had never been thoroughly understood or thoroughly canvassed. Public opinion in England rarely occupies itself seriously with more than one great question at a time, and those deliberate and widespread convictions, on which alone a national policy can be firmly and safely based, are only arrived at after a long period of discussion. Nothing can be more frequent than for a measure to obtain a majority in the House of Commons which has never been either approved of or considered by the bulk of the electors by whom that majority was returned. In all such cases it is a matter of vital importance that there should be a delaying power, capable of obstructing measures till they have been distinctly sanctioned by the electorate, till they have come to represent the reasoned and deliberate opinion of the constituencies.

It is extremely important, too, that something of a judicial element should be infused into politics. In policies that are closely connected with party conflicts, the question of party interest will always dominate in the House of Commons over the question of intrinsic merits. A bad measure will often be carried, though it may be known to be bad, when the only alternative is the displacement of a ministry supported by a majority. Under these circumstances, the existence of . a revising Chamber which is so constituted that it can reject a measure without overthrowing a ministry, and which is not dependent on the many chances of a popular election, is one of the best guarantees of sound legislation.

It is, also, one of the greatest and most distinctive excellences of British legislation that it is in general framed, not on the system of giving a decisive victory to one set of interests, and obtaining perfect symmetry or logical coherence, but with a view of satisfying, as

far as possible, many different and conflicting interests, classes, and opinions. The permanence and efficacy of legislation, according to English notions, depends essentially on its success in obtaining the widest measure of assent or acquiescence, and provoking the smallest amount of friction and opposition. In carrying out this policy the action of the House of Lords has been of capital importance. Very frequently it represents especially the minority which is overpowered in the other House. The will of the majority in the stronger Chamber ultimately prevails, but scarcely a great contentious measure passes into the Statute Book without compromises, modifications, or amendments designed to disarm the opposition, or to satisfy the wishes of minorities, or to soften the harsher features of inevitable transitions. The mere consciousness that there is another and a revising assembly, whose assent is indispensable to legislation, has a moderating influence on majorities and ministries which it is difficult. to overvalue. The tyranny of majorities is, of all forms of tyranny, that which, in the conditions of modern life, is most to be feared, and against which it should be the chief object of a wise statesman to provide.

It is an easy and frequent device of Radical writers . to assail the House of Lords by enumerating the measures of incontestable value which it had for a time rejected or delayed. That it has in its long history committed many faults no candid man will deny, though it is by no means equally clear that they have greatly exceeded those which have been committed by the other House. In my own opinion the side of its policy which, in the present century, has been the worst is that relating to religious disqualifications, and the fact is the more remarkable because, in the generation that followed the Revolution, the House of Lords

was incontestably more liberal than the House of Commons in all questions relating to Nonconformists. In more modern times this has not been the case, and the doctrine that the existence of an Established Church implied that State funds should be devoted only to one form of religion, and that the great fields of State power, education, influence, and employment should be guarded by religious qualifications against the adherents of other faiths, prevailed in the House of Lords long after it had broken down in the Commons. It is a doctrine which has played a great, and, as I believe, most mischievous, part in English history. In the present century it has probably found its most powerful defence in the early writings and speeches of Mr. Gladstone.

At the same time, many things may be alleged which will at least mitigate the blame that, on such grounds, may be attached to the House of Lords. An assembly which is essentially representative of property and tradition, whose chief duty is much less to initiatę legislation than to prevent that which is hasty and unwise, and which fulfils rather the function of a brake or of a drag than of a propelling force, will inevitably be slower than the other House to adopt constitutional or organic changes. The legislative reforms which the House of Lords is so much blamed for having rejected all became law with its consent; and, on the whole, England need not fear comparison with any other country in the enlightened character of her legislation. If a few countries have moved more rapidly, very few have moved so surely, and the permanence of her reforms and the tranquillity with which they were effected are largely due to the existence of a Chamber which delayed them till they had been thoroughly sifted and incontestably sanctioned by the nation, and

which disarmed opposition by introducing compromises and amendments to meet the wants of discontented minorities. Of the measures the House of Lords is accused of mutilating or delaying, many had been repeatedly rejected by the House of Commons itself, or had never been brought clearly and directly before the constituencies; or had been supported in the Lower House by small, doubtful, and diminishing majorities; or had excited little more than an academic interest, touching no real feeling throughout the nation. It has seldom, if ever, rejected measures on which the will of the people had been decisively and persistently expressed.

The moment of its greatest unpopularity was, probably, that of the Reform Bill of 1832, and it was the firm persuasion of the Radical wing of the triumphant party that one early and inevitable consequence of the extended suffrage would be the destruction, or at least the total transformation, of the House of Lords. The Whig ministers, it is true, gave no countenance to these attacks, but the agitation against the Lords was actively maintained by O'Connell and by a considerable body of English Radicals. One attempt was made to deprive it of its veto, and another to expel the bishops from its walls; and the incompatibility of an hereditary legislative body with a democratic Parliament was continually affirmed in language much like that which we so abundantly heard before the election of 1895. The result of this agitation is very instructive. On some of the questions on which the Houses differed the House of Lords yielded, insisting only on minor compromises. On the important question of the appropriation of Irish Church funds to secular purposes it succeeded in carrying its point. The agitation for an organic change in the Constitution was soon found

to excite more alarm than approbation in the country. The current of opinion turned strongly against the agitators, and against the Government which those agitators supported. In less than ten years the revolution. of opinion was complete, and the election of May 1841 brought a Conservative minister into power at the head of an overwhelming majority.

We may next consider the advantages and disadvantages of the hereditary principle in the Upper House. It was a saying of Franklin that there is no more reason in hereditary legislators than there would be in hereditary professors of mathematics. In England, however, there is no question of placing the making of laws in the hands of an hereditary class. All that the Constitution provides is, that the members of this class should have a fixed place, in concurrence with others, in accomplishing the task. It is absurd to expect that the eldest son of a single family shall always display exceptional, or even average, capacity, and this is one of the main arguments against hereditary despotic monarchy, which places in the hands of one man, selected on the principle of strict heredity, one of the most arduous and responsible tasks which a human being can undertake. It is not, however, absurd to expect that more than five hundred families, thrown into public life for the most part at a very early age, animated by all its traditions and ambitions, and placed under circumstances exceedingly favourable to the development of political talent, should produce a large amount of governing faculty. The qualities required for successful political life are not, like poetry or the higher forms of philosophy, qualities that are of a very rare and exceptional order. They are, for the most part, qualities of judgment, industry, tact, knowledge of men and of affairs, which can be attained to a