition of the Attorney-General that those who are prepared to render gratuitous services to their country are entitled, at any rate, to the respect of the country. The Resolution before the House contains a major premise, a minor premise, and proceeds to a conclusion. Its major promise is that the will of the people shall prevail. I do not quarrel with that except to the extent that I do not think the truth is very happily expressed. The "will of the people" is one of those phrases which are very useful on the platform, but one which is, I think, not often used with a very definite idea of its meaning. Because after all the "will of the people," in the sense of the whole people, does not exist. Nobody pretends that the will of the people of this country, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, coincides on every question. It is a mere abstraction, a mere confusion, to talk of the will of the people. But it does imply a real moaning, and the real moaning is the will of the majority of the electorate, which is a very different thing from the will of the people. Hon. Members from Ireland will assent to that proposition, because in Ireland no one pretends that the will of the people prevails. You must limit it in that way, and in that way I assent to the proposition that it is desirable that the will of the people shall prevail. Then I come to the minor premise—and here I think I quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman—that the will of the people as expressed by the decision of this House shall prevail. It seems to me to be so astonishing a proposition that I have difficulty in believing it. The will of the people is not expressed by a decision of this House. No one believes for a moment that it is. [Cries of "Oh."] Does any hon. Gentleman seriously suggest that any of the opinions of this House express the will of the people I Nothing of the kind. It is the merest legal fiction. How often does it happen that the decision of a Committee of the Whole House is reversed on Report? Do both those opinions represent the will of the people? Of course not. How about the late Parliament? Did that represent the will of the people? [An HON. MEMBER: "Not at the end of it."] When did it cease to represent the will of the people? I remember reading night after night in that brilliant organ of the Liberal Party, the Westminster Gazette, references to what was called a "Khaki election."

Hear, hear.

That is cheered by the hon. Member for Stoke. What did that mean? It meant that the Parliament had been elected upon a single issue, and did not represent the will of the people on any other issue. Then what nonsense it is to talk of the will of the people being expressed by the decision of this House. I am prepared to go further. I am prepared to maintain that the decisions of this House do not represent the opinion of this House, and I do not believe anybody thinks they do. Look at the decisions we come to under the guillotine. It is notorious that Ministers congratulate themselves on the fact that they have not to face certain Amendments, that they will not be discussed, that they will fall under the guillotine, and thus the Government will escape a great danger. That is only one instance. The real truth is that in the House as it exists and is at present constituted the decisions do not represent the opinion of the House, but the opinion of the Cabinet. The truth is—and I wish the Secretary of State for India were in his place, because he would be the first to recognise the truth of what I say—that in other days when Members were sent as envoys from their constituents to do the best they could for their constituents they were not bound to surrender their own view to the constituency. And this is why I wish the Secretary of State for India was in his place, because in a well-known passage in his Life of Burke he quotes a statement of Burke that he would never surrender his opinion and judgment to his constituency.

But he lost his seat.

True, even in those days he lost his seat. What is the state of things now? We are now told that the sole duty of a Member is to vote with his Party. [Cries of "No."] Hon. Members do not agree with that, neither do I, but it is clearly laid down.

Where?

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consult the Patronage Secretary? That is the truth; let us face it, and recognise what the whole truth is.

You can consult your brother.

I admit there are exceptions and I hope there always will be. I ask the House seriously to consider the working of this principle. The Cabinet comes down and presents a Bill to the House. That Bill is not passed because the majority agree to it, but because the majority must not, politically, vote against it. Everybody knows that on every Government measure every point is passed by the pressure of the Government on its supporters in the lobbies. Therefore, when you say that in future the will of the majority of the electorate shall prevail, it is really carrying (I do not wish to use a hard phrase) British self-deception too far to say that these decisions represent the will of the people or of this House or of anybody but the Cabinet. We all agree that the great object of statesmanship is that the will of the people should prevail in the sense I have described. I believe that has been the object of statesmen for many years, long before this Government came into office; and they have devised from time to time different plans for securing that the will of the people should prevail. The plan now in existence is this. You have your House of Commons elected for a certain term in order to give stability to the Government, and you have the Second Chamber, whose object and duty it is, if they think the measure is one not approved by the country, to refuse to accept that measure until an opportunity has been given to the country to express its opinion. That is the working of the present Constitution, and that is and must be the working of any Second Chamber. It is, in other words, a kind of power of referring a matter to the country. I do not deny myself that it is open to criticism as it at present works. In the first place, it is no doubt a clumsy method—that of appealing to the country. The only way you can do it is by dissolving the House of Commons, and requiring every Member to seek re-election. I myself think that a very clumsy way of ascertaining the opinion of the country on a particular question; I admit that fully. But there is a more serious charge brought against the system. It is said that it operates one-sidedly, and that under the existing Constitution, if the Party to which I have the honour to belong produced some great constructive measure, as to which there was a real doubt whether the country approved, there would be no security that the House of Lords would require the opinion of the country to be taken upon it. But may I remind hon. Members that the Party on this side of the House is or ought to be essentially a Conservative Party. In my judgment it ought not to embark on great legislative experiments. I do not think that is its true function in the State. I know there have been distinguished statesmen who have taken a wholly different view of its functions; but I think if this Party became a rival of the Liberal Party, by a great constructive policy of its own, it would be very difficult to defend the Second Chamber which was prepared to accept one side's constructive measures and not the other's. The defence of the House of Lords must be that it is a conservative body. I agree in that fully. I think that the case is made out to some extent for securing that if the House is misled by its political opinions into passing a great constructive measure, some plan ought to be devised whereby the country should have a right to call upon the Legislature to consult it before that great constructive measure becomes law. What is the device that we recommend and which would accomplish all these objects? It is a device which was sneered at by the Prime Minister as a foreign device—the referendum. Just see how it works. It gets rid of the clumsiness at once, though I do not say it is absolutely simple; it gets rid of the clumsiness to a large extent. A measure is sent by the House to the other House, and after a discussion, or a conference if you like, the House of Lords is unable to accept it. The House of Commons settles the final form which in its view the measure should receive. And if the House of Lords is unable to accept that, then the country is asked to say aye or no, whether the measure in that form should become law. That is the skeleton scheme. That is the way it would work here and in the country, and I believe it is substantially the way it is worked in other countries. That would dispose to a very large extent of the clumsiness. Then as to the contingency that the House of Lords would check great constructive measures. I think that there ought to be for a certain body of electors, say one-fourth of the electorate, power to petition in such a case that the measure should not be passed until it had been referred to the people. That also is a foreign device. In that way I believe you would secure to a very large extent that legislation should be in accordance with the will of the people. For my part I should be very glad to see some such proposal as that carried into law. I observe that the Under-Secretary for the Home Department in his interesting speech yesterday objected to this proposal, because he said it would give undue power to the wealthy, who would be able to organise in such a way that they would be able to reject every measure submitted. What a commentary is that on the will of the people! Still, I admit that there is something in the objection, and I would have any change of the kind I suggest strengthened by a far-reaching Corrupt Practices Act. The other objection raised is that the issue would be so very difficult to the electors, but I really have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by that. What is the issue submitted to the country at the general election? Why, it is an issue as to the merits of half-a-dozen Bills, complicated by every kind of personal question, and every kind of personal abuse. It would be far simpler to submit, aye or no, do you want the Plural Voting Bill or the Education Bill, than to put before the electors an issue as to half-a-dozen measures embracing the policy of the Conservative Party on the one side or of the Liberal Party on the other. The solitary criticism that I have heard on this proposal is that of the Prime Minister, who says it is a foreign device. I do not think that a very powerful criticism, with the greatest respect to the Prime Minister. Certainly we know that the proposal of the Prime Minister is quite free from that objection. I venture to say that the proposal to pass a Bill after repeated conferences is one that has never been made in any other civilised country of the world. May I call the attention of the House to the working of the Prime Minister's proposal? He suggests that first the Bill should be passed in the ordinary way, that is to say, under the guillotine. Then it is to be sent up to the House of Lords, who, it is assumed, will disagree; whereupon a conference is to take place. Four Members of this House are to go up the Lobby, and four Members of the House of Lords are to come down the Lobby, and they are to meet in some intervening space. What is the purpose of the conference? It is, as far as I can understand, to enable the four Members of this House, in a brief interview, to convince the four Members of the other House of their grievous sin, because it is quite plain that four Members of the House of Lords could have no chance whatever. Just conceive the Liberal Party submitting to the dictation of the House of Lords. Of course, they would never be able to face their constituents or even their obedient Party if they did such a thing. They would be called upon in every tone and by every newspaper to stand fast by the decision of the Commons. The conference would be a mere futility. What happens next? Back comes the Bill to the House of Commons, and either in that form or some other, it is passed by a somewhat accelerated procedure, I do not quite make out how much faster, but a little faster. There is another conference. Again the four Members of the House of Lords and the four Members of the House of Commons meet; there is a private conference, but this time it is abundantly clear that the House of Lords has nothing to expect, because whatever happens no further change is to be made in the Bill, if I rightly understand the Prime Minister's proposal. Therefore, this conference is absolutely confined to convincing the Members of the House of Lords of their wickedness in opposing the House of Commons. Then the Bill comes back here once again, and this time is passed with lightning rapidity; no discussion, no debate; through it goes; why, I cannot conceive; through the legislative machine it goes once again, and then these four devoted Members of the House of Commons make one last effort to convince the four devoted Members of the House of Lords. Really, is it worth while submitting a proposal of that kind? That is what I believe the Attorney-General describes as an arbitration clause. The Attorney-General has great skill, but I must say I should immensely enjoy having such an arbitration clause in any contract to which I was a party—to have the arbitration three times.

I did not say arbitration clause; I said conciliation clause.

No doubt that is what the Attorney-General meant. One of two things must inevitably happen. Either the passing and re-passing of the Bill, which had already been fully discussed presumably, is to have some effect, or it is not. If it has some effect it will be immediately denounced by the Prime Minister and by the Attorney-General as an encroachment on the supremacy of the House of Commons; the Prime Minister would not have to alter a single word or sound of the whole of the earlier part of his speech; he would be enabled to denounce the then condition of affairs in exactly the same way as he denounces the present condition of affairs. And so would the Attorney-General. The hereditary principle would be untouched, and all that elaborate talk about people being born with a talent for legislation would be just as good then as it is now. Why, such a guarantee as that would not stand a fresh breeze, much less a storm. They would all be swept away instantly. For my part I would rather have no guarantees than guarantees of that description. Though it is a very old metaphor to say that a rotten fence is much worse than no fence at all, yet it is a true one. It is far better that the people of the country should know the worst, that they should know exactly what they are doing, that they should know that they are electing a Single Chamber with no checks upon its decisions, than that we should have those miserable safeguards which the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General have sketched. I should very much prefer the clear issue suggested by the Labour Party. It is far better, if that is the real opinion of the House, that they should say it boldly, and submit the issue to the country that they are in favour of the abolition of the House of Lords. Let that be the clear issue. Remember that from this time to the next general election this is the only question in which the country will take an interest. You may produce, if you like to trifle with your character for sincerity, your Licensing Bill or your Education Bill, or any other Bills; but if you believe that the country want this great and revolutionary change in the Constitution, the country will think that you are merely trifling with their ideas if you proceed on the humdrum round of ordinary legislation. Let the issue with regard to the House of Lords be submitted clearly to the country. Let it not be confused with the misleading verbiage and empty ceremonial suggested by the Prime Minister. Let them ask the country boldly and clearly—" Are you in favour of the abolition of the Second Chamber altogether?"

I am not a believer in the hereditary principle. But as I listened to the great speech of the Member for East Marylebone, I had to admit that the mantle of his great historic ancestors has descended brilliantly upon my noble friend. I may also add that the speech of ray noble friend also suggests to me an Oxford don of the 13th or 14th century arguing 20th century questions. I have intervened at this stage because I do not represent any section of opinion which has yet been voiced in this House upon this question. This is, in the opinion of British Members of Parliament, a very great Party debate. To me it is something far more. I belong to no British Party, but on this issue I am here speaking not as a Party man but as an Irishman, and as a representative of the feelings of the Irish people. There was an expression used yesterday by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London to which, after twenty years experience in this House, I take absolute exception. He said, "We all must admit that politics is a game." There are a number of men in this House to whom politics is not a game, but a great religion, and to whom the advancement of the liberty of their fellow subjects is everything. If politics is a game then, in Heaven's name, what are the stakes? Are the stakes human lives, human liberty, and human justice? I wish to say just one word in defence of an absent man, Mr. Bryce. Every time during the life of this Parliament when the question of the House of Lords has come up for discussion Mr. Bryce has been trotted out as a supporter of the House of Lords, and as a great Radical who is a Second Chamber man. His views were referred to yesterday by the late Prime Minister and by the hon. Baronet the late Secretary to the Board of Education, and to-day Mr. Bryce has again been quoted by the hon. Gentleman who opened the do bate in a very interesting and well-digested speech. This is what Mr. Bryce said for himself on the 17th of May, 1879—

"We think that any hereditary House must be a weak one, and we would rather have no Second Chamber at all than a weak one. We say that to have a stick which breaks in your hand when you lean on it is worse than having no stick at all, and if I had to select between the present House of Lords and one Chamber I should prefer one Chamber.

It is to declare the opinion of the Irish Party that I venture to intervene in the debate. The first person to raise in the House of Commons the question of the reform of the House was Daniel O'Connell, but his was only a voice crying in the wilderness. We have got in Ireland a body called the United Irish League, and the executive of that body on Tuesday last passed a Resolution on this subject in which they affirm that they recognise in the House of Lords a body of irresponsible legislators invested only through the accident of birth with power which they have invariably used in a way which has shown them to be the implacable enemies of Irish rights and liberties. They further declare that the Lords have always treated every measure of conciliation and justice towards the Irish people with contumely and contempt, and that—

"While holding ourselves independent of all British Parties, and acting solely in the interests of Ireland and the advancement of the principles of liberty, we welcome measures for the reduction of the subordination of the will of the people to the House of Lords."

