THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 > ^ 
 
 ^•^T
 
 3 so ti S
 
 DRIFTING TOWARDS THE 
 BREAKERS!
 
 
 Rifting 
 Towards the Breakers 
 
 BY 
 
 A SUSSEX PEER. 
 
 MPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co., Limited. 
 
 iSrightou : 
 JOHN REAL & SON, EAST STREET. 
 
 1895. 
 
 [printed for I'KIVATE CIRCUI.A riON, SEPTEMBER. 1894.]
 
 Thk Sovthrrn Pip.i.iRHiN'<; Company, I^imitef). 
 no. XoRTH Strrkt, Brighton.
 
 If 15 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 V.\C,K 
 
 I. Demand oI' the F.iberal Partv for the 
 
 "PARAMOINT AlTHORITV " OF THE HoiSE 
 
 OF Commons ----.] 
 II. The Crown and the People - - - i 
 
 III. Their Cordial Relations - - - 2 
 
 IV. Democratic Despotism - - - - 5 
 V. Civil War in Ireland averted by the Hocse 
 
 OF Lords ...... 
 
 VI. Civil War in England, and the Scrrender 
 OF oiR Parliamentary and Monarchical 
 System ----- 8 
 
 VII. The Attack on the Throne throi'gh the 
 
 Lords ------ ^ 
 
 VIII. Are OCR Institctions worth Defending? - ir 
 IX. The Moderate Democratic Party - - rr 
 
 PART II. 
 
 I. The Leaders of the Liberal Party - - 13 
 
 II. The Royal Assent - - - - 14 
 
 HI. The suggested Creation of New Peers - ly 
 
 38';'885
 
 VI. 
 
 PAGR 
 
 IV. " RoBisT " Rapicalism - - - - 19 
 
 V. The Precedent of 1832 - - - - 20 
 
 VI. CON.STITITIONAI, METHOD.S OF ATT.\CK - - 2 1 
 Vll. .\t;iTATION CILMINATING IN RESENTMENT AGAINST 
 
 THK Sovereign - - - 23 
 
 VIM. A PE.\CEFrL Revoiation - - : - 25 
 
 IX. Primrose Leagi k Champions - - - 25 
 
 X. A Chamber of Revision - - - - 28 
 
 XI. The Sovereign and a Single Paramoint 
 
 Chamber - - - - - 32 
 
 XII. Abdication Inevitable. Social Results - 34 
 
 XIII. Sir Robert Peel on the Value of the Lords 36 
 
 XIV. His JrnciMENT Confirmkd - - - 40 
 XV. .Mr. Gladstone and the House of Lords' 
 
 AL^JORITIES - - - - - 44 
 
 XVI. Liberal Ministerial Pledges - - - 48 
 XVII. Mr. Gladstone's Silence as to Mode of 
 
 Abolition - - - - - S' 
 
 xviii. Mr. Gladstone on a Trilemma - - - 53 
 
 XIX. Lord Roseberv's Speeches - - - 54 
 
 XX. His Inconsistencies. The Privv Councillor's 
 
 Oath .---.. 55 
 
 XXL A Loyal Chairman - - - - 61 
 XXII. The Chancellor of the Excheoier at 
 
 Portsmouth - - - - - 63 
 xxiii. Attacks in Parliament. The Charwomen 
 
 OF the Upper House - - - 65 
 XXIV. The Chancellor of the Exchequer to the 
 
 Rescue -...-- 66
 
 l'.\(.E 
 
 XXV. The Conflict Inevitable - - - 67 
 XXVI. Mr. Morlev on Unicameran Government. 
 His Appeal to Mr. Bright. The Old 
 
 Radicalism and the New Democrats - 6g 
 xxvii. Mr. Bku;ht's Loyalty to the Crown and 
 
 Constitl iton ----- 74 
 
 xxviii. Reconciliation between the Two Hoises - 77 
 XXIX. Abolition ok the Veto is Abolition of the 
 
 HOLSE ------ 78 
 
 XXX. Seditiocs Harangies - - - - 79 
 
 PART III. 
 
 I. The Democracy in Enc;land - - - 82 
 
 II. The Advance of Democratic Sentiment - 83 
 
 III. The Hereditary Principle - - - 86 
 
 IV. The Despotism of a Single Chamber - - 87 
 
 V. Democracy in Australia - - - - 89 
 
 VI. Its Acceptance c^f a Second Chamber - 92 
 
 VII. ACSTRALIAN PROGRESS - - - "93 
 
 VIII. Colonial Federation and the Second Chamber 96 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 I. Democratic Legislatic^n by the Cc>nsekva- 
 
 TivE Party - - - - - 99 
 
 il extensicin of local government cnder the 
 
 Conservatives - - - - - 100 
 
 HI. Conciliatory Attitcde towards the De.mo- 
 
 CRATS - - - - - - 101
 
 PART \'. 
 
 I. Unmcamkran Govkrnmknt ... 103 
 
 II. Irs Ekkect iPON Foreign Nations. Danger 
 
 TO India . . . . . J03 
 
 III. The Slppression ok Individl alitv - 105 
 
 IV. The Dangers of Democratic Finance- - no 
 V. The Formation of a Unicameran Adminis- 
 tration - - - - - - 116 
 
 vi. The SoiTH American Model - - - 117 
 
 VII. Rejection of Hasty Legislation - - 121 
 
 VIII. The Practical Effect of the Democratic 
 
 Spirit of the Age - - - - 122 
 
 PART VI. 
 
 I. How TO Meet the Crisis ... 126 
 
 II. Olr Creed and War-crv - - - 127 
 
 PART VII. 
 
 I. The Position of the Liberal Party - - 130 
 
 II. The Old Whigs and the .Modern Democrats 132 
 
 III. VoA- Popvi.i Vox Dij - - - - 134 
 
 IV. Political Agitation at the beginning of 
 
 THE Centcry ----- 136 
 
 V. The Intoxication of Office . - - 138 
 VI. Political Heirs of the Old Whigs - - 140 
 VII. Their Obligation to Defend their Inheri- 
 tance - - - - - - 142 
 
 VIII. Trie to their Sacred Traditions - - 143
 
 IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IX. Loyalty of John Bright — and of the Radicals 
 
 TO Him ------ 145 
 
 PART VIII. 
 
 I. A Loyalist League - - - - 151 
 
 II. An Address to the Throne - - - 153 
 
 PART IX. 
 
 I. Opposition to the Chartists: A Memorable 
 
 Example . . . . . 155 
 
 II. Combine and Organize ! - - - - 156
 
 DRIFTING TOWARDS THE 
 BREAKERS! 
 
 PART I. 
 
 " Resolved : — That the Ministry may be assured of the 
 "enthusiastic and strenuous support of the Liberal Party in 
 "whatever measures it adopts to secure that the House of 
 " Commons shall be the paramount authority in the State." — 
 Meeting of the National Liberal Association at Portsmouth, 
 February i-j-tli, i8g4. 
 
 I. 
 
 T N the above Resolution, passed by the National Liberal 
 Association, w^e find, precisely traced, the lines of 
 the form of Government which it is proposed to 
 substitute for the existing Constitution of England, — an 
 Elective Chamber, "paramount in the State," that is to 
 say, ' ' paramount " over the Upper House of Legislature, 
 if it exists, — and (if this Single Chamber is to possess 
 " paramount " authority in the State) necessarily " para- 
 mount " over the Crown itself. 
 
 IL 
 
 For more than two centuries England has enjoyed 
 I remarkable immunity from ccwiflicts between the 
 Parliament and the Crown. In view of the violence
 
 of the controversies which, from time to time, naturall\- 
 and necessarily, divide political and Parliamentar\ 
 parties, this very immunity from civil conflicts is the 
 most striking testimony we can wish for to the self- 
 restraint and good sense and moderation with which the 
 Parliament has avoided coming into collision with the 
 Crown, and to the wisdom and prudence with which the 
 Crown has been careful to act in deference to the 
 opinion and wishes of the Nation. In a word — the 
 unbroken experience of two hundred years has proved 
 that the Monarchical and Parliamentary system of this 
 country has, by the test of existence, proved itself 
 admirably adapted to the character and require- 
 ments of this people. 
 
 III. 
 
