numbers, or constitution, or procedure, conspicuous and significant as some of these have been. I mean adjustments brought about by the acceptance of the House of Lords from time to time of what are termed constitutional understandings, which have invariably imposed limits upon their powers. Thus, whatever we think of the House of Lords, of second chamber or single chamber systems, whether we think the case against the Lords a strong case or a weak case, the time for testing it well chosen or ill chosen, Lord Rosebery's proposal has history and experience on its side. The late Prime Minister can cite these reputable authorities for the justification of his intention of proceeding by resolution and not by Bill; and of expressing the need of a further adjustment of the relations of the Houses in the terms of resolutions submitted to the House of Commons.

If we look at the history of money bills, we find such a need expressed and such adjustments successfully arrived at in 1407, 1671, 1678, and 1860. In all these cases the procedure was by resolution. As it has taken over 400 years to arrive at satisfactory constitutional rules about money bills, I do not for a moment suppose, as I have heard sanguine Radicals assert, that a resolution of the House of Commons would settle the question, but Lord Rosebery's plan was no loose guess at the solution of a constitutional problem peculiarly provocative of loose guessing. He hit upon the only way of getting to close quarters with the sense of the people which could claim the sanction of ancient usage and of the immediate circumstances alike. Moreover, it may be well to point out that a reform of the House of Lords and an adjustment of its legislative relations with the House of Commons are two totally different things. The reform of either House is the particular and intimate concern of the House to be reformed. An adjustment of legislative relations would appear to be a matter for the House of Commons to suggest and for the electorate to confirm.

Before passing to the House of Lords as the second chamber of a democracy, let us take a look at the peer in his private capacity. How does he stand the test of the strongly emphasised democratic ideas of 1885? Upon the whole very well. On great occasions in the House of Lords, such as the second reading of the Home Rule Bill, he is severely handled by the descriptive reporters of the Liberal press. According to these graphic gentlemen peers are distinguished to a melancholy degree by knock-knees and receding foreheads; and a pamphlet now before me enjoying some vogue with platform speakers is enlivened by a broadsheet of degenerate types of peers. At Radical meetings, and even in the House of Commons, we are the targets of epigram. Gilded chamber and proud titles notwithstanding, peers are to be dealt with, the treatment is to be drastic, so on and so on; I have listened to it time after time, and

it all means nothing or next to nothing. Outside the picturesque in the party press and the conventionalities of a party platform, to be Lord somebody or other is still a popular thing.

Within the limits of a peer's electoral possibilities his peerage is, speaking broadly, in his favour. Provincial municipal elections are, perhaps, hardly a good test. A peer who stands for his County Council almost invariably resides in the county. He spends money there, employs labour, and more or less identifies himself with its interests and doings, especially at Christmas time, and in the matter of coals, blankets, and port wine. But let us take the late London municipal elections. A large proportional class representation of peers stood for seats upon the London County Council last March. Some were elected, some were not. I myself belong to the latter category. But I think that the fact of my being a peer not only gave me a good start, but may even have contributed adventitious point and sagacity to my views on the graver municipal and social problems.

Other reasons for the personal popularity of a peer are not far to seek. The ease of his circumstances from his youth up tends to a good-humoured attitude and gesture towards the world at large. To be pleased with yourself may be selfish or it may be stupid. It is often both, but it is seldom actively disagreeable, and usually it is very much the reverse. That property has duties as well as rights is

a saying which is entitled to all the respect due to its origin, but even the rights count for something. All peers do not open bazaars, attend funerals, preside at political gatherings and charity dinners, or recognise that their leisure specially designs them for tedious functions and long journeys. With nice horses to ride, high pheasants to shoot, an heritage not only of broad acres but of mutual kindly relations towards his tenantry, his cottagers, and the tradesmen of his market town, he may neglect these graver duties, embarrass his fortunes and his posterity, and in many ways misconduct himself before he outruns the prestige of an old name and of tried association. In England these institutions still stand a heavy mortgage. This is especially the case if he does not deal with co-operative stores or manage his estate through a firm of town solicitors.

So much for the peer outside the precincts of his House. Now let us look at him inside. Here he comes off less well. Appearances are against him. Lord Chesterfield warned his son that the world. judges you generally by what you seem, not by what you are. It has more particularly been pointed out by a keen critic of our Constitution that a revising Assembly that does not assemble and which looks as if it does not care how it revises may be of use, but it will hardly convince mankind that it is so. Let us see how far a case against the House of Lords on this mere question of appearances can be made out. I remember when I succeeded as a very young man—

I never had the opportunity of contesting a seat in the House of Commons-I was advised by a relative to take some advantage of my seat in the House of Lords. You will find it,' he said, 'a pleasant lounge.' So it is. Many people are of my relation's opinion, especially after Easter, when the daily attendance gets quite respectable. The pleasant walk across the lawns of St. James's Park, the comfortable crimson benches inviting repose of mind and body alike, the certainty of getting home in good time to dress for dinner, and of a season of immunity from the door-bell and her ladyship's notes and telegrams, become matters of agreeable habit with an average of say from fifty to seventy peers from May to July. The routine business gets through quickly; questions are asked and answered, attention called to this or that without interruption, whether of approval or dissent. Ninety-nine nights out of every hundred the House of Lords is a machine with neither pulse nor temperature.

Bolingbroke has said that the Commons were like a pack of hounds-they liked the Minister who showed them sport. Individually, no doubt, so would the peers. But habit is ten times nature, and the habit of the House of Lords involves the converse of all that Bolingbroke meant.