With regard to the Resolution which the Prime Minister has moved, the hon. Member who opened the debate to-day spoke of it as savouring of the ludicrous, but it is nothing of the kind. A Resolution of this kind if it never is embodied in an Act of Parliament, or even if its substance is never placed on the Statute Book, will still have an immense effect, because it is the first Resolution of its kind in the whole history of Parliament. Resolutions have been passed before on the motion of unofficial Members of the House of Commons with reference to curtailing the privileges of the House of Lords, and it is surprising how this matter has grown and magnified during the last two years; but this is the first time in the history of Parliament that the Executive Government have moved a serious Resolution which if carried into operation will mean practically the abolition of the veto of the House of Lords. If it is simply passed and goes no further it will still remain on the Journals of the House, a bright example to others in the future, and I doubt whether, in the case of a change of Government, anyone will have the temerity to move that it should be expunged. Therefore any measure you may introduce to bring the House of Lords into accord with the House of Commons will have the hearty sympathy and support of all who wish that the will of this House should prevail in legislation which the people of the country desire. It is not consistent with the dignity, the manhood, and the intellect of hon. Members that they should be treated like schoolboys. We come here and slave day after day, moulding measures into the form desired by those whom we represent, and then when our Bills are sent to another place they are so amended as to be greatly impaired or they are kicked out altogether. The wonder is that you have borne this so long. I should have expected you to be quick to resent treatment of this kind, but I am afraid you are not half so nimble-witted as you ought to be. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London challenged the Prime Minister yesterday to mention any Bill of first-class importance which the House of Lords had thrown out in late years with the exception of Home Rule Bills. I do not know how the right hon. Gentleman proposes to meet that challenge, but I can meet it easily. I will simply state what Ireland has to complain of. First of all, there was the Catholic Emancipation Bill, a measure of importance not only to Irish Catholics but to English Catholics and English Nonconformists. That measure was passed by this House and twice rejected by the House of Lords. Pitt made the great promise that England and Ireland should be governed by equal laws. In the agitation against the Union from the time of O'Connell down to the present day the Irish people have always asked for the equalisation of the laws of England and Ireland. First of all, they asked for the equalisation of the franchise between England and Ireland. Although Ireland is a poor country and England a rich country, the Irish franchise for fifty years was higher than the English franchise. On three occasions the House of Commons passed a measure to remedy that inequality and the House of Lords rejected it. The municipal franchise in the Irish cities was very much higher than the English municipal franchise. No fewer than five times were Bills passed in this House with the sanction of the Government in regard to that matter, and on each occasion they were rejected by the House of Lords. These were all measures of first class-importance. When my right hon. friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland was about to bring forward the Evicted Tenants Bill, I asked whether it would be like the Evicted Tenants Bill of 1894, and he replied that it would be ejusdem generis. It was reported in the Press that it would be just and generous. The Bill of 1894 was passed through the House of Commons, its provisions being in accordance with the advice given by a Commission headed by one of the most illustrious lawyers of his day, Mr. Justice Mathew. That Bill was thrown out in the House of Lords, and yet there are some people who look upon the House of Lords as a wonderful place where detached beings, utterly exempt from human prejudices, arrest the unwise measures submitted to them by this House. They seem to be regarded as so many angels sent down for our good. It is said that Bills are sometimes passed through this House in a rush, and that hon. Members are subject to the fits and gusts of passion, and that it is valuable to have such a Chamber as the House of Lords to deal with such measures. The Criminal Law Procedure Act of 1887 was one in which the English Liberal Party took the greatest interest. They took an interest in it out of kindness to Ireland, and also from the instinct of self-preservation, for they knew pretty well that if things of this kind could be done in Ireland they might also be done in England. That measure is known to the Irish representatives as the Jubilee Perpetual Coercion Act. The Bill was brought forward in the second session of a new Parliament in which there was a Tory majority. It is no exaggeration to say that at the election not a word about coercion for Ireland was heard on any platform. The Government of the day had no mandate whatever. They had a mandate the other way. They were elected to grant equal laws for Ireland, and not to impose coercion. When the Bill was passing through Committee Lord Weymouth, now the Marquess of Bath, took a yellow poster out of his pocket and read out the words: "Vote for Weymouth and no coercion." That was the appeal which had been made to his constituents at the election. One of the most curious things of all was that, on the day of the Second Reading of the Bill, the Piggott forged letter appeared in The Times. It afterwards appeared from the evidence given at the Parnell Commission that the letter was printed in order to affect the vote on the Second Reading. When Mr. Parnell stood up to deny the authenticity of the letter the then Chief Secretary who was addressing the House refused to give way, and Mr. Parnell's denial did not appear in its integrity in the English Press. When that Bill was passing through this House free use was made of the guillotine. I remember Sir Charles Russell stood at the Table protesting that a promise had been given which had never been fulfilled, and it has not been fulfilled from that day to this. The Bill was bitterly contested, and the proceedings in this House lasted five or six weeks. Having been forced through the House with the aid of the guillotine, it was sent to the House of Lords. If the Lords had exercised their function as the guardians of the interests of future generations, they would have taken care that a measure which was to coerce not only the present generation, but future generations, was fair and equitable. That Bill by which jury trial was abolished, and by which new offences were created, was not subjected by the hereditary House to the revision it ought to have received. Tribunals were set up under the Act in which the magistrates were merely the creatures of the Crown. One man who had been dismissed for fraud was appointed a resident magistrate. The Bill received First, Second, and Third Reading in a few hours at one sitting of the House of Lords. What is to be said for a Second Chamber which performs its work in that way? What becomes of the hereditary wisdom in such a case as that? The fact is that there is no revision in the House of Lords when a Tory Government is concerned. Certainly there is none when Irish legislation is concerned, if it is proposed by a Tory Government. I am sorry that the late Prime Minister is not here, because although he is not a gentleman of a very ardent temperament, I should like to say something which might appeal even to him. There was another Tory once Prime Minister who knew how to manage the House of Lords. I refer to the Duke of Wellington. He has left a document which is familiar to every student of constitutional history, showing how he managed the House of Lords. He was a Tory of the best kind. When Catholic emancipation was proposed, he opposed that reform, but when he found that Irish soldiers cheered O'Connell the Liberator, he quickly altered that opinion. The Catholic Emancipation Bill, which the Duke of Wellington had bitterly opposed, was passed by the House of Lords. The Duke was an old strategist, and he did his best to save the Lords from themselves. In a letter written in April, 1844, he gave advice to Lord Stanley as to how he was to proceed in connection with the repeal of the Corn Laws. He said—

"Although I disagree with the Government measures, knowing what the House of Lords in now, knowing that it no longer reflects the will of the people, I have done my best with a considerable amount of management to bring them into line with popular opinion in order to preserve them."

The late Prime Minister did not take the advice of his godfather, the Duke of Wellington, but in language which could not be misinterpreted told the House that although the Liberal Ministry were supported by a general majority of 350 over his followers, he would go to another place and defeat the decision of the House of Commons; and by doing that he lured the other place to destruction. The late Prime Minister attributed the preservation of Ireland to the rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1893 by the House of Lords. If Mr. Gladstone had had his will on that rejection there would have been an appeal to the country, but, by the dilly-dallying of certain gentlemen, that was prevented, and the result is that we are only at the stage we were thirteen years ago, when Mr. Gladstone was overborne in regard to what he wished for as to how the House of Lords should be dealt with. The English Radicals have some representatives in the House of Lords; but there is not a single representative of the Nationalists in that Chamber.

There is Lord Dunraven.

He is not a Nationalist and he does not want to be in the House of Lords. The Irish Tories have twenty-eight representative Peers in the House of Lords—all of whom are Irish landlords of the Clanricarde type. It is a very remarkable fact that not one hon. Member has ventured to say that the House of Lords have a right to dictate your legislation here, to throw your measures out, to treat them with contempt, while Tory measures are passed automatically, or to erect barriers against Liberal measures, because they are the sons of their fathers. We do not view the ludicrousness of this, because we have got accustomed to it. It has been said by some hon. Members that Englishmen dearly love the House of Lords. I will examine in a general way as to the origin of some of these Peers. If I said all that I know in regard to them outside this House I might be subjected to prosecution by the Society for the Discouragement of Vice. I can consider nothing more cowardly or unmanly than to throw in anyone's teeth his antecedents. It is our glory here that every man stands on his own merits and that, however humble his origin, if he has ability he can rise to the highest honours. But when you come to this, that we are told that the Peers must revise the laws passed by this House, that they are the guardian angels of the people, that they are the trustees of posterity because they are the sons of their fathers, then we may inquire who their ancestors were. To begin with the Dukes. There are four of them whose ancestors must have been very precocious, because one was created a Duke when he was three years of age, and another when he was twelve years of age; and they rose to that position by the merits or demerits of Charles II. of blessed memory. Do you think it right that the descendants of these gentlemen should legislate for you and thwart your legislation because they are the spurious representatives of the divine right of royalty that was kicked out of the country? Another branch of the Dukes owed their position to the robbery of all the abbeys and the priories of the Catholic Church. I do not say whether that was right or wrong, but it should not have been used to give a hereditary right to sit in the House of Lords. There was another branch of the Peers who owed their position to royal favouritism or to honest purchase. Then William III. of glorious, pious, and immortal memory conferred a dukedom on a man named Bentinck, but before it could be conferred a special Act of Parliament had to be passed in order to naturalise him in this country, and the descendant of this noble Duke, who was of Dutch origin, the Duke of Portland, was the most bitter anti-Boer in this country in the recent war. Edmund Burke described the Duke of Bedford of his day as the great leviathan of pluralities. I come down to the time of the Georges. George III., who lost us America, created 388 Peers, who were described by Lecky as respectable nonentities, for their support of the policy of the Crown. Next come the peerages of our own day. What about the brewers who have got peerages, men who have brewed as much ale and porter as would float ten ships of war. They had no great ability about them except that of flatulent pockets; but no sooner do they get into the peerage than you find them with an ancestry that would take all the shine out of the blood of the Howards. I will say nothing about the military Peers; but as to the political Peers, Lord Clive, like Lord Curzon, obtained an Irish peerage because he had purchased seven seats in the House of Commons; and he was disappointed because he did not get an English peerage. During the Chinese debates it was pointed out, that in China they did not ennoble a man for special service but his ancestors! A great many men who are made Peers to-day are the shunted twaddlers of politics; the wall-flowers of the political ball-room who are obliged to retire gracefully. My recollection of twenty years in this House is that the Lords are the shunted dowagers of politics and the wall-flowers in the political bowl. [Laughter.] All these things create laughter, but although they are very ridiculous they are infinitely mischievous. But if they are ludicrous they are also true. This is the very best House of Commons that has ever been elected in the whole history of Parliament, and I do not include in that description only those hon. Gentlemen who agree with me and the Labour Party and the Irish Members, because I see there are yet elements of earnestness in the younger Tory Members. But how are you to begin to reform? How are the leaders in the Executive Government of this country, under whom some of us will not flinch, to deal with this situation? Are you going to think of the constituencies and those who come after you? If you are going to do a man's work to put down this indignity and make the world better than you found it, why not rise to the height of your strength and brush away all impediments of a gingerbread character! Let us all direct our attention to this urgent matter and say we will not allow any man merely through the accident of birth to thwart our wishes and stand between us and the desires of the people. Speaking with some little knowledge of Cabinet dissensions, and I daresay there have been dissensions in the present Cabinet, I believe that if we support them we shall bring this glorious campaign to a triumphant conclusion.

I rise to move the Amendment standing on the Order Paper in my name which runs, "The Upper House, being an irresponsible part of the legislature, and of necessity representative only of interests opposed to the general well-being, is a hindrance to national progress and ought to be abolished." The first observation I have to make is that the longer we listen to the debates the more convinced we must become that the position of the House of Lords as it is to-day is absolutely indefensible. If there was any doubt in our minds upon that point before, I think after the excellent review of the House of Lords to which we have just listened all doubt ought to be removed. We can congratulate ourselves, therefore, that we have had the opportunity of listening to the speech of the hon. Member for West Donegal, as he has refreshed our memory in regard to the position of our hereditary Peers. All this explanation makes it very much easier for me to put the proposition contained in the Amendment, but before proceeding to state my case I should like to make a very brief reference to the plan of the Government as unfolded to us in the able speech of the Prime Minister yesterday. I have examined the plan which he submitted as carefully as I can in the very short time at my disposal, and having regard to the whole circumstances of the case, I have been compelled to come to the conclusion that it is altogether too cautious, too moderate, and far too considerate for those against whom the Prime Minister made out such an excellent case. Applying the right hon. gentleman's scheme to the circumstances of last session, I may point out that it was the first session of a new Parliament, and happily the driving power of the new Parliament was such as to produce an output of legislation not only in quantity but in quality that, I believe I am right in saying, exceeds anything which has taken place in any session of Parliament in the lifetime of any single Member of this House. Supposing that this excellent plan of the Government had been in operation last session, I should like to ask what would have been the result. Let me take for instance the three measures in which many of us were most keenly interested the Trade Disputes Bill, the Amendment of the Workmen's Compensation Act, and the Education (Provision of Meals) Bill. I know that every one of those three measures would have been a subject of conference had the system now proposed been then in operation. I do not doubt that if this machinery gets into working it may facilitate the passage of some simple uncontroversial Bills, but I have the strongest conviction that it will be the means of hindering the passing of progressive legislation in general. I know I may be told that had this scheme been in operation a Bill very closely associated with the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Government Bench might have been after all his tremendous efforts passed into law. I may be told that if there had been this machinery the Government plan in regard to education would ultimately have been successful. Yes, but what I want to ask is this: Supposing the right hon. Gentleman had been successful, and I think he himself would make this admission, he would only have been successful in getting a Bill passed on to the Statute-book which would be far out of harmony with the pledges which the Government had given to the country and with that which the supporters of the Government were entitled to expect. [An HON. GENTLEMAN: You would not have got a stronger Bill.] All I can say is that if we did not get a stronger Bill there would have been more compromises than there were before the Bill left this House, and if we are going to have more compromises in regard to our Bills as the result of the conference, its establishment will not be the least concession. I say that is a fatal argument to my mind against our too readily adopting the scheme which is put before us by the Government. It has been suggested that after a little time the House of Lords will tire of this method of proceeding, that after a session or two they will hesitate to put the provision in force, and that the necessary Bill referred to yesterday when it becomes law will enable the Government to put on the Statute-book any Bill they wish. That to my mind is a delusion and a snare. I do not think the recent history of the other House justifies our concluding that after a year or two they will cease to resist legislation, and I am strengthened in that opinion by the character of the legislation which we hope this Government may be able to send to the Upper House before it again goes to the country. There never were such demands as there are to-day for advanc- ing social and economic legislation. We are recognising that social problems must be dealt with and are realising that economically and industrially there is much that the worker should receive at the hands of the Government. There is nothing that leads me to suppose that when we get these advanced measures the House of Lords will be more anxious to let those measures pass than they have been to pass other measures that have been sent up to them from this House in days gone by. For these not altogether unimportant reasons we look with some suspicion on the scheme unfolded by the Prime Minister in his speech of yesterday. Now I want before passing away from the scheme to urge the Government to reconsider the position, and see whether it is not possible to reduce the amount of time that may pass between the first disagreement between the two Houses and the final passage of the measure into law. That in my opinion is essential if we are to pass through both Houses legislation that is commensurate with the present needs of the people. Let us try to look at this scheme from a practical standpoint. Suppose in the first three sessions of a new great radical democratic Parliament we are engaged as we were last session with important controversial measures. Take the Trade Disputes Bill, the Workmen's Compensation Bill, and the Provision of Meals Bill and the Scottish Land Bill. Suppose the House of Lords seeks to avail itself of the right you are able to confer upon it by this scheme to put the conference machinery into operation on all those four Bills, how far are we going to be from the end of the third session of the new Parliament before those measures pass on to the Statute-book? But that is not all. What about the next two years? I hope hon. Members, and especially those who like ourselves came flushed with our promises of industrial and social reform, will ponder carefully over this. What about the last two years of the quinquennial Parliament? To what can we turn our attention during those two years? We cannot turn our attention to great controversial measures, because if we send up such measures in the fourth session of the Parliament there will not be time for them to run to the final period when the command will go forth that if the House of Lords opposes the Bill again it will pass without them. I allow therefore if we are going to have this scheme of a quinquennial Parliament, and I hope we shall have it—I should be prepared to go further and vote for a triennial Parliament, especially if we do not have a House of Lords—let us be very careful that we are not establishing a scheme that will restrict the activity of Parliament to three years of the quinquenial period. That is one of the most serious issues involved in the scheme, and I think I am right in saying that the Prime Minister is the last man to view such a situation with feelings of satisfaction. Having made this not unfair criticism on the Government scheme, I desire to bring to the notice of the House the alternative scheme contained in our Amendment. I have said that the Government scheme is cautious and moderate. I am afraid I cannot claim that for the scheme I am about to try to justify. But there is this about it—it is understandable, it is definite, and it is radical. It seeks by the plainest, the most complete and logical method to make the will of the House of Commons supreme. There is an almost unanimous opinion that the hereditary principle that obtains to-day ought to be ended, but we want to go further. We want to put an end, not only to the hereditary principle, but to the life of any Chamber which is irresponsible, which is not responsible to the nation. It may be asked why do we, representing labour, take the responsibility of moving this Amendment. We do so because organised labour has its own definite and ever-increasing indictment against the House of Lords. The record of the other House so far as organised labour is concerned is altogether bad. Organised labour remembers that the Upper House resisted a Bill for the protection of the lives of our women and children in the mines from 1842 to 1872. We recognise the attitude taken up by the other House towards the principle of compensation. We remember their making the principle of picketing an offence in 1872. Organised labour remembers the record of the Upper House on the Load Line and Merchant Shipping Act which was destined to do something for the sea-men. We remember their mutilation of the Employers' Liability Bill in 1893–4, and their practical rejection of the Railway Servants Bill in 1893. But let me come a little nearer the present Parliament. Can we forget their treatment of what we know was a measure for the prevention of the importation of alien labourers during the progress of a trade dispute? Their policy on that occasion is the more difficult to understand when we remember that in the last session or the last but one of the old Parliament the Government of the Party for whom the House of Lords is so pleased to act passed an Aliens Bill which they claimed they passed in the interests of the working man. But how inconsistent is the claim when we remember that at the very time organised labour asked for assistance for British labour the House of Lords refused it, and threw out the Aliens Prevention Bill! The reason given by Lord Londonderry was as follows—