 And yet, as by a thunderbolt in a clear sky, this 
 spell of immunity is to be broken ! But how ? And for 
 W'hat cause ? What possible quarrel can the Parliament 
 have with the Crown ? To all outward seeming there 
 never was a period in English history when the relations 
 between the People and the Sovereign were more cordial 
 — or seemed more firmly rooted — more unassailable — less 
 likely to be disturbed. No English statesman of eminence 
 — not a writer in any of the leading " Press " of the day 
 has, as yet, called in question the relations between the 
 Sovereign and the People. Acting upon the wholesome 
 and loyal tradition which forbids the Sovereign's name 
 to be dragged into the ordinary polemics of English 
 party warfare, a tradition which has for so long been 
 sacredly observed and respected by both parties, it
 
 appears that neither the '* Press" nor the statesmen of 
 the time have thought that the fateful moment had, as 
 yet, arrived for frankly and fearlessly speaking- what is 
 in their minds— and what must, at such a crisis, be 
 uppermost in their thoughts. So that, owing to this 
 reticence, honourable and loyal as the motive of it may 
 be — and is — there are tens of thousands of persons who 
 would be extremely puzzled to place their finger on the 
 weak spot in the relations between Crown and People, 
 or who would, after the most diligent search, see 
 the slightest prospect of any conflict between them. 
 On the one hand, — as they see, — the Crown is 
 absolutely beyond any suspicion — which in these days 
 would be a ludicrous absurdity — of any design toencroach 
 a hair's breadth upon the liberties or rights of the people, 
 — or even to thwart their wishes. On the other hand, at 
 notimehas the personality of Sovereignty been so popular. 
 Those nearest the Throne, never miss an opportunity of 
 listening to the wants of the poorer classes, — of studying 
 their requirements and alleviating their sorrows and 
 burdens. The People have seen the Heir to the Throne 
 as President, — a hardworking, indefatigable President, — 
 presiding over a body of Commissioners intrusted with 
 the noble duty of investigating — and of remedying— the 
 crying wants of labour and poverty. A Royal work 
 which well befits an English Prince! The People do not 
 forget these acts. When the Duke of York, with his 
 young wife, made a Royal visit to the Midlands, the heart 
 of the masses went out to the Royal pair. When an heir 
 to the Throne was born to them in the beginning of the 
 year 1894 there was but one serious discordant note in
 
 the general tribute of aflfectionate good wishes fromJ;he 
 Nation to the Royal parents and their Sovereign mother. 
 Unfortunately, it fell to the lot of the London County 
 Council to gain an unenviable notoriety as having a 
 Chairman, who alone, of almost all the official heads of 
 1 he governing bodies of all the great centres of population 
 throughout the country, refused himself, either as 
 Chairman, or in his capacity as Councillor, to 
 propose to the Council a vote of congratulation to the 
 Royal parents and the Crown on the birth of a Prince 
 and Heir to the Throne. It was a jarring, unpleasant 
 incident, to say the least of it, and significant as marking 
 a feeling in the" representative Government of the capital 
 of this Empire which could not be misunderstood. 
 Democrats seem to delight in these personal discour- 
 tesies, however petty and useless. In this case, such 
 discourtesy was even the more remarkable from the fact 
 that the Chairman* had but lately received a mark of 
 Royal favour from the hand of the Sovereign, which 
 hand — as soon as the honour so bestowed upon him was 
 safe — he turned and struck. The Democrats, no doubt, 
 are entitled to make all the capital they can of the fact 
 that the Metropolis, through its representatives, gave no 
 sign of its displeasure or of protest or censure at their 
 Chairman's petty exhibition of political feeling. But, be 
 that as it may — and fully recognising the significance of 
 the act having been acquiesced in by the representatives 
 of such a body as the Governing Council of London— we 
 may take it that, on the whole, the masses of the popu- 
 lation showed themselves, through their numberless 
 * Sir J. Hutton.
 
 representatives, loyal and affectionate to Royalty on the 
 occasion of the birth of an Heir to the Throne, — an 
 occasion excellently fitted to test the national sentiment. 
 If the Sovereignty is popular personally on social 
 grounds — as it is — and ought to be — is it less so 
 on political grounds ? Can it be said by any possibility 
 that the nation and the people of all classes — have 
 one single Constitutional grievance or complaint 
 against the political conduct of the Crow^n ? Such 
 a notion would be scouted by the masses themselves 
 — and yet ! — yet with all this superficial tranquillity, 
 all this apparent harmony between the People and 
 their Sovereign — that is, practically, in a political 
 point of view, between the two great powers of 
 the State, the Commons and the Crown, — with 
 all this blue sky overhead, a little cloud " no 
 bigger than a man's hand" is rising on the horizon, 
 which may eventually overspread the heavens and over- 
 shadow the land with the mighty tempest of a struggle 
 between Crown and Parliament. Disguise the thought 
 as you may, we have to reconcile ourselves to the truth 
 that if such an irreconcilable conflict takes place. Civil 
 War must in these days as inevitably result from it as the 
 Parliamentary War resulted from it in the seventeenth 
 century. But then we shall be asked what is to be the 
 cause of this irreconcilable conflict. Is it inevitable? 
 Why should it occur ? Let us see : — 
 
 IV. 
 
 Can we indeed grasp in its full reality what Civil 
 war means? It is difficult to take it seriously. To
 
 many minds it only opens up a hazy and rather 
 theatrical vision of Roundheads and Cavaliers, of 
 buff jerkins and yellow boots, very long swords, 
 and spurs nearly as long, of plumed hat and 
 slashed hose — shadowy things of a very distant past. 
 To the more serious and reflective eye. Civil war, 
 wherever it occurs, presents a proof — eternal in its truth, 
 but too often forgotten — or ignored — that unjust taxa- 
 tion, tyrannical legislation, unrestricted absolutism, 
 will not be tolerated by any nation beyond a certain limit, 
 whether the tyranny comes from above, — as in this 
 country, from Stuart absolutism in the past, or, from 
 below, — as threatened in the future, from the despotism 
 of an autocratic but democratic Government. Mutatis 
 Tmitandis, similar results would ensue from totally dis- 
 similar causes, and an attack on the Throne by Parlia- 
 ment for the purpose of substituting a purely Democratic 
 autocracy at the close of the nineteenth century would 
 as surely result in a Civil war as the overbearing 
 tyranny of the Stuart Kings led to the war with Parlia- 
 ment in 1642. Two centuries and more have passed 
 since the great Parliamentary war, and it was not until 
 two years ago, when the Loyalists of the North 
 of Ireland gave an ominously warning note to 
 the rulers of this country that they would resist to 
 the death a measure passed by the English Commons, 
 which they believed to be fatal to their liberties, that 
 Englishmen began to awake to the consciousness that, 
 in the sister island at any rate, a Civil war was not 
 an impossibility.
 
 V. 
 
 And very far indeed was it from being- an im- 
 possibility. That Ireland was saved from the horrors 
 of a Civil war, which would have been the more 
 bitter and savage from the fury of religious hate 
 which would have been imported into it, and would, 
 therefore, have possessed a special and savage char- 
 acteristic of its own, which was, to a great degree, 
 absent during the English Civil war, — was owing 
 to that House of Lords which is now marked down 
 for destruction by the same statesmen, the same 
 party, which endeavoured to put Ulster under a 
 parliament it loathed. Ireland has many reasons, 
 written in letters of blood, to remember the man who 
 destroyed the House of Peers in 1649. Drogheda does 
 not forget Oliver Cromwell. And now, perhaps, it may 
 be possible that Ulster will have as good reason to re- 
 member the modern Cromwell, if he succeeds in destroy- 
 ing the Peers, as Drogheda had to remember the 
 massacres of its children by the man who destroyed the 
 House of Lords two centuries ago. It is just possible 
 that Ulster blood may kindle a little at the thought that 
 the House of Parliament, which stood by it in the hour of 
 Ulster's danger, is now to suffer for its action. Ulstermen 
 would indeed belie the reputation of Irishmen, if, at the 
 proper moment, they failed to show some little practical 
 gratitude to the House which had saved them from the 
 tyranny which menaced them, and from the hated enemy 
 who, but for the Peers of England, might have had his 
 foot on their necks at this moment.
 
 8 
 
 VI. 
 
 But it is doubtful whether the warning- of Ulster 
 would be sufficient to awaken our countryman in 
 Engfland to a sense of dangler. What was possible in 
 turbulent Ireland would still be, an Englishman would 
 think, impossible in Eng-land. Civil war in Connemara 
 was just possible. Civil war in Sussex or Hampshire 
 seemed an unimag^inable anachronism. And even 
 now, with the warning of Ulster still ringing in his 
 ears, with the example of Ulster before him — that 
 there are still political causes in peaceful Great 
 Britain which must be defended by force of arms, — 
 if an ordinary Englishman, not accustomed nor inclined 
 to look very far ahead into the political future, were to be 
 told that his country was likel}- to become the theatre of 
 Civil war, with all its incalculable calamities, before he 
 was many years older, he would probably entertain 
 a strong suspicion that his informant was a person 
 of disordered intellect, or at any rate, the victim 
 of a mis-placed and exaggerated pessimism. But there 
 would perhaps be one thing even more startling to 
 him than such an announcement : — If his informant 
 went a step further, and told him that his country, the 
 mother of Parliaments, as we have been told from the 
 days of our callowest school boyhood, the model of Consti- 
 tutional Government, was about to destroy its Parlia- 
 mentary system, to massacre its own progeny, to be 
 the Medea as well as the Mother of Parliaments, to 
 allow the whole Constitution to be overthrown, perhaps 
 without a struggle ! — whatever were his suspicions 
 before, they would now be ripened at once into an 
 absolute certainty of his informant's mental weakness.
 