Nothing, for instance, can be more different than the ways of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. With a very few distinguished exceptions the average House of Lords' debating manner opposes a statement with a counter-statement, cites a personal experience to meet an arguable point, coldly acquiesces in the accustomed, civilly distrusts theory, and, above all, watches the clock. At this hour of the evening' is the almost invariable preface to any observations made after 7.15 P.M. Lord Granville once remarked that a rustle of lawn sleeves on the right reverend bench was the warning that it was time to think of other things. Lay peers begin to fidget, and we cry quits by consent. I have often been struck, looking down into the House of Commons from the Peers' Gallery, by the pains taken or apparently taken-by its members to be abreast of the subject under discussion. Men who one knows will never open their lips on any stage of the Bill, sit encumbered with a mass of papers, and pore over its provisions line by line and clause by clause. Such self-realisation is a wholesome symptom of a recognition of their duty, and of their responsibility to their constituents. But there is nothing of this sort in the House of Lords. The Order of the Day is as much as most of us care to grapple with. A peer with a blue-book under his arm and a bill bulging from his pocket is a disquieting spectacle.

Roughly speaking, individual peers of either party let their front bench think and speak for them, the right of private judgment theoretically exercised by the cross benches when expressed in speech being thought very tiresome.

It has been pointed out that the average House of Lords' mind is easily led captive. Probably the least sentimental assembly in the world, it is peculiarly susceptible to the authority and magic of a strong personality. On a celebrated occasion Lord Lyndhurst recited at enormous length all the black-letter authorities on a subject. Lord Lyndhurst got his way, not by the weight of his black-letter citations, which the pastoral peers who swell our full-dress debates could hardly be expected to appreciate, but by the accustomed yet ever vivid impression of Lord Lyndhurst on his legs. Thus, when Lord Salisbury rises to recommend a perilous success to the cohorts he controls, when the House 'gives audience and attention still as night' to the sequence of clear-cut argument and illustration, every phrase poised to a hair, every point piercing to the quick, the whole speech acting like oxygen on the languid air of the House of Lords, it is easy to realise the burden of responsibility which personal ascendency lays upon the leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords.

Charles the Second used to say that attending the House of Lords amused him as much as going to the theatre. Either the plays were very dull or the House of Lords was very different. A year or two ago we were treated to what was known at the time as the revolt of the eldest sons, who do not appear to agree with Charles the Second. As far as I understand the movement, several members of the House of Commons, heirs to peerages, did not like the look of their serener political future, and I remember an article in this Review in which their spokesman explained that, when the accident of death consummated the accident of birth, they would feel like flies in amber, or specimens in a naturalist's collection. To avoid these uncouth sensations they had drafted a Bill, under the provisions of which they could divest themselves of their rights by declining to obey the summons to the House of Lords. Yet, even assuming their Bill to have passed into law, I may be permitted to doubt any very considerable advantage being taken of its privileges, and, in view of Lord Selborne's recent experiment, the Jules Verne adventure may now be relegated to the domain of history.

'Some day or other,' said an observant critic, 'its slack attendance will destroy the House of Lords.' I dissent altogether, although I admit the value of appearances, and that the House of Lords disregards them. But it is a common error of judgment that a thing cannot be well done which has been done in a different way, or taken a shorter time than conventional opinion expects. The House of Lords' work is well done. I need not point to the discharge of its high legal functions as the Supreme Court of Judicature and Appeal of this country. The fact that our most eminent lawyers-the Lords of Appeal-are peers of Parliament, means that legislation is subjected to a broadside of the most authoritative legal criticism in the

country. The private Bill committees, dealing as they do with all kinds of large industrial undertakings, involving heavy expenditure and the nice adjustment of complicated vested interests, give general satisfaction. As everybody knows, the parties appear by eminent counsel before a committee of five lay peers, chosen, with the exception of the chairman, from the day-in day-out attendance of the House. I believe that the soundness and justice of their decisions are seldom called in question, and it may be worth remarking here that the committee is frequently appealed to by the learned counsel, not as a court enjoying in any sense the authority of special knowledge, but as mere men of honour, of plain common sense, accustomed by the administration of their own estates to form practical judgments upon the very kind of considerations raised by, say, a large railway or water scheme.

Then the House of Lords is a convenient debating society. Subjects of all sorts and sizes which from pressure of business could not be brought forward in the House of Commons-such, for instance, as marriage with a deceased wife's sister, or the Sunday opening of museums are certain of a respectful hearing and decent discussion. Closure, except by the clock or the grouse shooting, is unknown. There is practically no in order' or 'out of order' in the House of Lords. A peer, for instance, might raise a discussion upon the whole question of allotments or the profitable cultivation of asparagus by calling attention to a statistical return on the current prices of beef in Paris and Chicago issued by the Board of Agriculture. Anything to do with the Army and the Navy interests the House of Lords, many of whom have served the Queen, and some of whom are distinguished officers on the active list.

On questions affecting the machinery of local government, agriculture, and the tenure of land, the Lords are, as it were, thoroughly at home. They understand the facts and needs of country life. The accidents of their circumstances have given them the advantage, of which we hear so much, of a technical education. Their eyes, ears, and hands have taught them things not to be learnt from blue-books, statistical returns, or even the special commissioners of the Daily Chronicle.

'Although,' said a republican peer of the last century, 'I am in favour of a parliamentary king and a parliamentary army, I am not in favour of a parliamentary religion.' But, in spite of the polemical attention which their proceedings from time to time excite, we still enjoy the countenance and exhortation of the right reverend bench. I need hardly say that upon all legislation affecting the hydra-headed interests of a State Establishment and State endowment, of Church schools and free schools, and of social morals generally, the bishops, if they do not invariably intervene with acceptance, always do so with authority.