"There might perhaps, in the future, be a strike in some great industry with which was associated the welfare of the whole people, and in such a case would it be wise to forbid the introduction of men into the country who were to keep the industry going?"

At the time when the workmen needed protection the noble Lord thought of the rights of capital and forgot the wrongs of labour. Then we do not forget their treatment of the Provision of Meals Bill, a Bill for which we were responsible, and which was so successful that it went through this House with almost unanimous consent. The Amendment which caused its mutilation in the other House was the exclusion of Scotland. We had the satisfaction that when the same Amendment was moved by an hon. Member above the gangway, the force in favour of the Amendment was so small that Mr. Speaker asked those in favour of the deletion of Scotland to stand up, and the number that responded to his invitation was ten. The principle was laid down that Scotland should be included in the Bill, and rightly so. How could it be otherwise in face of the testimony of the Medical Officer for the City of Edinburgh that half the children of the slums were being compelled to attend school in an underfed condition? The Bill went to the other House, and the Amendment so unanimously rejected by the Commons was accepted by the Lords. No; it is scarcely correct to say it was accepted by the Lords, because the vote was twenty-nine to nineteen. Twenty-nine against nineteen had the power to take over this Bill, supported by the unanimous voice of the House of Commons, which on this point we claim to be directly representing the people before whom we have so recently been, and to leave out Scotland from the scope of its provisions. That is part, at any rate, of the great indictment preferred by the Labour Party against the House of Lords; and with such a history as it possesses we have no hesitation in accepting the following definition of its position—

"During the past 100 years the House of Lords has never contributed one iota to popular liberty or popular freedom, or done anything to advance the commonweal. During that time it has protected every abuse and sheltered every privilege; it has denied justice and delayed reform; it is irresponsible without independence, obstinate without courage, arbitrary without judgment, and arrogant without knowledge."

It is some time ago, I admit, since those words were uttered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, but they very correctly describe our opinion to-day. With such a House as is in those words accurately described, what is the method proposed by the Labour Party for dealing with it drastically? We are proposing a method that has long been settled and adopted by the organised labour of this country; whether it has spoken through the Trades Congress or through labour demonstrations, the voice of organised labour has been emphatically in the direction of this Amendment. After the rejection or the mutilation of the Employers Liability Bill there was held a great demonstration, admitted by The Times newspaper, I believe, to have been one of the greatest labour demonstrations ever held in Hyde Park, at which the following resolution was carried—

"That this meeting, representing the organised industries of the United Kingdom, condemns the action of the House of Lords in stultifying the decision of a majority of the directly-elected representatives of the people in the House of Commons upon the Employers Liability Bill. This meeting also calls upon the Government to reintroduce the measure at once to test the ultimate decision of the House of Lords, and to take steps for the entire abolition of the House of Lords, and thereby to deprive the Peers of the power of opposing the national will."

The Trades Union Congress in the following year, 1895, carried the following—

"That this Congress is of opinion that the representative character of the House of Commons is impaired, and its decisions rendered nugatory by the power of the House of Lords, and with a view of maintaining inviolate the supremacy of Parliament, this Congress calls for the speedy abolition of the Second Chamber."

This was seconded by my hon. friend the Member for South-East Derbyshine. The Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Congress took this matter up very seriously at that time, and, if the House will bear with me, I will read a brief extract from the manifesto of that Committee, which was sown broadcast on that occasion. In that manifesto, which was issued in February, 1904, they say—

"What use to you is the right to vote? What does it avail you that a majority of the elected representatives of the people decide in your favour, whilst a privileged class are permitted to make a mockery of the most extended franchise and all representative authority? It is now necessary for you to decide whether you will tamely submit to this contemptuous treatment or will determine to teach the House of Lords that they cannot oppose your will with impunity."

I need hardly say that this manifesto was signed by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, by the hon. Member for Wansbeck, and the hon. Member for Finsbury. Not only is this the policy of organised labour, but there are others who have made themselves responsible for suggesting a similar course of action. I will just trouble the House with this quotation before I conclude. One right hon. Gentleman who happens to adorn the front Opposition bench at the present time is responsible for having said the following—

"He saw on some banners the words they must ' Mend or end the House of Lords.' There were some institutions not worth mending. They were radically bad; they were founded on wrong principle. It was easy, however, to say, 'end them,' but how were they to do it? He believed one way was to stop their wages. A week ago, when there was a Vote of £41,000 towards the maintenance of the House of Lords, twenty-three of them went into the Lobby against the proposal."

The same Gentleman said on another date—

"For his part he was no reformer of the House of Lords. He demanded its total abolition as a legislative assembly."

These opinions are the opinions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bordesley Division of Birmingham. I feel I ought to apologise for having detained the House so long, but I would say, in conclusion, that we feel very strongly that everything which the Government has advanced against the Lords is true. We have endeavoured to supplement the opposition to the Upper House because of the treatment which the organised workers have received at its hands. What we have to ask ourselves is this: Against a House such as the House of Lords, with such a history, meting out as it has done such treatment to the working classes, can we justify the scheme of the Government, which, as I am afraid it will do, may place the House of Lords in a stronger position than they are in to-day? The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade in a speech recently deplored the fact that the Cabinet had always to keep in their minds the possibility of how their Bills would be treated by the House of Lords. But surely, if you put this scheme by Bill upon the Statute Book, you invite the House of Lords to interfere with every Bill. We feel that, if this scheme is sanctioned by the House, it is an invitation to the House of Lords, if they care to do so, to put the machinery which you propose into operation against every Bill. What is going to be the result? First of all, the character of a Bill must be altered, or legislation must be made more moderate in order to meet with their approbation. In the second place, during the whole of the proposed process, we are delaying legislation, whereas the country has endeavoured, by sending a great Government with a great majority to this House, to secure legislation of a social and industrial character in greater quantities than we have hitherto received. Instead of that being done, I am afraid that this very machinery will prevent the passing of the legislation we desire. Therefore, we are compelled to the conclusion that there is a much better way, a much more effective way, a way which will operate with greater speed for making the will of the House of Commons supreme, and through the House of Commons the will of the people, and that is not by tinkering and mending, but, as we state by our Amendment, ending the House of Lords. I beg to move the Amendment.

I feel that the House will extend to me that indulgence which it always gives to a Member who addresses it for the first time. I rise to second the Amendment moved by my hon. friend, and to all intents and purposes it would be wearying the House to labour the point much further. I have listened carefully to what my hon. friend has said, and I realise that he has stated from our point of view practically everything that can be said in relation to the matter. He has built up our indictment, and therefore I propose for a few moments to turn to some other aspects of the case. The Amendment is clear, it is definite. It puts on record, in the concluding words of the Prime Minister's speech yesterday, that "this House shall rule." We listened to the Prime Minister's speech, as we have listened to the speeches made from that side of the House to-day and yesterday, and almost every speech could be used to build up our case for the total abolition of the House of Lords. The Prime Minister yesterday demonstrated beyond all doubt that if the House of Lords ever did possess any power as a revising Chamber that power has now passed away, and we ourselves had witnessed it, for we have seen Toryism carried so far as to kill any legislation proposed from the Ministerial side of the House. As a representative of the working classes I say there are plenty of things before us which demand legislation. I know that any Bills presented to this House, unless there has been a direct agitation for those Bills in the country, have little chance of passing the House of Lords. I know there is the case of the Trade Disputes Bill, and probably the Labour Members ought to criticise the Lords more kindly because we are the only Party of which they have shown any fear. Nevertheless we Labour Members realise that the House of Lords have always been our enemies, and are our enemies to-day. We know that in whatever path we desire to strike out for freedom there they stand blocking the way, and it is time the people of this country took the matter into their own hands and politely put them out of the way of the path of progress. The taunt was made yesterday that the present Government are not sincere in this effort to deal with the Lords. May I remind the Ministerial Party that we are only a small Party in this House—there are only some thirty of us, but we represent with candidates defeated under our auspices nearly 500,000 voters, all of them independent voters? I desire to draw attention to the fact that this 500,000 workers are contributing their money to our upkeep, and they are keeping an eye upon the legislation of the country. As has been forcibly demonstrated by my hon. friend, wherever trade unionists have gathered together any Resolution dealing with the House of Lords has always been passed with absolute unanimity. Therefore, I think I can reasonably claim that the 500,000 voters which we represent are watching the Government, and they will judge whether they are sincere or not. If they go back to the country without something accomplished in this direction they will be slaughtered in the same way as the Tory Party was slaughtered in 1906. I will not detain the House further. I wish formally to second the Amendment which has been moved by my hon. friend, and I thank the House for the courtesy it has shown in listening to my remarks.

Yesterday I listened to the Prime Minister with the greatest interest, and there was no portion of his speech which interested me more than that in which he said that in moving his Resolution he spoke under a sense of the greatest responsibility. I am sure there are no hon. Members sitting on this side of the House who would in any way underrate the responsibility which is laid upon the right hon. Gentleman and upon his Party for the course they have chosen to take in regard to this question. It is a curious commentary on the sequence of events that in the year 1884 and 1888 Motions should have been made of a similar character suggested by Lord Rosebery with the universal approval of the Liberal Party of that day, and that to-day the Liberal Party should be found actually opposing the institution of an inquiry into the necessity for a reform of the other place, and that in spite of their opposition this inquiry should be actually at this moment going on under the guidance of the ex-Prime Minister of the Liberal Party himself. That is a somewhat curious instance of the irony of events. Now what is the ostensible reason for which this Resolution is being moved? What is the charge against the Second Chamber? We are told that the House of Lords oppressed the people, and that is the sum and substance of the charge. Hon. Members below the gangway declare that it is no wonder the House of Lords oppresses the country, because it is an irresponsible body founded upon an absurd hereditary principle. I am inclined to agree with the Prime Minister that it is hardly relevant upon this Resolution to discuss at length the composition of the House of Lords, because what we are really inquiring into is the conduct of the House of Lords in discharging its functions. The House of Lords, however, is not built up upon hereditary principles, but upon history. There is a large portion of the Second Chamber—and I do not mean the Lords Spiritual—who are Peers in the first creation and who owe their position in no sense of the word to the application of the hereditary principle. If you take the House of Lords at almost any period of its history during the past fifty years, you will find that there was always a large proportion who did not hold their positions owing to the accident of birth. We have been told that the House of Lords is not a representative body. I am afraid the word "representative" is a somewhat difficult word to define. I think, however, that I could point out that our Second Chamber to-day fulfils one condition of a representative assembly which is not fulfilled by this House. So great an authority as Sir Erskine May laid down that it was an essential thing in the case of a representative assembly that the record of its debates should be accessible to all and that every word spoken should be spoken to the city and the world. I think his actual words were that—

"Owing to the publicity of its debates there is present, as it were, the entire people to assist in the deliberations of Parliament.

I put it to the House, not in any controversial spirit, with regard to the representative character of the House of Lords whether, judged by this test, as it is at present constituted, it is not more representative than those Committees which have been constituted in this House under the new régime. The Prime Minister quoted in his speech the words of Burke, and I would like to give the opinion of the same authority in a passage following that quoted by the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the representative character of the House of Lords. Burke said—

"For it is not the derivation of the power of that House from the people which makes it in a distinct sense their representative. The King is the representative of the people, so are the Lords, and so are the Judges. They are all trustees of the people as well as the Commons, because no power is given for the sole sake of the holder, and although Government certainly is an institution of divine authority, yet its forms and the persons who administer it all originate from the people. A popular origin cannot, therefore, be the characteristical distinction of a popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of Government and to all its forms."