 VII. 
 Nevertheless, he himself might possibly prove even- 
 tually to be the one of the twain vi^ho was the most 
 mistaken. At first, it certainly is most difficult so 
 to frame one's mind as to believe that after two 
 centuries and a half of freedom from all threats 
 and danger of Civil war, now, at the end of the 
 nineteenth century, with all our boasted civilization, our 
 vaunted progress, our supposed superiority over other 
 countries as a constitutional covmtry, with a firm and 
 fixed form of Government, that now there should be even 
 the veriest "shade of a shade of a shadow" of anything 
 like an approaching possibility of those institutions not 
 only being attacked but surrendered, — without a blow, — 
 to the enemies of those institutions. But what seems to 
 be impossible at first sight, becomes, on reflection, not 
 only not impossible, but very probable, if the position is 
 not fairly grasped, and the situation more clearly 
 understood than is evidently the case at present. 
 Much indeed of the danger in the future lies in the want 
 of knowledge of the facts, — and of their tendency, — of 
 the present situation in the mind of the ordinary 
 elector, whose pursuits, business occupations, and 
 modes of life do not as a rule give him much leisure 
 to look beyond the immediate future. To use a 
 metaphor — any light which may show, however dimly, 
 the reefs and shoals ahead of the Vessel of State^ 
 however distant they may be, may perhaps awaken 
 some of the crew — slumbering in their watch in a 
 treacherous security — to a sense of danger, and may 
 help to save the ship with all its priceless cargo of
 
 lO 
 
 lives, and still more priceless cargo, the traditions of a 
 great nation. Clarendon speaks of his countrymen as 
 being "possessed," as a national characteristic, of 
 " laziness and sleep in the most visible article of 
 danger." Englishmen have in 1894 the same fatal 
 characteristic — as in 1642 — unreadiness. They will not 
 forecast the future. When a cyclone bursts over their 
 heads they will meet it with all the bravery of 
 their race, but Clarendon's reproach seems as applic- 
 able now as it was two centuries ago. Let us try, 
 however, or, at all events, let the Constitutional party 
 try, to redeem themselves from the reproach of the 
 great historian, and for once to be found on guard with 
 their arms in their hands when the enemy appears at 
 their gates. When it becomes more clearly under- 
 stood that this attack upon the House of Lords, 
 with which I am going to deal, is not only an 
 attack on that House but on the Throne and 
 all that is comprised in the words Constitutional 
 Government : — When it is understood that it is an 
 impossibility to separate the existence of the Throne 
 from the other parts of the constitution — that the Lords 
 cannot be separated from the Crown, — that if one falls, 
 the other falls — that no outward semblance could be in- 
 vented (even supposing the democracy were in a mood 
 to veil their revolutionary designs by any thin dis- 
 guises — which is very improbable), so as to combine 
 the existence of a monarchy, such as ours has been, with 
 the democratic pretentions of a despotic Single Chamber, 
 we shall have advanced an important step forward 
 towards obtaining a true perception of the full extent of
 
 the perils which are involved in this movement against 
 the Upper House. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I venture, then, to propound the question. Is 
 it an impossibility that, in no very remote future, the 
 antagonism of the principles, which have suddenly come 
 to the front, may be found so irresistible, that it would be 
 senseless optimism to affect to believe that they were 
 capable of a peaceful solution ? And to that question I 
 would venture to give a reply: — -We are "Drifting" with 
 a momentum, which at any moment may be accidentally 
 accelerated by some fortuitous unforeseen accident, into 
 a speed, which would leave little time for reflection or 
 preparation, towards a political " impasse," from which 
 one party, at least, — could not escape, save throvigh one 
 of two alternatives, — the one a weak and craven surrender 
 of what ought not to be surrendered, — the other a resort 
 to the extreme measure of resistance ; in fact, the question 
 which will soon come before us, in plain words, will be 
 this — " Are the Institutions of this country, as they now 
 exist, worth defending ? And secondly, if so, are we 
 men enough to fight for them ?" 
 
 IX. 
 
 To say that these remarks are principally addressed 
 to those who are members of the great Political Party, 
 which is pledged by its traditions, by its honour, by the 
 very conditions of its existence, to preserve and defend 
 the Throne, is needless ; but none the less are they 
 directed to those of the moderate Democratic party who.
 
 while chafing- at the restraints imposed upon legislation 
 by the existence of the Upper House, as they believe, 
 in an objectionable manner and degree, and while con- 
 sidering that House a hindrance to the advancement 
 of measures such as they approve, and while desirous 
 of seeing such checks and trammels put aside, if it were 
 possible to do so, by constitutional methods, would 
 shrink from any course of action which, however 
 much it fulfilled their wishes, could only do so at 
 the cost of what was even dearer than the attain- 
 ment of those aims, the existence, that is to 
 sav, of the whole constitutional system of this 
 country. In the m.inds of thousands it would be 
 one thing — and a good thing — to destroy the Upper 
 House ; but another and very different thing to attack 
 the throne. This political section would shrink from 
 destroying the monarchy, — and sooner than do so would 
 accept the existing evils. Show the politician of this 
 character that to destroy the one would be to destroy 
 the other, and he would soon perceive that it would be 
 infinitely better to endure the existing evils of the Upper 
 House, reformed as it might be in a hundred ways, 
 rather than place himself, by destroying that House, 
 under a form of Government a thousand times worse 
 than the system he had just destroyed.
 
 13 
 
 PART II. 
 I. 
 
 Well, then, the House of Lords is to be attacked. 
 There will be the usual chorus of protests that such a 
 cry has been raised before. What has been, will be. It 
 has failed before, it will fail again. It is quite true that 
 the attack has been often made and hitherto always 
 failed. But why did it fail ? Because it was led by 
 irresponsible leaders, demagogue agitators, pothouse 
 politicians, whose names were unknown beyond the 
 palings of Hyde Park, by men without character, without 
 authority, by men whom it was easy and safe to despise 
 and treat with scorn. Is that the case now ? Assuredly 
 not. A rabble, armed with bludgeon and pitchfork, 
 attacking a fortified citadel, bristling with Armstrongs, 
 is a ludicrous spectacle. Besieged by a force of drilled 
 and disciplined troops, with the full equipment of all 
 the deadliest weapons of science, led by the best 
 and most distinguished Generals of the day — the 
 fortress is at once in peril, and the garrison had better 
 stand to their arms. It is because the attack has 
 passed from the hands of irresponsible agitators to 
 the keeping of responsible statesmen of the highest 
 character and authority that it has risen at one bound 
 from the lowest and most contemptible depth to th© 
 gravest and most solemn and highest political standard. 
 It is no longer the Hyde Park orator who leads this 
 seditious movement; It is Mr. Gladstone — It is no longer
 
 the petty demagoijue who shouts for the downfall of the 
 Lords; It is the Prime Minister of England. You may 
 sneer at Mr. Burns and laug-h at Mr. Labouchere, but you 
 cannot as reasonable beings, pooh-pooh Mr. Gladstone, 
 Lord Rosebery, and the great Liberal meetings at Ports- 
 mouth and at Leeds, w^here, at the first, the leaders of the 
 Liberal Party pledged themselves to the uncompromis- 
 ing policy of total abolition — and where, at the second, 
 Leeds, the delegates of the extremer section of the demo- 
 cratic party resolved upon a definite course of action, 
 — a little more temporizing outwardly, but, in eff"ect, as 
 uncompromising and fatal as the policy of the Ports- 
 mouth gathering. It would be unworthy silliness 
 to ignore the difference between the political position 
 of this question in 1893 audits position in 1894. And 
 we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that— explain 
 it how you may — call it a snap division if you 
 will — a Resolution to abolish the Lords w^as carried 
 in the Commons in this Session of 1894 by a 
 majority — small if you will — but still a majority; and 
 we may then ask ourselves whether, as that Resolu- 
 tion was proposed and carried by a private Member 
 only, would it not be an absolute certainty that a 
 Resolution or Bill embodying the same objects, with the 
 w^eight and support of the Government at its back, 
 would be carried by a greater majority ? 
 
 IL 
 
 Let us suppose that the Electorate has been appealed 
 to by the Ministry, "for inspiration and guidance," as 
 Lord Rosebery phrases it, in this campaign against the
 
 Upper House. Let us try to trace, in imagination, the 
 course of events which, however, may be foretold in this 
 case with something- approaching to mathematical cer- 
 tainty : The constituencies, we will suppose, have 
 endorsed the policy of the Ministry, and have sent them 
 back to Westminster fully armed and equipped with the 
 mandate they asked for, to destroy the Upper House. 
 Parliament meets. The Ministers are pinned to their 
 pledges by their democratic followers, and they are 
 ( called upon to proceed at once to the execution of the 
 House of Peers, which the constituencies had con- 
 demned to death. And now begin the troubles of the 
 Ministry, x^bolish the Lords ! Certainly. If you can — 
 but how are the Ministry to do it? The difficulty of the 
 situation now becomes a little more apparent and 
 a trifle more embarrassing in proportion as a 
 nearer approach to the process of execution, makes its 
 gravity and its consequences be more carefully weighed 
 and appreciated. At first sight it seemed so easy to 
 shout, " Down with the Lords ! " It was a cheap and 
 safe display of democratic courage. There is always 
 something fascinating, to a certain kind of intelligence, 
 in defying avithority and denouncing the powers that be, 
 |when it can be done safely, without responsibility, and 
 jivith the hope and the purpose of gaining votes. There is 
 something almost ridiculous in the glib way in which 
 housands of meetings, with Cabinet Ministers at their 
 lead, filled with democratic ardour, have yelled for the 
 iownfall of the Lords, — and yet, when the time comes to 
 ct, they know not what to do. They are paralyzed if 
 he simple question is put to them — How will you do 
 
 l;r 
 
 S
 
 i6 
 
 it ? Do away with the Lords, do away with the 
 "veto!" But how is even the " veto " to be done 
 away with ? However, it is too late for the Ministers 
 to turn back, and they have to grapple with the 
 stern problem of how they are to fulfil their pledges. 
 The Prime Minister asked for a mandate from the 
 Democracy, and the Leeds Conference gave him what 
 he asked for, and we will suppose the electorate has 
 endorsed the mandate of the Leeds Conference. How 
 are the Ministers to begin their campaign against the 
 Upper House ? Lord Rosebery and Mr. Labouchere 
 have each discovered a method. Lord Rosebery points 
 out in his speech at Birmingham, May 24th, 1894, that 
 their object can be effected by a Bill agreed to conjointly 
 by both Houses of Parliament. He says, " It can 
 "only be done by a Bill passed by both Houses putting 
 " an end to one branch of the legislature." Mr. Labou- 
 chere suggests that any trifling opposition of the Lords 
 to the Bill for their own annihilation might easily be 
 extinguished by the creation of five hundred Peers. 
 It is almost impossible to understand how the Prime 
 Minister can have been led into such an extraordinary 
 lapse of thought as to imagine that the consent of the 
 two Houses of Parliament would be sufficient for the 
 abolition of one of them. Why should a Prime Minister 
 i.nagine that a Bill dealing with the most vital principles 
 of Government would be allowed to pass without the 
 Royal Assent, while every Bill, however unimportant and 
 trifling the objects may be, has to be submitted to the 
 Royal Assent? It is, of course, a complete mistake on 
 the part of the Prime Minister. If it is not a merely
 
 '7 
 
 momentary forijetfalness, it becomes curious and 
 interesting-, as showing how this Democratic Minister 
 has learnt to ignore the very existence of the Crown as 
 a legishitive factor. The assent of the Crown would be 
 necessary to any Bill, whether dealing- with the Con- 
 stitution or with a Highway Bill. Whatever Lord 
 Rosebery may wish, no such Bill would be operative 
 wMlhout the Royal Assent. Would that assent ever be 
 given ? Now, even supposing, which it is idle to do, 
 that the Upper House could be induced to sign its own 
 death warrant, an-d wished to join the Lower House in a 
 suicidal measure, it would be a cruel libel upon the 
 Sovereign of England to suppose that he would be 
 guilty of such inefiable infamy as to give the Royal 
 Assent to a measure having for its object the subversion 
 of the Constitution of which he is the head. There is 
 but one answer an English Sovereign could give to 
 such a measure— Ze A'o>' s'aviseni. 
 
 Wliat was Mr. Labouchere's proposal? To create 
 
 live hundred peers, who would first take tlie oaths o'( a 
 
 [],{ peer, and then perjure themselves. It was a proposal 
 
 founded upon the precedent, save the proposed perjury, 
 
 of the Reform Act of 1832. But when Mr. Labouchere 
 
 proposes to send five hundred men to the Upper House 
 
 ..I as peers, how does he propose to create them ? 
 
 jrjllt is not the House of Commons which creates 
 
 ,, A peerages. It is, unfortunately for Mr. Labouchere's 
 
 proposal, the Sovereign who alone has the power 
 
 of creating peers. And here again, as in Lord
 
 i8 
 
 Rosebery's case, there is a marked, and, in this case 
 probably intentional, ignoring of the existing rights of 
 the Crown. It is, no doubt, a delight to the Democrat 
 to insult the Sovereign, but, ignore the Sovereign as they 
 will, these new peerages can only be brought to life by 
 the will of the Sovereign. But could the Sovereign use 
 his Royal Prerogative for the purpose of sending a re- 
 sistless revolutionary force into the Upper Chamber with 
 the avowed object of destroying it ? Could the 
 Sovereign of England, holding the Constitution of this 
 Empire in his hands as a trust — a solemn trust — in the 
 eyes of his country and before his God, could he be so 
 base a traitor to his oaths, his dynasty, to those of his 
 subjects who are ready to follow him to the death, as to 
 call together a rabble of rifif-raff, by virtue of his own 
 Royal Prerogative, to override freedom of debate by 
 brute force, and shatter the Constitution, and, eventually, 
 the throne, which but a fev/ moments before these Sans- 
 culottes would, in their Parliamentary oaths, have sworn 
 to defend? But even if the Sovereign gave way, he not 
 only would have signed the death warrant of his own 
 dynasty as well as of the Upper House, but he would have 
 raised a very bitter feeling in the minds of the con- 
 stitutionalists of the country. Constitutionalists would 
 certainly raise the question, in a serious way, before some 
 adequate tribunal, whether a Royal prerogative, con- 
 stitutional in itself, can be used by the Sovereign for an 
 unconstitutional object. And the Sovereign would have 
 to face not only the attacks of the enemies of his throne 
 but the bitter feeling of resentment on the part of the 
 Constitutional party, whose trust he had betrayed.
 
 19 
 
 IV. 
 
 But in this rather solemn drama comes an element 
 of comedy. Lord Rosebery has a singular objection to 
 Mr. Labouchere's proposal. In his Birmingham speech 
 Lord Rosebery says, "There is this further objection. 
 "When you (Mr. Labouchere) get your Peers inside the 
 " House of Lordsareyou quite certain what they will do ?" 
 He doubts the success of it, and objects to that proposal 
 for the remarkable reason that he does not believe that 
 in the whole Liberal Party — not even in Northampton — 
 noteven amongst theNonconformists, conscientious party 
 as they are known to be, not even in the National Liberal 
 Association, not even amongst the Scotchmen he so 
 adoringly praised at Edinburgh, not even amongst 
 his associates in the betting ring, nor on the race course 
 he so much affects, not even with the assistance of Mr. 
 Schnadhorst, could he scrape together five hundred men 
 who could be implicitly trusted to be honest men, and fulfil 
 the mission they had undertaken ! He doubts whether 
 their " robust " Radicalism would stand firm when once 
 the Northampton shoemaker found that the crimson 
 benches of the Gilded Chamber were softer than his own, 
 and yielded to the demoralizing influence of a coronet 
 when it encircled his manly, but unaccustomed brow. If 
 the Democratic mind, like the Scotch mind, is un- 
 equal to the perception of a joke, perhaps it can 
 appreciate a compliment — and such a compliment ! 
 
 It is difficult to determine whether it is Lord 
 Rosebery or Mr. Labouchere who entertains the most 
 flattering opinion of his party and his friends. Is it 
 Lord Rosebery, who declares that he doubts if he could
 
 find five hundred men whom he could trust to behave 
 honestly if they were sent to the Upper House for a par- 
 ticular purpose, and to behave as ordinary honest men, 
 sent to perform a given duty — pledged to perform a 
 specific act — or is it Mr. Labouchere, who says that it 
 would be the easiest matter in the world for him at any 
 time to put his hand upon five hundred of his followers — 
 good, sound, "robust" Radicals! who could be depended 
 upon to take the Parliamentary oath, and then proceed 
 to perjure themselves without wincing, setting to work at 
 once to overthrow what they had just sworn to defend? 
 Both of these gentlemen may be supposed to speak 
 with a long and intim.ate, and, no doubt, perfectly 
 accurate experience of the character and virtues of a 
 large section of the "Great Liberal Party." 
 
 V. 
 
 If we are told to look to the precedent of 1832, we 
 find it is no precedent at all. There is not the slightest 
 similarity between the objects of the creation of peers in 
 1832 and those, say, in 1895. The King in 1832 con- 
 sented to the creation of a sufficient number of peerages 
 to enable a measure to be carried for the extension of 
 the Suflfrage, and for reforming the Electoral System 
 of the country within Constitutional limits. The 
 measure was perfectly legitimate and Constitutional in 
 itself, and in its fullest scope, and, moreover, the measure 
 was intended by its Parliamentary authors, in perfect 
 loyalty to the Throne, to strengthen and secure every 
 portion alike of the Constitution — not only the Crown 
 itself — by widening the basis of the Constitution, and
 
 placing- the Throne on even a firmer foundation than it 
 had ever rested on before. It may be said without ex- 
 aggeration that it was this threat to use the Royal Pre- 
 rogative in 1832 which contributed in no small degree to 
 place the Throne in a state of security, so firm that when 
 the revolutionary storm of 1848 shook every throne 
 in Europe, the Monarchy in England was shown to 
 be more firmly rooted than at any previous period 
 of its history — and this barely sixteen years after 
 the critical times of the Reform Agitation. No 
 doubt, when the King consented to exercise his 
 prerogative, it was a violent use of that power. No one 
 doubts that it was So, but nobody doubts also that 
 this prerogative was called into active use for a 
 Constitutional purpose and within perfectly Con- 
 stitutional limits. But for what purpose will that pre- 
 rogative be invoked in 1895 ? ^^ would be exercised 
 for the purpose of carrying a measure which had for 
 its special aim and purpose to destroy — and not to 
 strengthen — the Constitution and the Throne ! For 
 that reason — simple but fatal, — the precedent of 1832 
 completely fails. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Well, then, it is doubtful how the threatened assault 
 is to be made. But the country is impatient. Minis- 
 terial pledges must be fulfilled. The army must 
 advance ; the batteries must be opened. What 
 will the Ministers do ? Will they propose a 
 Bill as suggested by Lord Rosebery? Very good. 
 The House of Commons proposes a Bill. The House of
 