After all the real charge laid against the Second Chamber is that in exercising its functions it is oppressing the people. That is a matter which it is obviously appropriate that should receive serious and careful consideration. I want first of all to say frankly that there is nothing impossible in that charge, because it has repeatedly happened in the history, not merely of this country, but of other countries, that the Second Chamber has oppressed the people, and that one estate in the Constitution has sought to aggrandize itself at the expense of the others. The optimates of Venice and the Whig Peers in the first half of the eighteenth century combined against the people to set up the tyranny of an oligarchy. The nobles of France and the Holy Roman Empire combined against the Crown with resulting disintegration of these Empires. That, however, to-day is not the question we have to consider, and it would be no argument to say that because King John oppressed the people the monarchy should be abolished, or that, because this House in the time of the Great Rebellion and the Interregnum oppressed the people, its abolition is desirable. The question to be decided is whether the Second Chamber now is oppressive. Let us see what that accusation means. It is not pretended that they are in any way copying the nobles of France and the Holy Roman Empire. It is not contended that they are lacking in national or Imperial spirit. It is not contended that they desire to do anything to disintegrate the Empire. Such a contention would not hold water for a moment. Even hon. Members opposite will admit that whatever the House of Lords lacks it does not lack broad and Imperial views in matters of Imperial policy. Even Liberal Imperialism, that plant of tender growth, flourishes and blossoms in that serene atmosphere. Nor is it pretended that the Second Chamber, like the Venetian nobles and the Whig Peers of 1719, are trying to make themselves a close corporation. On the contrary, it has already been pointed out as a charge against the Second Chamber, not that it is too much of a close corporation, but that it is too easy of access, and by a curious process of argument those hon. Members who make that charge would prefer, if oppressed, that it should be by some one with the blood of Vere de Vere than by one who, rising by his own merits, has succeeded in reaching high office in the State. I do not profess to follow that argument. What is the real charge that is laid at the door of the Second Chamber? It is that it oppresses the people because it resists their will as expressed by their elected representatives when those representatives happen to be Liberals. In other words, it is resisting what the Liberal Party believe to be the will of the people. That was the charge made at Plymouth at the outset of the campaign by the Prime Minister. He said it is Liberalism that is at stake—not the people that is at stake. In short, this reform of the Constitution is being proposed not for the safety of the people, but confessedly nakedly, unashamedly, in order to strengthen the position of the Liberal Party. As I listened to the right hon. Gentleman yesterday raising his voice in lamentation over his innocents that have been slaughtered by the Lords—though indeed he seemed to weep more sorely for the step-child that survived—I expected him to conclude with a paraphrase of that finest of all funeral orations that was delivered at Gettysburg. Let us here highly resolve that these dead "shall not have died in vain," and that government of the Liberals by the Liberals for the Liberals "shall not perish from the earth." What we have to inquire into, after all, is whether it is absolutely certain that the will of the elected representatives is the will of the people. I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen opposite generally accept that doctrine. If they do, it is a somewhat curious commentary on their own conduct in connection with their proposed land legislation, because it is part of their machinery to send down Commissioners to dragoon the popularly elected representatives of the people on the county councils into compliance with the views of the Government of the day. If they do hold that doctrine, it would be well to consider whether it should not be applied in more ways than one. If it is to be held that after an election the majority of the Members of this House give a true representation of the will of the people, then something will have to be done to devise a remedy for the curious anomaly by which everyone who sits on these benches represents something over 16,000, and everyone who sits in other parts of the House represents about 7,000 electors. There are, no doubt, occasions when a special mandate on a special subject is given by the country to Parliament. The people say to Commons and Lords, "This is our will, execute it." On no occasion has a special mandate of that character been permanently resisted by the Second Chamber. The Lord Advocate admitted as much at Plymouth when he said that the House of Lords had never resisted a popular measure nor insisted on an unpopular one. In truth the Second Chamber is being attacked, as all Second Chambers, whether nominated, elected or hereditary, in other countries are always attacked, on the ground that it retards legislation. Of course it retards legislation, for that is its proper function. If a Second Chamber is not to act as a check upon the first it has no raison d'être, and it is of no use. I do not say that in a Party spirit. It is a constitutional commonplace. As far as I can make out, the real complaint about the action of the Second Chamber is that it has arrogated to itself, to use the Prime Minister's words, the right to force an appeal to the people. The right hon. Gentleman said that was an entirely unconstitutional doctrine—I think he said it was a doctrine not known to the Constitution. He did not cite any constitutional authority for his proposition; but I make so bold as to say that the doctrine is neither novel nor unconstitutional. It was insisted upon forty years ago in the debates on the Irish Church Bill. I cite the authority of Mr. Bonamy Price, a constitutional writer, who during the Irish land law debates was commended to the attention of the House and the country because of the peculiarly detached character of his opinions. This is what he says in regard to the functions of the House of Lords—

"To balance and regulate the political movement of the nation—to test by temporary resistance the sincerity and strength of the will which demands a change; to make legislation take its stand as the good sense and ultimate judgment instead of the momentary desire of the country, and to give continuity and stability to the general policy of the nation."

I have done more in respect to this doctrine than the Prime Minister, for I have brought up one constitutional authority, impeccable and impartial, to testify that this conception of the functions of the House of Lords is neither novel nor unconstitutional. After all, what does it all come down to? We are actually told by the Party opposite that their proposition is that the Party which, by hook or by crook, manages to secure a majority in this Chamber on a measure on which ex hypothesi the people have the very strongest convictions should hesitate to take the risk of confronting the electors at the polls. I do not necessarily mean that there should be a general election. I mean testing the opinion of the people by election or referendum. I understand that both of these methods are rejected by the Party opposite. What is the consequence? Suppose you eliminate the right of the House of Lords to challenge the decisions of the House of Commons, the House of Commons becomes absolute. Moreover, if this Resolution were translated into a Bill the power of the Second Chamber would be confined to the limits of a Parliament, and these limits are of course at the discretion of the Government of the day. Hon. Gentlemen opposite contend that Parliament towards the end becomes more or less unrepresentative. If that is the case, the curious anomaly would arise of the House of Commons having complete control of legislation, not at the beginning of its career, not in its youthful manhood, because then by the circumambulatory process which has been proposed, its powers are curtailed, but when it has begun to be unrepresentative. The new Commons are fettered. The dying Commons are supreme and their will is to prevail instantly. That is a perfectly logical and reasonable deduction from the proposition which has been made. The second deduction is this. If this Resolution is passed why have a Second Chamber at all? If I understand hon. Gentlemen opposite, their view is that if the Second Chamber agrees with this House it is unnecessary, and if it differs it is mischievous. Sir Henry Maine, discussing that point of view, said it reminded him of what happened on an historical occasion when the question of burning or not burning the Alexandrian library was under consideration. The Caliph Omar settled the matter by stating that if the books contained in the library agreed with the Koran they were unnecessary, and if they disagreed they were impious and ought to be burned. So the Second Chamber is regarded by some hon. Members as either superfluous or impertinent. I ask why is it that in all constitutional countries a Second Chamber has been found necessary—in the federal Kingdom of Germany, in the federal republic of the United States, in the unitarian Kingdom of Italy and the unitarian republic of France. And yet in none of these countries is their constitution so elastic as in this country. I have tried, at all events, to argue this question, although I do not suppose that I have convinced many Members opposite. I suppose that many hon. Members opposite will still say that the Lords ought to be mended or ended; but the question is, which is to prevail—the writing on the wall of the hon. Gentleman below the gangway or the writing on the slate of the Government. That will solve itself when we go into the division lobby. The action of the Government lays them open to a certain amount of suspicion. They say that it is impossible for them to go on legislating so long as the Second Chamber reject or mutilate their measures; but they still go on with their legislation, and therefore ex hypothesi go on wasting time, before they proceed with their open attack against the House of Lords. I am bound to say that in the light of recent events in Lincolnshire and elsewhere, there may be something in the proverb that a burnt child dreads the fire. I do not wonder that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite rather shrink from the fiery furnace of a general election, but if they hesitate they can hardly hope to escape the suspicion that they are bringing forward this Resolution at the present time for the purpose of masking the heat test. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister is doing a disservice to his Party, because he is taking a course which has not the support of all the Members who sit behind him, as the Amendments to his Resolution on the Paper show; and it is a course which did not commend itself to the leaders of Liberalism in the past. In the crisis of 1860 Lord Palmerston said—and this is the last quotation I will make—

"I do not think we should have raised ourselves in public estimation, I do not think we should have done anything towards maintaining effectively those rights and functions which belong to us, if we had thrown into these Resolutions anything likely to prove the commencement of hostilities with the other branch of the Legislature."

No one can complain that the Amendment proposed by the Labour Party is in any way indefinite; they regret anything in the way of the reform of the House of Lords and want to go in for the abolition of the House of Lords, lock, stock, and barrel. But anyone would imagine from the first part of the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney-General that he was in favour of the Amendment, but in the second part of his speech he was at great pains to point out what were the responsible functions which would still remain to the House of Lords. When the Prime Minister put down his Resolution a great many Members did not know what it meant; but I do not see that there is any real difference between the plan proposed by the Government and that outlined in the Amendment. If you vote for the Resolution you in fact practically vote for the Amendment which is proposed from the Labour Benches, because you say that the House of Lords as a revising body shall cease to exist. But the House of Lords must essentially be a body of opportunists whose duty it is to give any legislative proposal sent up to them consideration in accordance with what they consider to be the wishes of the country and not in accordance with their own private opinion. The Resolution does not deal with the constitution of the House of Lords; it only deals with the relations between the two Houses of Parliament. I know that some hon. Members would not reform the House of Lords. Some would wish the referendum. Some would wish for an elected Second Chamber. Personally I believe that the House of Lords are quite sagacious enough to reform themselves so as to give themselves the maximum of moral weight and authority in the country. The Prime Minister and other Members on this side of the House spoke often of the will of the people, and that the will of the people must prevail. I cannot conceive anyone getting up to deny that the will of the people must prevail. But the point is, does the will of the people always coincide with the legislative proposals of the Cabinet? Has the Cabinet always interpreted the wishes of the people in any particular legislation they propose? The Prime Minister's Resolution means that when a conflict arises between the two Houses under no circumstances shall there be given to the electorate an opportunity of saying whether the Cabinet have in their legislative proposals correctly interpreted their wishes. I am only a new Member of the House, but it seems to me that it is useless for anyone to say that the Government of the day, even when supported by a large majority, must always be right in their interpretation of the will of the people and that the House of Lords must always be wrong, and that the electorate should never have an opportunity of saying which is right and which is wrong. It is the duty of the House of Lords to revise or reject measures which they think are not in accordance with the prevailing opinion of the people. If they make a mistake they will have to bear the penalty. [An HON. MEMBER: What penalty?] Abolition, of course. Prove that they are wrong, and then bring in a Bill to abolish them. But unless you prove that they are wrong I do not believe that the country will allow this scheme to be carried through. Take the Education Bill. No one will contest that the vast majority desire that all clerical control of the schools shall cease; but I do not think that there is much hostility among the people to Church denominational teaching, and I am convinced that the wishes of the people were not correctly interpreted in the Government's Education Bill as originally introduced. The Leader of the Opposition reminded the House of the great powers which this House has, uncontrolled and unchecked by the House of Lords, in regard to naval and military and other expenditure and in regard to administration. Take another power which this House possesses of carrying into effect its will in such matters as the granting of Constitutions to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. There are many Members on this side of the House who would have liked to have seen it possible for the House of Lords to intervene, and who would have welcomed the interference of the House of Lords in regard to those Constitutions with a view of making them more favourable to the British subject and bringing them into accordance with the wishes of the British people of that country. My chief reason for opposing this Resolution is that I can quite conceive that Labour Members opposite may in the future adopt a different attitude on Imperial questions from that which they had taken up in the past. I cannot help thinking that they may get tired of being looked upon as the natural allies of small sections on the Liberal side who have peculiar and advanced opinions on various subjects, who when trouble arises in our native dependencies invariably seem to think that British administrators are always at fault and always in the wrong; these I am convinced are not the views of those who send Labour Members to this House. I am not the least afraid of their socialistic programme, but combined with a more rational attitude on Imperial questions, with a strong and steady support of Imperial interests. I dread the support their predatory and socialistic programme may receive in the country. We cannot calmly look forward to a Cabinet reflecting the views of those who hold such opinions. There are hon. Members who wished to see the Education Bill, the Plural Voters Bill, and the Scottish Land Bill amended by the House of Lords. Surely they are not going to support this Resolution, by which they will practically acquiesce in the abolition of the. House of Lords. I regard the Government Resolution as practically the same as the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Barnard Castle Division, and I am opposed to both of them. I think hon. Members who vote for this Resolution will give a vote which they will profoundly regret in a comparatively short period of time and no matter how many quotations you may make from the speeches of the Prime Minister, no matter how much dialectical skill you may bring to bear on the matter, you cannot rid yourselves of the accusation that you have voted for one Chamber. If the Prime Minister knew how many of his followers at one time or another have said "Thank God, we have a House of Lords," he would not have brought forward this Resolution with the confidence he professed yesterday. I am told that many of those who vote against this Resolution and legisla- tion of this sort will lose their seats. That time will show, but personally if seats are to be retained by voting for a Resolution which one thinks is against the best interests of the country I for one shall decline to pay the price.

I am not surprised, after listening to the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down, that we hear accusations on the platform that the Liberal Party are no more progressive in their tendencies and aspirations than the Party opposite. A more reactionary speech coming from a Member who professes to support His Majesty's Government I never listened to. The hon. Member for North-West Lanark argued in his speech that because the House of Lords had never set itself permanently against the will of the people, therefore we had no ground of complaint against them. You might just as well say that if a ruffian meets me on my way home to-night and assaults me and breaks my arm, but does not permanently incapacitate me, I have no ground for complaint against him, as say that we have no ground of complaint against the Lords for delaying the legislation which is justly demanded by the nation. The hon. Member says that if the House of Lords does wrong you can punish them. You can penalise them. In what way? Have they not again and again been convicted of wrongdoing? On their own admission they have stood against legislation which the country demanded until we have been brought almost to the verge of social revolution. What opportunity have we had for bringing them to trial up to now? This is the first time in which we have had a responsible Government bringing forward legislation to help us to deal with the block which confronts us in another place. I think that nobody can deny the importance of the Resolution, and, I would certainly be the last to deny the importance of the issue. But I sincerely hope that now we have put our hand to the plough we shall go forward. Nothing gave me greater satisfaction and pleasure in listening to the admirable speech of the Prime Minister yesterday than when he said that whatever might be the attitude of the House of Lords to this Resolution, whether they took it lying down or otherwise, the Motion, so far as the Government is concerned, is to be translated into a project of law. It is no use to take off your coat in a matter of this sort if after a short scrimmage you make matters up again. I hope in this case it is to be a fight to a finish. No self-respecting Government and no Government claiming to be a democratic Government, it seems to me, can do anything but accept the challenge they have had thrown down to come to close grips with the House of Lords when it resists the will of the people. If we are to admit their claim in the slightest degree then there is an end to representative Government. The House of Lords strikes directly at the House of Commons as a representative institution, therefore their claim is not to be tolerated for a moment. The Leader of the Opposition, in his speech yesterday, spoke of a school of Radicals who put social legislation in their speeches, but never anywhere else. I thought that was a rather dangerous observation to come from anyone in the position of the late Prime Minister, and I could not help wondering whether he had in his mind what occurred in 1895. The whole programme of his Party and of himself in particular was based on the policy of social legislation. One of the prominent pieces of legislation shown in that programme was old age pensions. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite in 1895 were not unwilling to trade on the misfortunes of the poor by offering if they received their votes to provide them with old age pensions. What happened? Those who sat in this House at that time will remember that when we pressed the right hon. Gentleman on that subject his reply was—

"If a promise is given to a person who does not seek for its fulfilment I do not see why it need be fulfilled."