 Lords rejects it. Or, if the Lords consent to its passing 
 their House, (if such an absurdity could be imagined), it 
 passes that House, and waits for the Royal Assent, and 
 there probably it would wait for a very lengthened period. 
 But to believe that such a Bill would ever reach that stage 
 is absurd. The Peers would never pass a measure for 
 their own deliberate destruction. An attack, therefore, 
 in the shape of a Bill is foredoomed to be unsuccessful. 
 The next move would be the passing of a Resolution 
 by the House of Commons, declaring more or less 
 distinctly, that it is the will of the people, that the House 
 of Peers should cease to exist. Well, let the House of 
 Commons, if it so please, pass a thousand such Resolu- 
 tions. They are of no value. The House of Lords does 
 not exist by the will of the Lower House. The 
 Commons can no more destroy the House of Lords by a 
 Resolution than they can prevent the sun from rising 
 by a Resolution. A Resolution of the Commons 
 to annihilate the Lords would have as much effect 
 as the Papal Bull against the Comet. The House 
 of Lords exists by the will of the Sovereign alone, and 
 not by the authority of the people, or of any legislative 
 body. It exists by virtue of the issue of Writs of 
 summons from the Sovereign bidding the peers to take 
 their seats and legislate. It is the Sovereign — and the 
 Sovereign alone — who calls the House of Lords into 
 existence. It is the Sovereign alone who possesses the 
 power to issue these Writs of summons. It is he alone 
 who can refuse to issue them. The Sovereign himself, 
 therefore, is the only power in the State who can abolish 
 the House of Lords. It is clear, therefore, that no Bill
 
 23 
 
 and no Resolution could possibly effect, in a Constitu- 
 tional manner, the object of the revolutionary party. 
 Before resorting- to actual force they inust try some other 
 method. There remains only one other Constitutional 
 method : The Commons must send an Address to the 
 Sovereign requesting him to cease in future from issuing 
 his Writs of summons to the Peers. An "Address," 
 therefore, with a hint at stopping- Supply, is the only re- 
 maining Constitutional way by which the Commons can 
 proceed. Such an Address, with such a proposal sent 
 direct to the Throne, over the head of the Upper House, 
 would at once place the Crown in a position of most 
 critical embarrassment towards the Commons, because 
 it would be impossible for any Sovereign to submit to 
 their demands. He would refuse, and in that case a 
 collision between the Commons and the Crown would be 
 as inevitable as death itself. 
 
 vn. 
 
 If the sequence of events, as I have traced it, is 
 at all accurate, it is clear that this attack on the Lords, 
 so lightly undertaken by so many thousands, so appal- 
 ling in its consequences, cannot by any possibility be 
 made without embroiling and endangering the safety of 
 the Throne. And it is the key-note of these remarks that, 
 although the struggle against the Peers will be at first 
 regarded as an ordinary political electoral opposition 
 against an ordinary political grievance, it must eventu- 
 ally be extended to the Throne, — that the issue will 
 ultimately be placed in the hands of the Sovereign, — and 
 that round the throne itself will surge the fiercest fury of
 
 24 
 
 the storm, and that hatred of the Lords will soon be 
 merg-ed into anger against the Sovereign for his refusal 
 to surrender to demands which no Sovereign of 
 this Empire could accept. Can we imagine a state 
 of affairs more full of the most perilous responsibility 
 than that in which the Sovereign would be placed by an 
 Address petitioning him to abolish the House of Lords? 
 He must either refuse or accept the democratic proposals. 
 If he accepts, he overthrows the oldest Parliamentary 
 Chamber in the world, and an integral part of what has 
 been for six centuries the constitutional system of 
 England. More than that, he must eventually, by his 
 own hand, destroy the throne he occupies, and on which 
 a long line of Kings has sat before him. He would be- 
 tray a trust, so solemn, so sacred, that probably there is 
 no other trust in this world more sacred or more solemn, 
 the trust of the traditions of this mighty Monarchy, and 
 the duty to hand down to his successors that crown and 
 his Royal robes without a stain, and to defend his crown, 
 even with life if necessar}-. He would betray the 
 thousands of loyal subjects who look to him to defend 
 their Institutions to which they are devoted, who look 
 to him as the representative and guardian of a cause 
 which they do not intend shall be attacked with im- 
 punity. 
 
 If the Sovereign refuses to accept the demands of 
 the Address, it would be childish foolishness to shrink 
 from the avowal that nothing short of a miracle could 
 prevent such a collision between Crown and Commons 
 as would convulse the country from end to end, and 
 attain eventually the dimensions of a Civil war. And
 
 25 
 
 this is what will happen if the electorate approves the 
 policy of the Democratic Ministers who place the aboli- 
 tion of the Lords before it and await their judgment. 
 
 Vlll. 
 
 There is, no doubt, an opinion and belief in the minds 
 of many that whatever changes may be in store for this 
 country will be effected peacefully. It is often asserted 
 that, if the will of the nation upon the organic principles 
 of its form of Government is clearly and distinctly ex- 
 pressed, the country would pass quietly from one form 
 of Government to another, from Monarchy to Democratic 
 Dictatorship, with perfect order, without a conflict. Exit 
 King ! enter Democracy ! enter Dictator ! and not a hand 
 will be raised against them. The Conservative lamb will 
 lie down by the Revolutionary lion. Beyond a little 
 lamb-like bleating, the lamb will make no protest. 
 All will go on just the same as before. All will be 
 happy. The Sovereign, in fear of a conflict, and not 
 wishing to shed the blood of his very patriotic subjects, 
 will either surrender at the first whisper of a stoppage 
 of supply, or will abdicate. The Sovereign indeed would 
 abdicate if he found himself face to face with a single 
 Chamber, without a House of Lords, and after a defeat — 
 he could not do otherwise. But not before ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 But if the situation is to be accepted with pious 
 resignation, and a martyr-like submission, we must be 
 resigned, and prepared for the contempt and ridicule 
 with which all the nations of the earth, who were impar- 
 tial eye witnesses, would regard this extraordinary exhibi-
 
 26 
 
 tion of national deterioration. What would have become 
 of all those professions of devotion to the throne, and the 
 undying attachment to the Institutions which we have 
 been accustomed to hear shouted from the housetops 
 of every city, every village, every parish in the country, 
 if the great Constitutional Party, as they are fond of 
 styling themselves, tamely abandoned without a murmur 
 the field to their opponents ? There would indeed be a 
 wondrous spectacle of a great party admitting that all 
 their professions of loyalty had been hollow empty 
 phrases ; and their devotion to their principles a sham 
 and a fraud. Could they, before the eyes of the whole 
 world, be guilty of this desertion ? To suppose so would 
 be to admit that the race of Englishmen had deteriorated 
 to a degree and to an extent which even their greatest 
 detractors would scarcely have ventured to assert. To 
 imagine that this change from our present system of 
 Government to one diametrically opposed to it, and 
 which we have always opposed, should pass un- 
 challenged, would be to imagine a display of 
 poltroonery on the part of the Conservative party, with 
 all its combination and bodies, with all its Conserva- 
 tive Associations and Unions, with its "Primrose 
 League," and such like organisations, as would suffice 
 to bury them ignominiously beneath a hurricane 
 of scorn and contempt. What sort of figure would 
 the " Primrose League " cut, with all its paraphernalia 
 of Councillors, Knights, Habitations, and Dames of 
 high degree ? And what would have been the good 
 of all this frippery, all those eloquent addresses, 
 all the harangues against democratic principles, which
 
 27 
 
 had been thundered so valorously hi so many thousands 
 of Habitations, Habitations blessed with the most 
 dignified names and patronized by the most exalted 
 of Dames ? A g"lorious spectacle it would be to 
 see these valiant Councillors and Knights on 
 their bended knees, grovelling- before the enemy 
 they had so often challenged to the death in the safety 
 of their Habitations, and whom they had so heroically 
 threatened with utter extermination behind the petti- 
 coats of the " Dames," And now — well, the flag is to be 
 hauled down. But would not the Knights be in rather 
 a sorry plight, and have very rueful countenances ? And 
 the Dames ? Well, it would not be very odd if they were 
 the laughing stock of their Democratic sisters, who, 
 after their bloodless victory, would be justified in 
 pointing with infinite scorn their fingers at those great 
 Dames who could not manage to get their valiant 
 Knights to screw their courage up to the sticking point, 
 and who had shewn as little of the heroine themselves 
 as their own egregious Knights had shown of the 
 chivalry of those fighting champions "of the faith 
 that w^as in them " whose titles these modern Paladins 
 had usurped, but without at the same time putting on 
 with their armour their attributes of courage and fidelity. 
 Yet, all this, which sounds an exaggerated jest, and an 
 improbable one, will become an absolute truth, if we 
 are to be, as we are told will be the case, passive 
 and humble spectators of these great political changes ! 
 And it is an undoubted fact that thousands entertain 
 the belief that these changes will not be resisted — 
 certainly not by force. It is the commonest everyday
 
 28 
 
 "summing' up, "in ordinary conversation, which we hear 
 ■on all sides, in the usual intercourse of society, "These 
 ■changes will not come in my time ; and if they do, they 
 will be effected peacefully." Whether they will come 
 in our time depends on the simple question whether 
 the Liberal Party and their Leaders will stand true to 
 those professions they have made and the pledges they 
 have given to the Democracy, or whether they will think 
 that discretion is the better part of valour, and run away. 
 On the other hand — if they stand true, these 
 changes, or attempts to enforce these changes, are net 
 ver}' distant. Whether, I repeat, they will be effected 
 peacefully will depend upon whether the Constitutional 
 Party in England is true to its principles, and has 
 the courage and manhood to resist their utter destruc- 
 tion, not only at the polling booths, but to resist it 
 in ways more worthy of their professions, than in 
 heroic vapourings in Primrose League Drawing- 
 rooms. 
 
 X. 
 
 We will imagine the House of Lords abolished 
 (by some methods at present undeveloped) very 
 peacefully, but very effectually. We now have a 
 Sovereign left face to face with the Single Democratic 
 Chamber. But we will stop for a moment to suppose 
 that a Chamber of "Revision," as so many believe and 
 hope will be the case, has been created in the stead of 
 the old Chamber, to revise the measures of the 
 Commons, but without the veto. It is possible that a 
 very large amount of public opinion may be enlisted in 
 -favour of the Abolition of the House of Lords, by the
 
 29 
 
 belief and hope that if the present House was abolished, 
 another Senate with different powers might be created. 
 Many could be induced to vote under that impression. 
 A Senate — a Chamber of Revision without the right of 
 rejection, — revision, but no veto — would tempt many 
 men to vote for the ending oi^ the House of Lords as it 
 now exists. The bait has been held out by the Leeds 
 Conference, and perhaps many may be caught by it. 
 But it would be an absolute delusion. If men vote for 
 the ending of this House because they believe there will 
 be another Legislative Chamber created (I will call the 
 limitation and alteration of the powers of the Peers a 
 new Chamber for the sake of brevity) they must be 
 under some infatuation which blinds their minds and 
 obscures their intelligence. Tliey must have forgotten 
 that there could be no question of creating a new Senate 
 until the old Chamber, that is to say, its present powders, 
 were out of the w^ay. But they will not be out of the 
 way until the Revolutionary Party have coerced or cajoled 
 the Sovereign into a state of subservience to their 
 demands, and had frightened him into subjection, or 
 had won the day in other fields than the floor of a 
 legislative charriber. In either case, why should the 
 Democrats create another Senate? What is the avowed 
 object of this revolution ? It is to free the Lower House 
 from all restraints from any other body, and to 
 allow nothing to exist between the people and their 
 representatives in a Single Chamber. That is 
 the object avowed by every leader of standing in 
 the Democratic party. If the Democratic party are 
 powerful enough to destroy the Upper House, either
 
 30 
 
 by terrifying the Crown or by defeating- its armies, 
 and to reduce the Crown either into a complete state of 
 impotence, or to destro}' it altogether, why should this 
 party, in the full flush of its victory, having just 
 destroyed the House of Lords, set to work immediately 
 to re-construct on its ruins another Second Chamber, — 
 which must be either strong or it must be weak ? If it 
 is to be strong, that is to say, possessed of a power of 
 rejection, which is the life and breath of a Legisla- 
 tive Chamber, why take the trouble to destroy 
 the present Chamber ? If it is to be weak, why 
 take the trouble to create it ? Would it be worth 
 while ? It W'Ould indeed be an absurdity to suppose 
 that the Democrats having gained their object by 
 demolishing the legislative body which stood in the way 
 of its absolute authority and "paramount " despotism, 
 would create any Second Chamber, however limited its 
 functions. Would it not be childish inconsistency if 
 they preceded to re-construct another chamber to stand 
 between them and their supreme power when the object 
 of their revolution had all along been to set up 
 one Democratic Chamber absolutely independent of all 
 control or interference of any power or personage in 
 the State ? Why should they stultify themselves and 
 nullify their acts when they had taken the trouble and 
 the rather serious responsibility of overthrowing a Con- 
 stitution and destroying a Throne to rid themselves of 
 the veriest semblance of control or check. No ! 
 Throne and Constitution are to go ! One Single 
 Chamber is to be invested with absolute and "para- 
 mount " power. How could a Chamber exercise
 
 31 
 
 "paramount" authority if another Chamber had 
 powers of revision ? The victory had been gained. 
 Why should they throw away the most precious 
 fruits of the victory and again place their necks 
 under the very yoke they had just thrown oflF ? 
 It would be absurd to believe it. It will be obvious 
 at once that such a Chamber of Revision is not what 
 the Democrats have asked and fought for, nor could 
 they be expected to be satisfied with it if they had just 
 been successful in overturning the old Chamber. The 
 Democrats, as the attacking party, asked for a "para- 
 mount " Chamber, and nothing less — without any other 
 Chamber whatever, whether of revision or otherwise, 
 whether hereditary or otherwise — standing between them 
 and the people. That this was their object was clearly 
 formulated at the Portsmouth meeting of the representa- 
 tives of the National Liberal Association, and adopted, 
 with solemn pledges by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 peaking in the name of the Ministry — and adopted by 
 the acknowledged leaders of the Democratic Party 
 and their followers. On this point there can, fortu- 
 nately, be no doubt. But supposing for an instant 
 hat the Moderates are sufficiently strong to obtain 
 ome kind of a Second Chamber, it would obviously 
 )e but a shadow of legislative power ; and the 
 emblance of control, in revising the measures proposed 
 )y the Commons, would be unsubstantial and ridiculous. 
 t would have no practical power over any measures the 
 !)ommons might think fit to send to them, because the 
 loment their powers of revision were used to any prac- 
 ical effect, they would be snuffed out with little ceremony
 
 by the "paramount Chamber, "and the show and pretence 
 of any control would be put aside as soon as there wa^ 
 the slightest symptom of their becoming a reality. Aj 
 under no circumstances would this Chamber of " Re- 
 vision "' possess the veto, this mode of ending- the! 
 Lords would simply be a vexatious and irritating! 
 mode of prolonging the emasculated existence of i 
 moribund Second Chamber in a purely comatose 
 state ; in order to soothe the feelings and gain the 
 votes of the moderate section of the Liberal Party 
 But for how long would a democratic Commoni 
 tolerate such a vexatious — as well as ludicrous — 
 interference with their absolute supremacy in legislative 
 matters ? At the very best it would only be a Chambe 
 to register the edicts of the Lower House, tor they woulc 
 have no power of "rejection" — no veto. A wretchee 
 spectacle of legislative impotence ! Such a Chambe 
 would probably die after a very short and by no mean 
 glorious career. Whatever might be the cause of it 
 end, it is not at all dangerous to assume that its em 
 would be certain — and the life short. 
 
 XL 
 
 We find ourselves now the happy citizens of 
 Country with a Sovereign trying to exist wit 
 an Assembly aspiring to Sovereign powers a 
 "paramount authority" in the State. We are i 
 this enviable position : A Sovereign, and a Chambe 
 "paramount " over the Sovereign, are our Constitution 
 How long would that union last ? Why, the first act i 
 the single Chamber would be — ^judging from the oni
 
 33 
 
 precedents we have— to declare its supreme authority 
 over the Crown and every other body — and to define 
 what it meant by "paramount authority!" Such a 
 definition would naturally comprise the absorption into 
 the hands of the one Chamber all the powers and 
 privileges and prerogatives which had hitherto been 
 
 i| possessed by the Crown as the political Head of the 
 State. We will see what those dignities and royal pre- 
 rogatives amount to. " To give or refuse to Bills the 
 " ' Royal Assent,' to cause the due administration and 
 
 4" execution of the laws ; to act on behalf of the whole 
 "community in its intercourse with Foreign States, and 
 " as a part of that, to declare war or conclude peace ; 
 " to direct the naval and military force of the country ; 
 *'to administer the public revenue ; to prorogue or dis- 
 
 '^" solve Parliament ; to create peers ; and to coin money. 
 
 ^'" The monarch is the supreme power of the Church ; the 
 'source of justice and of mercy, of all offices, 
 ' honours, emoluments, and chartered rights."* Would 
 t be reasonable to suppose that a triumphant Denio- 
 :racy, determined to usurp "paramount" authority, 
 ivould leave one shred of these powers, not only political 
 put personal, in the hands of Royalty ? If the Demo- 
 ;ratic idea of asserting its superiority, and arrogating to 
 tself supreme power, is carried to its logical fulfilment, 
 lot one of the above attributes would be left in the 
 lands of the Sovereign. It may be true that some of 
 
 i* hese attributes of Royalty are nominal and unreal, and 
 lave only a fictitious importance. But many of these 
 ttributes are very real, and even now have not lost 
 
 See authorities passim.
 
 34 
 
 their power, though limited by influences and certain 
 boundaries, which are perfectly well understood and 
 recognized. The headship of the Church, the headship , 
 of the Army, the power of selecting- Ministries, the power i 
 to dissolve Parliament, are by no means fictions of power, 
 they are the existing prerogatives of the Sovereign, and 
 are real and living. In the present reign the headship 
 of the Church has been by no means unasserted. 
 The Royal prerogative was used, and violently 
 used, to carry the Abolition ot Purchase in the Army 
 over the usual Parliamentary forms of procedure, 
 and to overrule the opposition of the Peers. 
 Even the Veto, the strongest legislative weapon in 
 the Royal Armoury, is not dead. It may be dor- 
 mant, but the Veto exists. It may have rusted 
 for years in its scabbard — but it is there — the steel is 
 as true and good as ever. But if the democracy assumes j 
 the virtual sovereignty of the Empire by constituting itself 
 the "paramount" despotism in a single assembly — it 
 would abolish these prerogatives altogether from 
 the Crown and would take them to themselves, and it 
 is at once obvious that the Chamber cannot possess 
 " paramount " power unless the powers of the Crown 
 had ceased to exist. 
 
 XII. 
 
 How would a Sovereign possibly exist under such 
 anomalous circumstances? It would be impossible. If 
 all these appendages of state, whether real or nominal, 
 political or social, are torn from the person of the 
 sovereign, and he is left to become a mere powerless.
 