That was not a social reform in the programme of the Radicals. There was no such declaration made on their part at that election; and here I should like to say that if a Radical Government gives pledges which they are not able to fulfil it is because of the standing block and menace over the way. You talk of the House of Lords as a Court of Revision; it is nothing of the kind. The House of Lords as a Court of Revision does not exist during the time a Tory Government is in office. It is only when you have a reforming Ministry in office that the House of Lords becomes an active interferer in the country. One hon. Member reminded us of the fact that every legislative assembly in Europe—I am not sure that he did not say in the world—had a Second Chamber. I dare say that is true, but it has often been said that this is the mother of Parliaments, and if that is true I can only say of other countries which have followed our pernicious example that they have followed our bad example, but that there the members of the Second Chamber have had the good sense not to throw themselves across the will of the Representative Chamber. The hon. Member for the Eccles all Division twitted the Party on this side of the House with the fact that since the year 1830 we had created 286 Peers, while the Party opposite had created only 181. But is not the parent to be allowed, to correct its own child? If we have created such a number of Peers, surely we are not to be denied the power of parental restraint and correction. That is all we propose to do by the terms of this Resolution. It is suggested that the Prime Minister's Resolution is practically a declaration for a single legislative Chamber. In my opinion that is not so; I wish it were. I have never concealed my views upon this subject. I am now, and always have been, ever since I entered public life, an advocate for a Single Chamber; and my hon. friend the Member for Barnard Castle is quite right when he quoted my name as being one of the signatures to the trade union manifesto for the abolition of the House of Lords. But I do not, and, cannot, exclude from my mind all that is involved in a Single Chamber. With a Single Chamber, legislation would certainly not be so rapid in its passage through the House as my hon. friend seemed to think it would be. If you have no Second Chamber to revise and examine the legislation sent up from this House you are bound to give greater time and facilities for debate in this House. Those who took part in the deliberations of this House when the late Sir William Harcourt was carrying through his great project of national finance will remember the time that had to be given to the discussion of that project, which was carried through without a single application of the closure. Why was that? It was because we all realised that the project was great in its incidence; that it could not be amended by the other House, and that therefore, it was bound to have the fullest consideration that this House could give it. If you have a Single Chamber—and I shall vote for the Amendment—although the Amendment does not involve a Single Chamber arrangement, it will abolish the hereditary arrangement—if we are to have a Single Chamber arrangement, I ask hon. Members to consider whether we shall not be bound to give more time to the discussion of legislative projects in this House. The hon. Member for Aston Manor last night said that this House was becoming less and less efficient to pass and discuss first-class legislation. I have had the honour of sitting in six Parliaments, and I do not know any one that was more efficient than this. Instead of being less competent it is more competent. What we are deficient in is time for the proper consideration of legislative projects. That involves consideration of a question which I think the hon. Member would not be able to agree upon. It involves the consideration of a scheme of devolution, which he and the Party opposite are not prepared to concede. I most cordially support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Barnard Castle, and will vote with him, but I shall do so in no hostile spirit towards the Resolution of the Government. I think the time has come when the claim of the House of Lords should be seriously considered by the House and the country. We have limited their interference in every direction with finance, foreign policy and treaties of peace, and the question of war. The only sphere of operations in which we have not been able to limit their action is in domestic affairs, and affairs which affect the well-being and happiness of the people of this country. That is the sphere in which they were still permitted to interfere and in which they are the least qualified to interfere. What measures do they ever take to make themselves acquainted with the wishes and desires of the people? How often do they come into contact with the people? Yet we are compelled time after time to go to the country and spend considerable sums on elections in order to find out what are the wishes and desires of the people. But what matters it after all the spending of all this money, or whether the present Prime Minister sits on the right or left of Mr. Speaker, so long as the Leader of the other Party can call in that section of the Carlton Club that sits over the way, and command it to do his bidding? I appeal to the Government strongly to go forward with this project which they have now put before the House and country. I do not urge them to do it at once. There is time enough yet. There are a good many things which I think this House can do before we go again to the country. And, it being a quarter past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

I am sorry that I had not an opportunity of uttering another sentence, and I should have concluded. Let me say that I do not personally put any pressure on His Majesty's Government to proceed immediately with this project. I conceive that there is much useful legislation that they can do, and which in all probability the House of Lords may not be disposed to interfere with, but by all means, having put our hands to the plough, do not let us draw back at all until we have made a complete settlement of the true and proper relation which ought to exist between this House and the other House of Parliament.

I wish to say a few words on this subject which of course interests me as much as it does other Members of the House. I greatly rejoice that we have had the interposition of the two hon. Gentlemen below the gangway, who put before us a clear, fair, and what the late Mr. John Bright called a "square," issue. The question before the House is whether we are to have a Constitution of one Chamber or one of two Chambers. I was greatly surprised to hear so high a constitutional authority as the Attorney-General refer to the action of the House of Lords on the paper duty. He must have forgotten that in addressing the House of Commons he was not addressing a jury, because he endeavoured to raise a prejudice against the other Chamber on the ground that they had opposed the paper duty for social reasons. The fact of the case is that in the House of Lords the duty was retained for a year because at that time, in the estimation of great financial authorities, the income of the State would not bear the loss of £1,000,000. This estimate was confirmed by experience; but in the following year the resources of the country were more abundant, the £1,000,000 could be afforded, and the House of Lords without any he station whatever repealed the duty. Coming to more recent times, I might refer to what occurred last session, reference to which has been made. No one can complain with any reason or justice of the action of the House of Lords with reference to compensation to workmen or with reference to the Trade Disputes Bill. I greatly regretted the action of the House of Lords in regard to the Bill for the provision of meals for children in schools. I supported that Bill, and I hope that I did something towards carrying it through this House. But I cannot forget that the House of Lords were supported in their action by the almost unanimous vote of nearly all the school boards in Scotland, those school boards being representative bodies. I think it is rather hard on the House of Lords that they should be blamed for following the lead of the great representative education authorities of Scotland. I will not endeavour to go back on the long story of the supposed misdoings of the House of Lords. I hope that I may be allowed to say, with every respect to what is the opinion of the Labour Party, that they are hardly entitled to expect the House of Commons and the House of Lords to bow before them, and accept all their wishes without debate or controversy, or without delay. I hope that I may be allowed to make that observation, because hon. Members below the gangway know that I have assisted them on former occasions, and I may be able to render them the like service in the years to come. We have to deal now with the question of a single Chamber. This old country has a long history and an infinite variety of interests, and when it is proposed to have a single Chamber, I challenge anyone to show a single instance in civilisation where a single Chamber has continued during any length of time worth reckoning, or where it has given satisfaction or commanded confidence. I believe that no such instance exists. But this I do say, that before a Bill of this kind is brought before the House, such cases, if there are any, ought to be cited in its support. This old country is not like a new colony, where you take a desert island and fertilise it. This is not a country where you may try any experiment you please, changing and modifying, and waiting the results. Here our institutions are so deeply seated, they are so fixed in the affections of the people, that it is both rash, and, I think, foolish, to endeavour to create in this country an institution so novel to civilisation as a single Chamber. I confess I was somewhat surprised to hear the citation by the Prime Minister yesterday of the Resolution passed in the republican times of this country. I think that the right hon. Gentleman fixed his eyes too much on one Resolution of the Commonwealth period, and he did not consider what was the result of that Resolution. There was one instrument which we see in this Chamber every day, namely, the mace. The result of that Resolution was that the mace for a time had an ill fate, for it was sent off in the most unceremonious manner by Oliver Cromwell, not to reappear until the House of Lords reappeared. We know well enough, without going into details, the history and the troubles of those times after the passing of that Resolution. The country then had to deal not with one Parliament after another chosen in the same fashion according to our modern usage, but with Parliament after Parliament, each more strange than the last; and the Long Parliament of Oliver Cromwell was sent to the country in the manner which I have described, and which caused the mace to be sent out of the House too. I do not wish to dwell on the Constitution of the United States, but having given some time to the study of the subject I would beseech hon. Members, if I may say so, to devote their time and industry to a study of that most interesting Constitution. Each State in America has its own legislature, but the Constitution limits the powers of the State legislature to a very remarkable degree and extent. The effect of it is that any drastic change made by the State legislature cannot be carried out without an amendment of the Constitution, which amendment can only be accomplished with some difficulty and with full discussion. I do not wish to-night to make any remarks of a theoretical kind upon democracies. We know that a monarchy requires checks. An aristocracy requires a check. That which a wise country will do is to devise some check which will save the democracy form its own excesses, give them time for consideration, and prevent those rash proceedings which certainly do occur in every Assembly, whatever its constitution may be. There is another considera- tion which has occurred to me. I do not know how far I carry the sympathies of the House with me, but I confess that I do view with very great dread indeed the limitation of debate. I believe that limitation is a great danger to this country and is going to bring forth issues of serious moment. What system we shall have if the Lords are abolished it is not for me to say. There is, however, one method, that of proportionate re presentation, which I am perfectly sure will, in the next few years, undergo a discussion of a most practical character. I am very much inclined to think that we can only be secured from this violent oscillation of public opinion by some system of proportionate representation. I will not pursue that subject to-night, but in the future those who are working in favour of this new system must give the most careful consideration to this part of the case. There is another method to which reference was made by the Prime Minister yesterday, and that is the referendum. We already have that system in Switzerland. I will not dwell upon this system now, but I should like to read one extract from a text-book which I think is worthy of the attention of the House. It is from Adam and Cunningham's "Switzerland"—

"Extreme measures, whether radical or reactionary, have no chance whatever of being accepted by the people, who, while in a manner fulfilling the functions of a Second Chamber, have infinitely more weight than such a body usually possesses, even if it be thoroughly representative and chosen by universal suffrage."

That is a most remarkable comment upon the system of referendum. There are two remarks more which I desire to make. These are the British Isles, but the British Isles are not alone concerned. We have Colonies, and we must cast our eye, when we change our system of government, upon the Colonies, and we must be quite sure that any instability or want of firmness in our institutions here may not do much to weaken the confidence of the Colonies in the Mother Country. We have also to remember that we are not solitary as regards the Colonies, and we are still less solitary as regards the continent of Europe, the shores of which are within sight of our own. If we have an uncertain Government here which changes from one extreme to the other the confidence in the Government of the country will be greatly impaired, and we shall fall, as no patriot desires we should fall, in the confidence and respect of other nations. I am glad to have had this opportunity of making these few simple observations, because I believe that the problem which has been introduced into this House is one of a most gigantic character. I sometimes think that those of us who have been engaged in legislative work for a long time, and have had our thoughts deeply engaged on the subjects which have come before us, do not always sufficiently consider the result of our own action. The question which is now before us is one respecting which we must look forward to the most distant future. It is an occasion when we must look around to foreign countries and across distant seas, and it is not until we have considered all these relations as well as our own concerns at home that we shall be able to arrive at a conclusion worthy of this country, and worthy of the great difficulties with which this and every constitutional problem must necessarily be intermixed.