 35 
 
 puppet, without a vestige of the royal prerogatives or of 
 the poUtical splendour of kingship ; could any sovereign 
 continue to occupy a position so degraded in contrast to 
 its old glorious magnificence ? There is not a pauper 
 between the Four Seas, who, under such conditions, 
 would care to sit upon what was once the proudest 
 (throne in the world. What would the Sovereign 
 do ? There might be a very tempting course open to 
 him — abdication. And what an abdication ! Not a 
 noble one by any means, or one which would inspire the 
 east sympathy for the person of the monarch in his 
 fallen fortunes. He individually would richly deserve 
 every misfortune that could befall a man ! For it 
 must be remembered, that if he found himself in that 
 predicament, it would be the consequence of his own 
 Icowardice in yielding to the threats of a rebellious parlia- 
 jment and in tamely surrendering the House of Lords as 
 a victim to the Democracy. If the Throne had been 
 [abolished it was through his own act, and here was the 
 Nemesis for his cowardice ! A sovereign discredited in 
 the eyes of his nation ; a traitor to his oaths ; to his 
 :ountry ; to his dynasty ; stripped of his power without 
 a murmur ; robbed of his kingly robes and sceptre 
 without a struggle ; a coward and a traitor. He would 
 ibdicate, and who would pity him ? He would leave a 
 ithrone he had dishonoured, accompanied by the jeers 
 ind ridicule of the world. But more than this. Not only 
 jwould the political system, but the whole social system of 
 he English community be shattered by the degradation 
 md disappearance of the Sovereign's influence, which it 
 "elt through all the ramifications of English society. If
 
 36 
 
 the head of society were shorn of his king-ly attributes 
 and dig-nities how long would he remain at the head of 
 that society ? A fallen and discredited monarch would 
 never hold the first position in English society. Nor 
 would it be good for the nation that he should do so. 
 The influence, therefore, of a Court, so far-reaching, so 
 inestimably valuable, when the example is of a high and 
 noble standard, would cease, and the results would be 
 a very perceptible deterioration in all those qualities 
 which during the earlier portion of Queen Victoria's reign 
 made English Society far superior to the Society 
 of preceding reigns. In fact, what is usually termed 
 Society, would fall to pieces without the guiding light 
 and leading of a respected sovereign. Society, under 
 the new era, might possibly establish an improved 
 social code of manners and customs, and the civili- 
 zation of a new type, and of many fresh ideas, but it is 
 doubtful if it would be — even framed on democratic 
 models and judged by democratic standard — equal to 
 the society of the more refined and cultured period of 
 Queen Victoria's reign. We see therefore how irrepar- 
 able would be the injury inflicted on the social as well as 
 political interests of the nation by the Sovereign if he 
 deserted his colours, and then abdicated ! But then 
 we are told all this will be eff"ected peacefully. Will it 
 
 be so? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Let us first of all try to realize to ourselves what it 
 is we are going to exchange so quietly for a democratic 
 system. 
 
 This is not the moment to introduce an academic
 
 37 
 
 disquisition into the merits of the Assembly which the 
 Sovereign is now to be asked to demolish, but let one of 
 the greatest of England's statesmen speak from the grave 
 and remind us what it is we are going to surrender. 
 What are the words of Sir Robert Peel? He says : 
 
 " I avow to you that I mean to support in its full integrity the 
 authority of the House of Lords as an essential, indispensable 
 condition of the continued existence of the mixed form of gfovern- 
 ment under which we live — as tantamount, in short, to the main- 
 tenance of the British Constitution. ... I ask you, then, to 
 unite in defence of the House of Lords. I do not invite you to 
 form this resolution by a mere appeal to hereditary prejudice and 
 affection without reference to reason. It might have been enough, 
 in other times, to allege ' This is the Constitution under which 
 we live ; this is the Constitution we inherit from our fore- 
 fathers, and wish to hand down to our posterity. The con- 
 dition of the society in which we live will bear a contrast with 
 that of any other countr)^ of the world, by whatever form of 
 
 I government it may be regulated, and we will stand on the old 
 ways of the Constitution, and prefer practical substantial happi- 
 ness to such visionary projects of improvement as affect the foun- 
 
 I dations of our government.' . . . This might have sufficed in 
 other times, but now it would be neither safe nor wise to shrink. 
 
 ' from the appeal to reason ; not safe — for prescriptive authorit}- 
 will be rejected ; not wise- — for j'ou may without danger submit to 
 the test of argument. 
 
 " It is said that the privileges of the House of Lords are 
 
 i hereditary. Why, from the nature of the functions which the 
 House of Lords have to discharge, it is because its privileges are 
 hereditary that they are valuable. It is this which gives the 
 institution that stability which it would not have if it were sub- 
 
 j servient unto, and immediately controllable by, the will of the 
 people. The objection of hereditary privilege may be good if you 
 prefer pure democrac}' to that mixed form of government under 
 
 j which we live ; but if you wish to maintain a mixed form of govern- 
 
 .'i8';'885
 
 38 
 
 ment and an hereditary Monarchy, it would be madness to 
 relinquish the hereditary privilege of the House of Lords. . . , 
 And when, on such arguments as those by which it is proposed to 
 destroy this hereditary privilege, that destruction shall have taken 
 place- — when for such profound reasons as that because men are 
 not hereditary tailors, nor hereditary carpenters, therefore that 
 there ought not to be hereditary peers — when for such arguments 
 as these you have abolished the House of Peers, how long do you 
 think the privilege of hereditary Monarchy will survive ? I will 
 tell you — ^just so long as the privileges and prerogatives of 
 Monarchy can be made useful instruments and tools in the hands 
 of the democracy which is to ride triumphant over the ruins of the 
 House of Lords. 
 
 " The peers, it is said, are not responsible. I have heard 
 that before. I replied that the peers were not responsible in the 
 same sense in which the House of Commons were responsible, 
 but that in their responsibility to God, to their conscience, and to 
 enlightened public opinion, the public had a guarantee for the 
 faithful performance of their duties. Now, if it is a vital objection 
 to the House of Peers that they are not directly and immediately 
 responsible to the whole mass of the people, let me ask whether 
 therebe not otherpoliticalbodies invested with high privileges which 
 are in the same sense irresponsible also. The House of Commons 
 certainly is responsible to their constituents ; the Ministry is re- 
 sponsible to the Parliament ; but to whom is the constituent body 
 responsible? You have selected a certain class from the whole 
 of the people. You have qualified them for the exercise of great 
 powers. You have invested (them) with great political privileges 
 and franchises, and I ask to whom are they responsible ? 
 They are not selected for any peculiar qualification. You 
 can administer no test by which the fitne;:s of a man to exercise 
 the elective franchise may be determined. Does the right accrue 
 from any merit of the holder, from superior education, or any 
 education at all ? No ; it is inherited in one half of the cases. One 
 half of the whole privilege has the fatal defect of being hereditary, 
 and, as to the other half, any man, w^hetlier he can read or not, may
 
 39 
 
 acquire and exercise it, if he rents a house of sufficient value. 
 Here, then, is a privileged political body. And what one security 
 have you for the faithful and honest exercise of its powers and 
 discharge of its functions beyond that which exists in the case of 
 the House of Lords ? To whom is the constituent body re- 
 sponsible ? Is there any responsibility of any conceivable kind, — 
 responsibility to God, to their consciences, and to an intelligent 
 ■ileliberate public opinion ? Public opinion ! — a powerful check, no 
 tloubt. But this check is not to exist for the constituent body. 
 They are to vote by ballot. They are to exercise their high trust 
 in secret. No responsibilty for them whatever — nay more, no 
 knowledge of what they do, or how they exercise their power. 
 Will this great country, will those who have not the franchise, 
 ever tolerate such a state of things? We are to relinquish the 
 controlling check of the House of Peers — we are to constitute one 
 overruling, privileged, democratic body, and to trust it with an 
 authority, not only unlimited, not onlj' irresponsible, but secret 
 and unseen. No, never will such a tyranny be borne! 
 
 " But then, it is said — and, this being the main point, let us 
 consider it fairly — it is said that the House of Lords has shown a 
 spirit at variance with that of the people, and has obstructed the 
 march of social improvement. I challenge the opponents of the 
 House of Lords to the proof of that fact. ... I ask )ou, can 
 it be said with the shadow of truth that the progress of improve- 
 ment has been suspended ? The House of Lords, in respect of 
 some of the measures I have mentioned, has originated them. In 
 others they anticipated and acted in advance of public opinion. 
 In respect to some (reform of the House of Commons, for in- 
 stance) they felt a strong and almost insuperable objection, and 
 resisted to the last. They yielded — reluctantly yielded, I admit — 
 when the current of public opinion could not be mistaken and was 
 too strong to be opposed. But where is the ground for impeach- 
 ment of the House of Lords in all this ? What better proof could 
 be adduced of the discretion and wisdom with which the Lords 
 have exercised the functions which the Constitution designed them 
 to perform ?"
 
 40 
 
 XIV. 
 