As this is my maiden speech, I must ask the kind indulgence of the House in the few words I am about to say. I feel that we have had no defence from the Opposition side of the House of the extraordinary position in which we find ourselves in regard to our relationship with the House of Lords when a Liberal Government happens to be in power. The Leader of the Opposition yesterday claimed that the House of Lords always did its duty. He justified their position by the rejection of the Home Rule Bill which was brought in by the Government of 1892, and claimed that upon that occasion the Lords represented the will of the people. It ought to have occurred to the right hon. Gentleman that, in the first place, the Parliament of 1892 was returned by a very narrow majority, and the divisions which took place in this House also had very narrow majorities. Therefore, much as the Liberal Party regretted the rejection of the Home Rule Bill they accepted it as part of their destiny. Compare that state, of things with the position in 1906, when the Liberal Party was returned to power with an unprecedented majority, when two Bills, about which there had been so much discussion, were rejected by the Lords, notwithstanding the large majorities by which they were passed through this House. I do not think that there is any analogy at all between the two cases. Surely it cannot be contended by the Opposition that the Education Bill of last year was not thoroughly discussed and digested in the country, because the country had the four years which intervened prior to the passing of that Bill to form their opinions as to the wisdom of that measure. [OPPOSITION Cries of "No."] The Education Act now in force was passed in 1902, and the general election took place in 1906, and therefore, the country had ample time to consider the working of that measure. In my county, at any rate, I know that this was the great question before the electors, until the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham entered upon his fiscal expeditions. Up to that period it was the Education Bill, and that only, which excited the people. My hon. friend the Member for Clitheroe said yesterday that even with a single Chamber there would be no tendency to hasty legislation. If my hon. friend was referring to projects started by the Liberal Party and the Labour Party I can thoroughly agree with him. I do not think, however, that it can be contended that that should be accepted as a universal proposition by the House. I remember that the 1900 Parliament passed a measure which was hasty and ill-considered, and I cannot understand why the House of Lords in its wisdom did not, at any rate, send that Bill back again to be reconsidered by the. House of Commons. The Bill I am alluding to is the Licensing Bill. I was under the impression that the Bill was really brought forward in consequence of certain elections which had taken place just about that time, and which brought a certain amount of fear to the mind of the right hon. Gentleman who was then Prime Minister. Certainly no explanation has yet come from the Opposition as to why the House of Lords, acting as a revising Chamber, did not then exercise its powers, whilst on the two occasions last year they did. The noble Lord the Member for Marylebone was quite can did in his speech, for he admitted that the House of Lords was a Conservative body, and he said that if the Conservative Party in this House adopted a constructive policy we Liberals should have reason to complain of the Lords' unfair treatment. Now the late Conservative Government certainly promoted legislation of a kind, but the Education and Licensing Acts are regarded by the people as being of a destructive, rather than a constructive character, and yet were accepted at once by the House of Lords. I think it must be generally admitted that the House of Lords has long ago ceased to be impartial. Probably it was impartial in the old days of Whigs and Tories, but those days have gone by, and at the present moment the House of Lords is out of touch with the great masses of the people. How the Upper Chamber can claim, in any sense whatever, to understand what the will of the people is I am utterly at a loss to understand. I know that there are honourable exceptions, but there are a large number of Peers who not only do not know what the desires and aspirations of the people are, but who take no interest whatever in public affairs. And yet when a wicked Liberal Government brings forward some measure distasteful to the Tory Party, all those gentlemen come up from the country, absolutely regardless of the public interest, to vote with their leader against Liberal measures, just as the clergy rush up in flocks to outvote the tutors at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The hon. Baronet the Member for Oxford University said yesterday that the Prime Minister desired the supersession of the House of Lords as a legislative Chamber. I do not think that we on this side of the House need to be very much frightened about that. Personally, I am not frightened. We have already restricted the House of Lords very much in its power of legislation, and I desire to go a great deal further. I cannot say that I agree entirely with the view taken by the Labour Party on this question. I am still a Second Chamber man. but I do not want a legislative. Second Chamber. The hon. Member said it was equivalent to voting for abolition of the House of Lords. I think the same argument might have been employed 250 years ago when the question of finance was entirely removed from the purview of the other Chamber. I have no fear whatever on that score, and if it is a matter of going on as we are doing now, or resolving to have one Chamber, I would prefer the latter course. I think it is quite possible that legislation will enable us to have a Second Chamber with only a limited veto. I should like to see noble Lords elegible for seats in this House. That has been the wish of some of them, and I am sure that those whose opinions are worth having would be welcomed here. At any rate, after a contested election, I should say that they would know something of the desires of the people, and that is a claim which they cannot make at the present moment. If any noble Lord would go to my constituency, he would get a very clear and definite idea of what the people want on this great question. I am not talking now of unreasoning and unthinking people, but of working men who have reasoned out the question for themselves, not in consequence of the events of last year, but during the last twenty years. One of the first questions which I was asked when I presented myself as a candidate for the district I have the honour to represent was: "What is your opinion on the question of the veto of the House of Lords?" I am perfectly sure if I had not stated that I was opposed to the present veto, and in favour of only a very limited veto, I would not have been accepted as a candidate, notwithstanding my views in regard to free trade, education, and Chinese labour. The question of the reform of the House of Lords was handed on to us by that great constitutionalist, Mr. Gladstone, eighteen years ago, and I look upon the bringing forward of this Resolution as the commencement of the duty laid upon us by him. I am not afraid of the outcome. The hon. Baronet the Member for Wigan, for whose opinion on many points I have the greatest respect, seemed to think that we were going to have no Second Chamber if we adopted this Resolution. I think that opinion can be attributed to the usual fear entertained by the Conservative Party when any change is proposed in the Constitution of the country. The hon. Member for Cambridge University said the Lords always gave way when it could be shown that the House of Commons represented the deliberate judgment of the people. It has been asked—Who is to decide what the deliberate judgment of the people is? I can conceive of no other means of discovering that fact except a general election. You probably do not discover it at a by-election, but surely at a general election you get at the desires and the will of the people. At the last election the people sent a majority of Liberal and Labour Members here in order to achieve certain things, one being a change in the constitution of the House of Lords. We are just as much within our rights in saying that the veto of the House of Lords should be restricted now as our ancestors were in taking away financial questions from the consideration of that House. It must be admitted that as times change our Constitution must change with them, otherwise it would be all the worse for the Constitution. I think we must admit that the House of Lords must become a diminishing power in the Constitution. It is bound to be so in the natural order of events. I say that we the Liberal Party who support the Resolution of the Prime Minister are the true Conservatives in the highest sense of the word. I am entirely opposed to a man having the power to legislate merely because he is the son of his father. I recognise, however, that that is not a question which falls under this Resolution. I can only trust that noble Lords will themselves come to the decision that the hereditary principle must for once and all be stopped in regard to the other House. I shall vote for the Resolution with the greatest possible pleasure without any fear of any untoward event happening in our old country. I thank the Prime Minister for bringing forward the Resolution, and I trust that it will be followed by legislation at no distant date.

We have before us two remedies for a supposed malady of a constitutional character. The diagnosis of the two doctors is agreed upon, but the remedies are very different. The remedy prescribed by the Prime Minister is to treat the patient as one who has no reason, or who has been bereft of reason, and to put him in confinement so that he may thereby be prevented from taking any deliberative action in the affairs of the State. The remedy proposed by the other is of a more Draconian character, and that is his immediate extinction without a hearing, without trial, and without mercy. There is this in common between the two proposals. They base their propositions on the will of the people. In those days the people are supposed to have control of their own affairs. It is recognised that they have the right to control their own affairs, but they do not actually possess the power. I would ask the Prime Minister if he were here whether, in the terms of his Resolution, he does not require to assume as a postulate that the will of the people is expressed by their elected representatives in this House. In effect, it says, Let it be assumed that the will of the people is expressed by the representatives of the people sent to this House. The Amendment of which I gave notice, but which on account of the order of the proceedings it will not be possible for me to move, propounds two propositions. One is that the present Parliament, expressed by a simple majority in this House, does not necessarily represent the will of the people. [Laughter.] Well, we shall see, and I am going to quote very high Liberal authority in the argument I am going to put before you. The Leaders of the Liberal Party in this House legitimately boast of having 512 supporters. The opposite Party have the remainder. But by what votes in the country were they elected? About 6,000,000 out of the 7,500,000 electors of the country voted at the last general election. The 512 representatives who are supposed to form the Liberal Party were elected by 3,400,000—I am stating round numbers for convenience, but I have the exact figures here—which gives an average to each Member of 6,629. The 158 members of the Unionist Party were elected by rather over 2,500,000, which gives an average of over 16,000 voters to each. It will be seen if that number of votes had been equally distributed among the Unionists and the Government Party, instead of the Government Party having the majority of 354 of which they boast, they would just have a majority of ninety-four. I am endeavouring to be fair. What is the effect of that upon the majorities of the Government? The Government claim that they do represent the majority of the voters in the country, but they represent different majorities from that which they are entitled to represent in divisions. It will be seen that the difference between 354 and ninety-four is 260. Therefore, it is an unreasonable argument to put forward that in every division in which the Government can boast of a majority they represent the will of the people as distinguished from the will of the House. If you deduct 260 from 354, you may have a chance of having an approximate idea of the will of the people outside. I have taken the trouble to analyse all the divisions in which the Government have obtained a majority since 24th May. There have been sixty-seven divisions, in none of which the Government attained a majority of 260, and in thirteen they only obtained a majority of 200 or more. I think I am entitled to say that that is not an expression of the will of the people, for they were really in a minority. I do not say this as a mere Party argument. An anolagous thing happened at the general election in 1886, when the advantage was on our side; and so it has happened at every general election for the last forty years. Therefore the least I can say is, that the will of the people is not certainly expressed either by the method of representation in the House, or by the divisions taken in the House. It is easy to make your conclusions right by framing your premises as you please, but is this the way in which the will of the people can be represented in this House, and on which a vast change should be made in our Constitution which has existed for many centuries to the great advantage to the State? I am convinced that if there was a proposition submitted to the country that the House of Lords should be abolished an immense majority would be found against it. But secondly, it is not only in this Parliament, but in any Parliament elected with our present conditions of representation that the will of the people cannot be really represented. Let me give a few facts which are incontrovertible, and which have been placed by me before the country in a variety of ways. There is great disparity in the constituencies in the country. For instance, there are three constituencies which send only three Members to this House, while there are thirty-five constituencies which have rather a less number of electors than the three constituencies I have mentioned but which send thirty-five representatives to this House. Is that represention of the people? Is it fair that one constituency with 47,000 electors should send the same number of representatives to this House as another constituency which had only 1,500 electors? Can the result of that be said in any fashion to represent the will of the people? Take the broad facts. Under our present representation one-half of the electors in the country are only allowed to send 225 representatives, while the other half send no less than 445 Members to the House of Commons. It is quite true that the political questions which divide Parties do not divide constituencies in precisely the same way. How can it be said that there is any proportion between the divisions in this House under any circumstances which corresponds with the proportion of the people outside? One other fact. There are 670 Members in this House. One-half, 335, represent 5,100,000 electors, the other half represent 2,300,000 electors. How can it be said that these represent the will of the people? I submit that it can be said with certainty that this House does not represent the will of the people, and that the Prime Minister's proposition based on that postulate vanishes into thin air. I contend that our present representative system in this House ought to be reformed; and that that reform ought to precede any attempt to tinker with the ancient Constitution of this old country. It is admitted on the other side that the House of Lords is useful for the assistance it gives in legislation; it has been attacked because it has not done what it was constitute I to do. It cannot be asserted for a moment that the House of Lords has violated any part of its duties in amending or rejecting any Bills we send up to them. The raison d'etre of a second House is that it may differ from the lower House. If always bound to agree, why is it wanted to examine questions at all? This outcry against the House of Lords is merely vindictive. There are many unworthy Members in the House of Lords, just as there may be unworthy Members in this House, and in all other classes of society; but if the Votes and Proceedings of the House of Lords are looked at, we cannot detect any signs of interference by unworthy Members in our legislation as a whole. I believe that the country has never had any reason to complain on that score. At all events, the question contained in the Prime Minister's proposition should not be decided until the House of Lords itself takes into consideration whether it can reform itself, or until the representation in this House is reformed.

Many Members on the Liberal Benches would agree with the hon. Member for Wandsworth as to the necessity for a measure for redistribution; but that is no argument against the pressing and more important needs of a measure for muzzling the House of Lords. All measures of reform cannot be carried together; one thing must be done at a time. When one hears arguments like that one recalls the phrase uttered by the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone that if in a few years hence we discuss this question of the abolition of the House of Lords we shall be trifling with our character for sincerity. The question is whether the other side have any character for sincerity left to trifle with. I think there is a great deal to be said for the referendum, but I think the Prime Minister has in view a different kind of referendum from that cherished by the noble Lord Possibly he would have a referendum with the House of Lords left in its present position, so that the referendum would never be employed against a Conservative Government.

If the hon. Member had done me the honour to listen to me he would remember that I said that the subject he is now dealing with should be provided for.

If the noble Lord means that the referendum should be applicable to every measure I retract what I said, but so long as the House of Lords subsists in its present form the referendum would be very unsatisfactory. The Amendment proposed by my hon. friend the Member for Barnard Castle has our greatest sympathy. But suppose we declare that the House of Lords should be abolished, how much nearer are we to abolishing it? The hon. Member seems to think that by sounding his trumpet outside the walls of Jericho he will cause them to fall down. But they will not do so, and the practical advantage, therefore, seems to be on the side of the Resolution proposed by the Prime Minister. We must take into account the warning which the Prime Minister uttered, and I hope the hon. Member will take it to heart. If, then, I support the Resolution it is from no lack of hostility to the institution which the hon. Member wishes to get rid of. The noble Lord the Member for East Marylebone has expressed a preference for the Amendment, doubtless because he thinks that the tentative, gradual, and conciliatory method proposed by the Prime Minister will lead to effective action, whereas a declaration that the House of Lords should be abolished would leave us where we are. In a discussion which has ranged over all the aspects of the case one is bound to come to the question of the purpose for which a Second Chamber should exist and the justification for a Second Chamber. The Leader of the Opposition, with a good deal of cynicism or a good deal of candour, declared that the will of the people of this country could never be known. The question raised by "the swing of the pendulum" only doubles the difficulty. Supposing there is the swing of the pendulum, it is impossible for us to get the benefit of the return of the pendulum, because the other side of the House by means of the Lords prevent us from doing so. The Leader of the Opposition claims that the House of Lords opposes destructive measures; but the impeachment is that it is always ready to pass any measure, constructive or destructive, sent up by one Party, and that the Conservative. But in spite of this claim that it opposes destructive legislation, by its aid one of the most flourishing of the country's democratic institutions—the school board—has been destroyed without notice. Therefore, we say that the Upper Chamber does not represent either of the two mediums between the extremes of the swing of the pendulum. It is perfectly true that a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the will of the people. There is, in one sense, no such thing as the will of the people, but there is such a thing as a balance of the will of the people, and the only way in which you can get that balance is by providing the best machinery, but quite a different machinery from that provided by the House of Lords. It has been said by the hon. Baronet that the House of Lords did represent the will of the people in rejecting the Home Rule Bill; but if he had carried his investigations further he would know that it is not possible to find out the will of the people so long as you have the system of plural voting which the House of Lords seeks to conserve. The plural votes at the 1895 election more than wiped out the majority by virtue of which it is claimed that the rejection of the Home Rule Bill by the House of Lords was in accordance with the will of the country. If you really reckon by votes there is no reason to doubt that the majority of the people of this country have always been in favour of Home Rule, and if the rejection of the Home Rule Bill is the only justification which hon. Members can offer for the House of Lords that justification disappears altogether. I grant that the hon. Member for Lanarkshire had a case when he sought to set up proportional representation. Other hon. Members have Amendments on the Paper to the same effect, and I think the Party opposite would be well advised if, instead of defending the indefensible, they were to argue seriously for a system of proportional representation. The idea of a Second Chamber depends upon feudalism, and I should like to say a word upon the question of whether we should have a Second Chamber at all. New Brunswick has abolished its Second Chamber without injury, and I think Ontario and British Columbia never had one. The institution of a Second Chamber in most cases is a pure superstition, based upon the practice of our Legislature, where its survival is purely fortuitous. It is practically a device to thwart democracy. The British Constitution in time of European turmoil presented a stable quality, and as other States were unstable they assumed that it was because they had not a Second Chamber. The Second Chamber is, however, in most double-chambered States a superfluity. There is one absurdity inherent in the idea of a Second Chamber that it is not democratic. This was pointed out by John Stuart Mill, who, came to the conclusion that the true check upon a Chamber representing the power of the people must lie in the Chamber itself. If there is proportional representation so much the more easy is it to get a proper representation. I know that I am arguing in advance of opinion. But surely if the democratic Chamber is made the sole chamber, the sense of responsibility, not only in the Member himself, but in his constituency, will be raised, and the consequence will be to secure, on the one hand, a more careful choice of representatives, and, on the other hand, a more careful deliberation among Members sent to this House. The hon. Member for the Wansbeck Division said that if you have a single Chamber you must leave more time for deliberation, but if you have a single Chamber you will have more time to deliberate, because the Opposition of the other House will be destroyed and the time saved.

In the able speech to which we have just listened the centre of this subject was struck when the hon. Member denounces the necessity of the Second Chamber at all. I must admit that the particular instances the hon. Member gave us, which are against the entire experience of the civilised world, namely, the instances of the Legislative Assemblies of New Brunswick and British Columbia, were not very convincing when considered in relation to the very wide experience which we have received from the past in this matter. They do not at any rate convince me when I put them alongside the remarkable admission made by the Attorney-General that this country is at present the freest democracy in the world. Are you prepared to interfere with the security of the present constitution in this drastic way in order to give still greater freedom to this democracy? The moment for proposing this very serious change is singularly inopportune. The House of Lords have shown themselves not opposed to wise changes, and a Committee of the Lords, with Lord Rosebery in the chair, is now sitting to consider the improvements which might be made. The Government proposal is a most extraordinary one, having regard to the state of affairs. The Government proposes to leave the House of Lords with all the anomalies, which undoubtedly exist, and to tear away from them the responsibility which is the guarantee of their character. As to the sacred character of these conferences, that is a strange way of dealing with these questions. When once issue is joined the struggle ought to take place, if at all, in the light of day and not in the dark. But, further than that, surely once the issue is joined between the two Houses, effective criticism is quite useless if all power to enforce that criticism or to bring it to a test is taken away. Under the guise of moderation the Prime Minister's proposal is intended to hoodwink the public into the belief that no serious and drastic change is before them. These methods were attempted in the Irish Bill, but they deceived nobody, certainly not the Irish. I trust the present methods of bringing this great constitutional change before the country will not deceive anyone here. Everybody agrees that our Constitution is all-powerful so far as it has power to reflect the truest, soundest, and most permanent aspirations of the democracy when they are found in the verdict given in the various elections. But the fluctuations of public opinion as shown in general elections are of the most extraordinary kind. On every occasion the electorate is rent by contending motives and conflicting interests, and the only thing certain is that the electorate will not, as a whole, go very long the same way. These fluctuations are inevitable. They are within the experience of every man in the House. They will always continue, and I do not think it will be possible for anybody to say that an opinion that may be held for one period of five years will be held by the electorate during a subsequent period of five years. But these fluctuations should if possible be excluded from the State. If these violent fluctuations and oscillations of opinion took place in the State no one would deny that they would destroy its credit, impair its influence abroad and in the Colonies, and weaken its authority at home. In fact, if the liberty which the people have of expressing their opinions at general elections was really to influence the whole policy of the State it would justly be called in the words of a great philosopher—

"Not true liberty, but the desolate freedom of the wild ass."

The House of Lords, as everyone must recognise, has its faults, but there is a note of stability and continuity in it. I think everybody will say that we ought to have some institution in this country, some portion of the Constitution, which should be effective to carry into the future some, at any rate, of the traditions of the past, traditions that we do not wish to part with. We ought to have some institution which should be the custodian of our traditions and customs, that ought to be kept clear from the strife and aims of the hour; and if the House will reflect for a moment they will see that at present we have no other resource than the House of Lords. Surely it is vital that hon. Members should have something alternative to suggest in view of the circumstances. I think that we ought to remember that the nation is composite in its constitution, and its great interest is to enlist, not one, but all classes, in its service. The best strength is to be obtained by drawing the best qualities of all classes of the country into its service. I say that it is an excellent thing, which ought to be borne in mind in considering this large constitutional question, that much of our progress is derived from the varied services which are rendered by the different classes. The United States, though they have succeeded in many things, have lamentably failed in enlisting the assistance of the leisured and cultured classes, the most educated classes, not to say the richer classes, in their service. British institutions have been singularly successful in that particular matter. There are dangers which were pointed out by the hon. Member for Salford, and I freely admit that there are dangers in the very great ascendancy of wealth even in this country. Those dangers have exhibited themselves in the most lamentable manner in the United States.

was understood to dissent from the observation that the cultured and educated classes did not take part in public life in the United States.

I do not say that there is a want of culture among those who take part in public life in America; it would be very impertinent of me to do so; but I say that as a general rule—I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for India is in agreement with me, but I am entitled to make the statement without, at any rate, interruption—as a broad rule the United States have not been successful in enlisting in the Senate and in Congress the best educated and most efficient men belonging to the nation. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentle-man does not share that view, but I think, speaking with due deference to him, that what I have stated is very generally admitted. ["No."] Of course, I do not for a moment deny that there are many excellent and great exceptions to the general rule. It is easy, perfectly easy, to deride primogeniture, heredity, and title. Any of those things are easily made to look absurd by those who argue that we could do as well without them. But I submit that though logic may be on your side in that matter, we have on our side all the history. Whatever may be said on the subject of primogeniture and heredity, historically it has been a very practical device to get the best use you can out of the upper classes. In the United Kingdom money and titles and position have always been regarded as carrying with them, and it is so today, the obligation of public service. In the United States I venture to say that that is not the rule; whereas it is the tradition of old English families to serve the State, the traditions of the best of American families is commercial ascendancy pushed to a very far extent. Public service in America takes the form of the gift of large sums of money—cheques, no doubt, very handsomely and very freely given. But I think that the nation which depends on gifts of money for service has no security that such service will continue to be rendered, whereas the State which relies on the recognition of the obligation to render loyal public service is in a sounder and better position. The Attorney-General derided the existence of a permanent opinion in the country separate and distinct from that which is promulgated at general elections, and he said, moreover, that the Lords were not in the least qualified to judge of that opinion even if it existed. First, I would say, though I admit that it is a difficult thing to get at, that this separate opinion does exist. I say that there are certain great principles which are settled in this country, which have passed into general acceptance, and are quite different from those fluctuating and oscillating opinions which are evident at the time of general elections. There are certain questions which, no doubt, the public think deeply upon, and which they think permanently upon, and the real function of a Second Chamber is to judge rightly when the public are really possessed of one of those strong and permanent opinions, and to give effect to it if it is in consonance with the decisions given by this House. Nobody can question that this is an extremely difficult thing at which to arrive, but I am perfectly certain that any such Second Chamber must be judged according as it arrives at the solution of that question generally. It has been observed on several occasions in this debate that the Lords are absolutely incompetent, by reason of their position, to give any true opinion on the permanent and settled convictions of the country. I do not think that such an argument can stand the test of facts. In the first place those who have had long experience of public life and of the work connected with the Government of the country know that there is hereditary skill in dealing with political questions. It is therefore a delusion to suppose that the House of Lords in great matters is not at any rate well qualified by reason of the occupations of its various members to judge of the position in these matters. Take for instance the number of Peers who have served in this House. In the House of Lords there are 166 men who have served in the House of Commons, 172 who have served in various offices of the State, nearly 200 who have served in the Navy or Army, twenty-six Judges and eminent lawyers, twenty-nine Colonial Governors and Ministers, and 140 mayors and county councillors. Of course, a proper allowance must be made for duplication; what the figures show are the numbers of different qualifications of the Members of the Home of Lords, and after you make the necessary deductions, there still remain a large number who have not only large experience in public affairs but have been selected because of their services in this House, and because of their knowledge, as mayors and county councillors, of local government, to take their place in the House of Lords. I venture to think that that body, constituted as it is, must be regarded as well qualified to judge of the permanent opinion of the country—indeed as well qualified as any body which could well be conceived. I admit the difficulty of the task, but how often have the House of Lords gone wrong in discharging it? Extremely seldom. If the last twenty or thirty years be taken, I think it will be found that there are only three important cases that can be referred to. It is rather soon to judge whether last year they were right or not in amending the Education Bill. I have my own firm opinion on that matter; but if you test public opinion by the declarations of public meetings held in regard to the matter, I think you will say that the Lords were in the right. If I may use Oliver Cromwell's expression—

"There was a great hubbub in this House, but not a dog barked outside."

But I will turn away from the Education Bill and the action of the Lords with regard to it as one that I have no right to dogmatise upon, because it is not yet finally concluded. If we turn from that question to the subject referred to by the hon. Member who preceded me, namely, the question of Home Rule, I think he was wrong in saying that the decision of the country was not conclusively in favour of the judgment exercised by the Lords. The hon. Gentleman certainly cannot be a consistent supporter of the right hon. Gentleman if he says so, because not merely was their decision affirmed in the election of 1895, but the question of Home Rule was wrecked by the action of the Liberal Party, who went to the country in January, 1906, and did not dare to place Home Rule before the electors as a part of their programme. We, therefore, do not merely think the decision of the House of Lords has been acquiesced in for nearly seventeen years, but we have the great representatives of Liberalism who sit opposite to me not venturing to go to the country and explain what some of them say was their own true opinion. The country had not accepted Home Rule, and they did not dare to put forward as a substantive part of their policy that which the House of Lords had rejected and which rejection the country endorsed. There is only one other matter which. I need to mention. It is said that there is no penalty upon the House of Lords if they make a mistake. My own strong opinion is that if the House of Lords were to go wrong on several occasions their position could not be satisfactorily maintained or justified in this House. If the House of Lords was constantly making mistakes in pronouncing upon those highly conjectural problems nobody could say that they would be a satisfactory Assembly. My submission is that the past has shown that the Lords have generally been right in deciding upon those problems.

A fatality seems to associate me with the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. Whether I have had occasion to address the House on the subject of South Africa or Newfoundland, it has almost always been in reply to a speech of his. Even when we discuss the distant New Hebrides, outside the authority of the British Empire altogether, there is the right hon. Gentleman. And now, when the Under-Secretary for the Colonies is permitted to return to the congenial atmosphere of domestic affairs, the right hon. Gentleman again presents himself. I do not think, however, that I have any reason to complain, because the House will admit that when the right hon. Gentleman intervenes in our debates he always speaks with moderation, and addresses himself to the real arguments which underlie the ordinary commonplaces of Party controversy. The right hon. Gentleman has made a speech devoted to the great constitutional issues which are raised by the Resolution and the Amendment before the House. I will not venture at any length to follow him or my hon. friend the Member for Tyne-side who preceded him into an abstract constitutional discussion, because, after all, we have an extremely practical issue before us, and I would like to say a few words from the rule-of-thumb point of view. It seems to me that this great constitutional question must be looked at from three points of view. First of all, there is the issue between the two Houses; there is the issue between the two political Parties; and then there is the national issue. The quarrel which is now open between the House of Lords and the House of Commons arises from two events—the general election of 1906, and the rejection of the measures of the new Liberal Government, culminating in the destruction of the Education Bill by the House of Lords at the end of that year. Either of these events is memorable in itself, but placed in juxtaposition and considered together they have a multiplied significance. The general election of 1906 was the most vehement expression of public opinion which this generation has known; and that expression of public will was countered in the December of the same year by the most arbitrary and uncompromising assertion of aristocratic privilege upon record. Let the House think of it. The process of the election of Members of Parliament is extremely elaborate. The candidates go about the country for two or three weeks saying all they have to say for themselves in the different constituencies which they are contesting; at the end of that most exhaustive discussion there is an elaborate process of voting; the returns are counted with the most scrupulous care; and as the result 670 Members, representing 6,000,000 of voters and many more who take a deep interest in public affairs but have no votes, are returned to the House of Commons in the name of the people of Great Britain and Ireland. The new Parliament assembles. Scarcely any question at the election was more a test question, so far as the supporters of the Government are concerned, than the question of the amendment of the education system of the country. A Bill dealing with education is brought forward as the principal measure of the first session of the now Parliament. Weeks are occupied in its discussion. It represents the fulfilment of the election pledges of every hon. Gentleman who supported it. The Bill is supported by perhaps the largest majority that ever sent a Bill from this House to another place; it was not a revolutionary Bill, to turn the world upside down and inside out; on the contrary, it was a Bill which, if vitiated in any respect, was vitiated by the element of compromise. Immense concessions were made in it, and rightly, I think, to conscientious and agitated minorities. It was a Bill which so moderate and consistent a statesman as the Duke of Devonshire, of whoso ill-health the House learns with grave concern, urged the House of Lords to pass into law. Sir, the Leader of the Opposition told us the other day that it was the habit of His Majesty's Government to introduce Bills which they did not mean to pass. No one—not even the right hon. Gentleman himself—can say that the Government have not earnestly desired to pass the Education Bill. Every concession that could be conceived was made, but to what purpose? After the House of Commons had humbled itself before the House of Lords, after we had gone to the extreme limit of concession which self respect, which a proper sense of the dignity of this House, and a due observance of the pledges of the Liberal Party permitted, the House of Lords curtly, bluntly, uncharitably, and harshly flung the Bill out in our faces, mutilated and destroyed. I do not wish to import an element of heat into this discussion, but I respectfully submit to the Conservative Party that that act on the part of the House of Lords places them in a new position—a new position in the sense that never before had their old position been taken up so nakedly, so brazenly, and so uncompromisingly. It is true that we have this excuse put before us with much suavity of language in these debates—we are told that the House of Lords seeks to interpret the will of the people, and it is explained that by the will of the people what is meant is the persistent, sub-conscious, and permanent will of the people, as opposed to any articulate expression of that will. The right hon. Gentleman who leads the Opposition told us that what he meant by the persistent will was the will of the people expressed continuously over a period of thirty years. That is what he called "democracy properly understood." From the House of Commons point of view, having regard to that part of the question which concerns the issue between the two Houses, we repudiate emphatically the claim of the other House to what the French call faire l'ange—to "play the angel," to know better than the people themselves what the people want, to have a greater authority to speak in the name of the people than their representatives sent to Parliament by the elaborate process I have described. I say that to dispute the authority of a newly-elected Parliament is something very like an incitement to violence on the part of the other House. [A laugh.] The noble Lord laughs, but we are anxious to convince him and his friends that we are in earnest. We go through all the processes which the Constitution prescribes, we produce an enormous majority, and we express the opinion of that majority, but still the noble Lord and other noble Lords less intelligent, but more remote, tell us that they are not convinced. What steps do they suggest that we should take in order to bring home to them the earnestness of our plea? What steps do they suggest that the people should take in order to assert their wishes? I hold entirely by what I said that to dispute the authority of an elected body fresh from its constituents is a deliberate incitement to the adoption of lawless and unconstitutional methods. I say that the assertion which the House of Lords made at the end of last year is an intolerable assertion, and on the whole I believe the country is altogether unprepared for it. I confess, if I may hazard a personal opinion, that I wonder it was thought worth while to risk an institution which has lasted so many centuries in the very skirmish line of Party warfare. I am aware there is a special reason for the temerity of the House of Lords. It is not a very complimentary reason to the Members or the leaders of the late Government, but their position is that the Conservative Party cannot be worse than they are. No matter what they do, nor how they are hated or reprobated by the country, they cannot possibly occupy a more humiliating and unpleasant position than they did after the last two years of the last Administration. Consequently having reached the low water mark of political fortune they think they can afford to be a little reckless, and that at the very worst they will be returned in their present numerical proportions. That is a very natural explanation of their action; but if we for our part were to accept the assertion lately made by the House of Lords—an assertion which is the furthest point to which aristocratic privilege has attained in modern times—that assertion itself would become only the starting point for a whole new series of precedents and of constitutional retrogressions; and worse than that, if by any chance, having raised this issue, we were to be defeated upon it, if having placed this Resolution on the records of the House we were to fail to give effect to it, and we were to suffer an electoral reverse as the conclusion of it, then I say goodbye to the power of the House of Commons. All that long process of advance in democratic institutions which has accompanied the growth of the power of the House of Commons, and which has also been attended by an expansion of the circles of comfort and culture among the people of this country—all that long process which has gone steadily onward for 200 years, and which has almost exclusively occupied the politics of the nineteenth century—will have reached its culmination. It will have come in contact with that barrier of which we have heard so much in this debate. The tide will have turned, and in the recoil of the waters they will gradually leave exposed again, altered no doubt by the conditions of the age, all the old assertions of aristocratic and plutocratic domination which we had fondly hoped had been engulfed for ever in the flowing waters. The hon. Member for Fareham to-day made an interesting speech in which he included a valuable disquisition on the American Constitution. I noticed that the hon. Member rebuked some of those with whom he acts for having received this debate with something like a flavour of levity, and he was quite right. I think hon. Gentlemen opposite would be well advised to treat this Resolution seriously. This Parliament is still young, but there are some things at which they have laughed which have already become accomplished facts. I could not have during the past eighteen months listened to their taunts about the permanence of Chinese labour without reflecting now with satisfaction that Chinese labour is going. Yes, and other people may follow. Let me say this in reference to the Amendment which was moved by the hon. Member for Barnard Castle, and which was seconded in a brief and powerful speech by the hon. Member for Preston. We are only at the beginning of this struggle. We are not necessarily committed to every detail of the proposal; we are opening the first lines for a great siege, we have to sap up to the advanced parallels, to establish our batteries, and at no distant date open our bombardment. It may be many months before we shall be able to discern where there is a practicable breach, but the assault will come in due time. The right hon. Gentleman opposite said he welcomed this contest with great confidence. I wonder if hon. Members opposite realise, to use an expressive vulgarism, what they are "letting themselves in for" when this question comes to be fought out on every platform in every constituency in the country? They will not have to defend an ideal Second Chamber; they will not be able to confine themselves to airy generalities about a bicameral system and its advantages; they will have to defend this Second Chamber as it is—one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee. They will have to defend it with all its anomalies, all its absurdities, and all its personal bias; they will have to defend it with all its achievements that have darkened the pages of the history of England. And let me say that considerable constitutional authorities have not considered that the policy on which we have embarked in moving this Resolution is unreasonable. Mr. Bagehot says of the House of Lords:—

"It may lose its veto as the Crown has lost its veto. If most of its members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of one class, and that not quite the best; if its doors arc shut against genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not £5,000 a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so much kingly power is gone—no one knows how."

One of the speakers on the other side—I think it was the Leader of the Opposition—suggested that we are guilty of insincerity in bringing forward this Resolution. But what is the position of the Conservative Party when they attempt to defend the House of Lords? They are always telling us to imitate the Colonies; they are always telling us that we ought to adopt the fiscal systems and other methods employed in the self-governing Colonies; but what is their view of the relations which are held between the two Chambers under the bicameral system in the Colonies, and as established by their own Australian Commonwealth Act in the last Parliament. By that Act they have given power to the Lower Chamber to over-ride the Upper Chamber under certain circumstances. Imitating them and following in their footsteps we have adopted the plan in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony Constitutions. The Commonwealth Act says that when the Chambers differ they shall meet together, and that the majority shall decide, measures being taken, however, that the numbers of the Upper Chamber shall not be such as to swamp the opinion of the Lower Chamber. The Leader of the Opposition asked a Question yesterday as to whether the people are not often wrong, and he proceeded very characteristically to suggest that he always considered them wrong when they voted against him. I am not prepared to take such a rough and ready test of the opinion and of the mental processes of the British democracy as all that. I should hesitate to say that when people pronounce against a particular measure or Party they have not pretty good reasons for doing so. I am not at all convinced that in 1900 the people were wholly wrong in saying that the war should be finished— by those who made it. Even in the last election I could, I daresay, find some few reasons to justify the decision which the people then took; and I say that if we should be so unfortunate in the future as to lose that measure of public confidence so abundantly given to us, then I shall not be too sure that it will not be our own fault. Certain am I that we could not take any step more likely to forfeit the confidence of the people of England than to continue in office after we have lost the power to pass effective legislation. I will retort the Question of the Leader of the Opposition by another Question. Has the House of Lords ever been right?

What about Home Rule?

Has it ever been right in any of the great settled controversies which are now beyond the reach of Party argument? Was it right in delaying Catholic emancipation, and the removal of Jewish disabilities? Was it right in driving this country to the verge of revolution in the effort to secure the passage of reform? Was it right in resisting the Ballot Bill? Was it right in the almost innumerable efforts it made to prevent this House dealing with the purity of its own electoral machinery? Was in right in endeavouring to prevent the abolition of purchase in the Army? Was it right in 1880, when it rejected the Compensation for Disturbance Bill? I defy the Party opposite to produce a single instance of a settled controversy in which the House of Lords was right.

What about Home Rule?

I expected that interruption. That is not a settled controversy. It is a matter which lies in the future. The cases I have mentioned are cases where we have carried the law into effect and have seen the results, and found that they have been good. Let me remind the House that, but for a lucky accident, but for the fact that Letters Patent can be issued by the Crown and do not require the assent of Parliament, it would very likely have been impossible for this Government to have made the constitutional settlement in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony, because probably, upon the instigation of some noble Lord, like Lord Milner [Cries of "Oh"]—it surely is not insulting to Lord Milner to mention his name ["Hear, hear,"]—upon the instigation of some noble Lord, the Constitutions would have been mutilated or cast out by the House of Lords, and the Executive Government would have found itself responsible for carrying out the government of Colonies on lines of which it wholly disapproved, and after their own policy had been rejected. But there is one other feature in the House of Lords which the Conservative Party will have to exercise their ingenuity in defending in the next few years—I allude to the presence in that body of those interesting Lords Spiritual. By what violation of all ideas of religious equality the leaders of one denomination only should be represented I do not pause to inquire; but no doubt when such very delicate and ticklish questions as Chinese labour and the prevalence of intemperance, and great questions of war and the treatment of native races beyond the seas come up, it is a very convenient thing to have the Bishops in the House of Lords in order to make quite sure that official Christianity shall be on the side of the upper classes. I proceed to inquire on what principle the House of Lords deals with Liberal measures. The right, hon. Member for Dover says they occupy the position of the umpire. Are they even a sieve, a strainer, to stop legislation if it should reveal an undue or undesirable degree of Radicalism or Socialism? Are they the complementary critic—the critic who sees all the things which the ordinary man does not see? I say that the attitude which the House of Lords adopts towards Liberal measures is purely tactical. When they returned to their "gilded Chamber" after the general election they found on the Woolsack and on the Treasury Bench a Lord Chancellor and a Government with which they were not familiar. When their eyes fell upon those objects there was a light in them which meant one thing—murder; murder tempered, no doubt, by those prudential considerations which always restrain persons from acts which are contrary to the general feeling of the society in which they live. But their attitude towards the present Government has from the beginning been to select the best and most convenient opportunity of humiliating and discrediting them, and finally of banishing them from power. Their treatment of the Trade Disputes Bill constitutes the gravamen of the Government's charge against the House of Lords. Lord Halsbury described that Bill as outrageous and tyrannous, and said it contained a section more disgraceful than any that appeared in any English Statute. On what principle did they pass that Bill if it was not the principle of political opportunism and partisanship? What safeguard will such a Second Chamber be to the commercial interests of this country? Is it not clear that they are prepared to sacrifice, if necessary, what they consider to be the true interests of the country in order to secure an advantage for the political Party whose obedient henchmen they are? The Trade Disputes Bill was a very inconvenient measure for the Conservative Party to leave open, because so long as it was left open a great mass of democratic opinion was directed against them. And so it was passed. On the other hand, the Education Bill was very inconvenient for the Liberal Party to leave open, because they are supported by Catholics and Nonconformists, and to bring in an Education Bill to satisfy those two extremes is not to solve a problem, but to solve a double acrostic. That Bill was not passed. Upon a measure which it would be inconvenient to the Liberal Party to leave open the House of Lords rejected all compromise. That I suppose is what the Leader of the Opposition called an averaging machinery, I press these points in order to justify me in making this statement, that the House of Lords as it at present exists and acts is not a national institution, but a Party dodge, an apparatus and instrument at the disposal of one political faction; and it is used in the most unscrupulous manner to injure and humiliate the opposite faction. When hon. Gentlemen opposite go about the country defending a Second Chamber, let them remember that this is the kind of Second Chamber they have to defend, and when they defend the veto let them remember that it is a veto used, not for national purposes, but for the grossest and basest purposes of unscrupulous political partisanship, I have dealt with the issues between Houses, and I come to that between Parties. Great changes in a community are very often unperceived; the focus of reality moves from one institution in the State to another, and almost imperceptibly. Sometimes the forms of institutions remain almost the same in all ceremonial aspects, and yet there will be one institution which under pretentious forms is only the husk of reality, and another which under a humble name is is in fact the operative pivot of the social system. Constitutional writers have much to say about the estates of the realm, and a great deal to say about their relation to each other, and to the Sovereign. All that is found to be treated upon at length. But they say very little about the Party system. And after all the Party system is the dominant fact in our experience. Nothing is more striking in the last twenty-five years than the growth and expansion of Party organisation, and the way in which millions of people and their votes have been woven into its scope. There are two great characteristics about the Party institutions of this country: the equipoise between them, and their almost incredible durability. We have only to look at the general elections of 1900 and 1906. I do not suppose any circumstances could be more depressing for a political Party than the circumstances in which the Liberal Party fought the election in 1900, except the circumstances in which the Conservative Party fought the election of 1906. At those two elections, what was the salient fact? The great mass of the voters of each political Party stood firm by the standard of their Party, and although there was an immense movement of public opinion, that movement was actually effected by a comparatively small number of votes. I do not wish to push the fair-play argument too far, because I fully admit the justice of what the Prime Minister has said that politics must not be approached with an air of levity, but in dealing with this case in the country I should be sorry to cut myself off altogether from the rough and ready sense of fair play which is so pronounced among all classes of our fellow countrymen. When Parties are thus evenly balanced, to place such a weapon as the House of Lords in the hands of one of the Parties is to doom the other to destruction. I do not speak only from the Party point of view, although it explains the earnestness with which we approach this question. It is a matter of life and death to Liberalism and Radicalism. It is a question of our life or the abolition of the veto of the House of Lords. But look at it from a national point of view. Think of its injury to the smooth working of a Liberal Government. At the present time a Liberal Government, however powerful, cannot look far ahead, cannot impart design into its operations, because it knows that if at any moment its vigour falls below a certain point another body, over which it has no control, is ready to strike it a blow to its most serious injury. It comes to this, that no matter how great the majority by which a Liberal Government is supported, it is unable to pass any legislation unless it can procure the agreement of its political opponents. Observe the position in which the present Executive Government is consequently placed. Take only the question of the passive resistance. The action of the House of Lords at the present time forces the Executive Government to lock up in prison men with whose action they entirely sympathise and whose grievance they have faithfully promised to redress. Such a position is intolerable. Indeed, I am sure that if the right hon. Gentlemen opposite would only utilise that valuable gift of putting themselves in imagination in the position of others, they would see that no honourable men could continue to occupy such a position except with the one single object of putting an end to it for ever. Much might be said for and against the two-Party system. But no one can doubt that it adds to the stability and cohesion of the State. The alternation of Parties in power, like the rotation of crops, has beneficial results. Each of the two Parties have something to give and services to render in the development of the national life, and the succession of new and different points of view is a great and real benefit to the country. The advantage of such a system cannot be denied. Would not the ending of such a system involve a much greater disturbance than to amend the functions of the House of Lords? Is there not a much greater cataclysm involved in the breakdown of the constitutional organisation, of democracy, for that is the issue which is placed before us, than would be involved in the mere curtailment of the legislative veto which has been given to another place? I ask the House what does such a safeguard as the House of Lords mean? Is it a safeguard at all? I allude here to the argument of the Leader of the Opposition. He professed to deplore this agitation because he thought the House of Lords ought to remain, weak as it is; and he was afraid that our agitation might do something to awake the slumbering giant, and awake him in a stronger and more effective form than at present. It is quite true that great powers are already possessed by the House of Commons. It has finance under its control, it has the Executive Government; the control of foreign affairs, and the great patronage of the State are all in the power of the House of Commons at the present time. And let me say that if you are to proceed on the basis that the people of this country will elect a mad House of Commons, and that the mad House of Commons will be represented by a mad executive, the House of Lords is no guarantee against any excesses which such a House of Commons or such an Executive might have in contemplation. Whatever you may wish or desire, you will be forced to trust the people in all those vital and fundamental elements of government which in every State have always been held to involve the social stability of the community. Is the House of Lords even a security for property? Why the greatest weapon which a democracy possesses against property is the power of taxation, and the power of taxation is wholly under the control of this House. If this House chooses, for instance, to suspend payment to the Sinking Fund and to utilise the money for any public purpose or for any social purpose, the House of Lords could not interfere. If the House of Commons chose to double taxation on the wealthy classes, the House of Lords could not interfere in any respect. Understand I am not necessarily advocating these measures; what I am endeavouring to show to the House is that there is no real safeguard in the House of Lords oven in regard to a movement against property. But surely there are other securities upon which the stability of society depends. In the ever-increasing complexities of social problems, in the restrictions which are imposed from day to day with increasing force on the action of individuals, above all in the dissemination of property among many classes of the population, are the real elements of stability on which our modern society depends. There are to-day, unlike in former ages, actually millions of people who possess not merely inert property, but who possess rent-earning, profit-bearing property; and the danger with which we are confronted now is not at all whether we shall go too fast; no, the danger is that about three-fourths of the people of this country should move on in a comfortable manner into an easy life, which, with all its ups and downs, is not uncheered by fortune, while the remainder of the people shall be left to rot and fester in the slums of our cities, or in the deserted and abandoned hamlets of our rural districts. That is the danger with which we are confronted at the present moment, and it invests with a deep and real significance the issue which is drawn between the two Parties to-night. It is quite true that there are rich Members of the Liberal Party, and there are poor men who are Members of the Conservative Party, but in the main the lines of difference between the two Parties are social and economic—in the main the lines of difference are increasingly becoming the lines of cleavage between the rich and the poor. Let that animate and inspire us in the great struggle which we are now undertaking, and in which we shall without rest press forward, confident of this, that, if we persevere we shall wrest from the hands of privilege and wealth the evil and ugly and sinister weapon of the Peers' veto, which they have used so ill so long.

said that on the previous evening the Under-Secretary for the Colonies had taken upon himself to say that the conduct of a Gentleman on that side of the House was disgraceful. The hon. Gentleman was evidently under the impression that he and his Party could dragoon hon. Members in Committee by closure and in the House by denouncing their conduct in such terms. If the Government hoped to frighten Members into taking their measures after eleven o'clock by talking about the disgraceful conduct of those Members who did not give them all their own way, they were mistaken.

:rose to reply, but it being Eleven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.

asked whether it would not be in order to resume Committee after Eleven o'clock. He hoped his hon. friend would allow the Bill to pass unopposed.

said he knew of no reason why they should not go into Committee again.