 If Sir Robert Peel had lived to this day, he would 
 have found his convictions still further strengthened. 
 Not many months ago he would have seen a Bill for the 
 creation of a Separate Legislature for Ireland — a Bill 
 aiming at the Legislative Dissolution of the Union 
 between the two Countries — a Bill of vital importance — 
 carried through the Commons by a minority of English 
 votes added to a number of Irish votes sufficient to turn 
 an English minority into a Parliamentary majority. It was 
 clearthat English opinion, through the majority of English 
 representatives, was adverse to the measure. But it 
 passed the Commons. It would have become then the 
 law of the land if there had been only one single Chamber, 
 and if the Lords had not been truer interpreters of 
 English opinion than the House of Commons, and, by 
 destroying the Bill, proved the inestimable value of the 
 veto entrusted to that House, which it is now proposed to 
 destroy in defiance of the proof of its value just presented 
 to the eyes and intelligence of the whole world. But 
 Sir Robert Peel would also have seen in 1886 an ample 
 proof of the wish of the Peers to move in harmony with 
 the times and the increased requirements of the age; in 
 their acquiescence with the Franchise Bill. I say nothing 
 of the Reform Bill of 1867 because it was a Bill brought 
 in by the Conservative Administration, and consequently. 
 Liberals would attach no importance to the passing of 
 that measure through the Lords, because they would 
 say that, whether it was a reactionary or a revolu- 
 tionary measure, it would be all the same to the Peers 
 because it was the production of a Conservative Cabinet.
 
 41 
 
 So I will pass by that Act, and quote the Franchise Act 
 of 1885, because that measure was a Bill broug^ht in by 
 a Liberal Government. This Franchise Bill of 1885 
 was an advance to meet the extension of popular 
 demands which would have startled Sir Robert Peel 
 in 1832, and if he could have foreseen in 1832 
 that such a Bill would pass the Lords practically 
 unopposed in 1885, he would have doubted the evi- 
 dence of his own senses. We are told that the 
 Lords have no sympathy with popular requirements 
 and that every great measure for the people's ad- 
 vancement is opposed and thwarted by the infamous 
 Peers! What happened in 1885? The Conservative 
 Party in the most Conservative Chamber, agreed to a 
 Bill of Franchise for the most advanced extension of the 
 suffrage which had ever been made, far beyond what the 
 Liberal Party had ever before dared or ventured to 
 propose. The same party, which had brought the country 
 to the verge of civil war in 1832 to oppose a measure which 
 transferred the political power of the country from the 
 Upper Classes to the great Middle Class, were them- 
 selves, in 1885, as well as in 1867, the supporters of 
 measures for transferring that power from the Middle 
 Class to the Lower ! What did the Conservative Lords 
 do ? How did they receive both those measures ? Not as 
 in 1832 by opposition, almost to the verge of Civil war, 
 but practically without part3-opposition. In fact, whatever 
 opposition there was to the Bill of 1885, was not directed 
 against the principle or policy of the measure itself, 
 but simply against the measure being pressed upon the 
 country before the question of redistribution of seats had
 
 42 
 
 been dealt with and settled. When we are told that, with 
 unvarying obstinacy, the Lords are the natural opponents : 
 of everything- that is asked for by the people, it is only j 
 necessary to ask whether it is possible to point out one 
 single measure of primary importance affecting the 
 people's interests, and welfare, which has been destroyed 
 or permanently rejected by the Lords. 'As a matter 
 of historical truth there is absolutely not one single 
 instance of any permanent rejection, in modern Parlia- 
 mentary history, of any Bill of the first importance 
 sent up by the Commons. It is a simple truth to say 
 that every great measure — Roman Catholic emancipa- 
 tion. Reform Bills, extension of the suffrage, repeal of the 
 Navigation Laws, removal of all civil and religious 
 disabilities, Repeal of the Corn Laws, is now on the 
 Statute Book of England by the act of the House of 
 Lords as well as by the act of the Commons. And the 
 Nonconformist body, who constitute the bulk of the 
 Liberal Party, might, in fairness, remember that the 
 opening of the burial grounds, one of their greatest 
 grievances, was owing far more to the Lords than the 
 Commons. However that may be — we may ask, 
 in reference to the Acts of Parliament which the 
 Commons claim as their own, why are the Commons 
 to arrogate to themselves the whole credit of passing 
 laws, when the Lords had the same Constitutional 
 share in passing them as the Commons ? And they 
 have, of course, the same right to claim the whole 
 credit of passing them as the Commons — neither more 
 nor less. Although many of these measures were 
 opposed and delayed by the Lords, not one of them was
 
 43 
 
 definitely destroyed, and the delay in passing them was 
 strictly in accordance with the exercise of those functions, 
 and that ' veto,' which in the case of the Home Rule Bill 
 has met with the general approbation and gratitude 
 of the majority of English opinion, while in 1886 
 we saw an instance of deference to popular opinion 
 and sympathy with popular wants, which at once deals 
 a death blow at the charge of a want of sympathy and 
 harmony with the people. How can it be said, 
 with fairness, that the Lords, who have jointly 
 and with co-ordinate authority, with the Commons, 
 agreed to — or (if it so please the Whigs) have 
 given way to all these Liberal measures, are nothing 
 else but a Conservative Chamber existing to pass 
 Conservative measures and to throw out every measure 
 which would be beneficial to the people ? If it is said 
 that the enormous majority in the Lords against the 
 Home Rule Bill, a majority of something like ten to one, 
 was an instance of it, it must be remembered that the 
 Home Rule Bill was not a measure which affected the 
 popular welfare, at any rate of England, in the remotest 
 manner, and also that the majority was composed of 
 many Liberals — many Whigs — who are still true to true 
 Liberalism, and who, if true Liberalism was only 
 in question would show themselves once again as 
 Liberals and Whigs as earnest, and faithful to Whig 
 principles, as their fathers had been. It is certainly 
 a very hard thing, but very characteristic of the party 
 which makes the charge, that the Lords should be 
 blamed for being a Conservative Chamber, because of 
 the largeness of its majorities against such Bills as the 
 Home Rule for Ireland, when the majorities are composed
 
 44 
 
 of as many Liberals as Conservatives. Is it fair to call 
 a Legislative Chamber a purely Conservative Chamber 
 when the majorities on Constitutional questions are, in 
 a very large proportion, composed of Liberals who, 
 in all the essential points of Liberalism, are as 
 good, as honest — perhaps far more honest — and 
 faithful Liberals, than the revolutionary Liberals who 
 figure in the Democratic minorities of that Chamber ? 
 
 XV. 
 
 We might even carry the war into the enemy's camp, 
 and ask, why should not the Democrats blame them- 
 selves, — and with far more justice; for these majorities? 
 Are they not their own doing — the result of their 
 own policy during the last ten years ? It is an incon- 
 testable fact that the Conservative majorities, which 
 have made the House of Lords a purely Conservative 
 Assembly (if indeed it is one), are the gifts of Mr. Glad- 
 stone and his extreme followers and successors. It is 
 Mr. Gladstone's policy which has destroyed the Liberal 
 party in the Lords — and put an end to anything 
 approaching an even balance between the two parties. 
 Extremes beget extremes, — and, if the House of Lords 
 is now an extreme Conservative Chamber, it is owing to 
 the extreme policy of the Democratic Party. The pre- 
 ponderance of Conservative majorities in this House is as 
 much the creation of Mr. Gladstone himself as of Lord 
 Salisbury. This would not matter to Mr. Gladstone if the 
 House of Lords is really eventually to be swept from the 
 faceof the earth. But suppose the attack to fail ! Suppose 
 the Upper House does weather the storm ! — and it has 
 not vet fallen — it w'ould be difficult to imasfine a more
 
 45 
 
 ludicrous position than that in which the Democrats 
 would be placed, because, in the case of the survival of 
 the Peers, the policy of Mr, Gladstone would not only 
 not have destroyed the Peers themselves, but have 
 strengthened the Conservative party in their House, and 
 would have made the Conservative party predominant. 
 Mr. Gladstone w^ould have the satisfaction, which, 
 we are sure, would be a most delightful and novel 
 feeling" to him, of recognizing that no Conservative 
 statesman had ever done so much to give the Conser- 
 vatives in the Lords such supremacy over the Liberal 
 party, as he had himself, by driving all the moderate 
 Liberals out of his own ranks into the arms of his Con- 
 servative enemies. And to no purpose ! If the Lords 
 survive the struggle, — and the struggle will be a very 
 bitter, — very long, — and very doubtful — one ! — -Mr. 
 Gladstone will have to feed, in his venerable leisure, 
 upon the reflection that, much against his own 
 grain, he has proved a very Balaam to his party. He 
 has cursed his friends and blessed his foes. He has 
 doubled or trebled the Conservative majority in the Peers. 
 He has given them a distinct supremacy by breaking 
 up his own party, and reducing it to a mere group 
 from its position as a great Parliamentary party 
 in one of the two Chambers of Parliament. 
 But then, — as we know perfectly well, — Mr. Gladstone 
 would smile at this sort of Conservative gratitude and 
 its complacent congratulations, and would answer them 
 by pointing his warning finger to the coming future. 
 No doubt, Mr. Gladstone counts on this same over- 
 whelming supremacy as being a most fatal gift to the
 
 46 
 
 Tories — a very Trojan horse within their walls to 
 carry perdition in its frame to the citizens, — and as being- 
 the very best arrow in his quiver to smite his foe. 
 Mr. Gladstone would say, " By all means take my gifts — 
 " if you like to call them so — and see what they will 
 "bring- you. Wait a little! and see where your Con- 
 *' servative majorities, of which I wish you joy, will land 
 "you ! " " Rira Men qui rira le dernier. " He laug^hs best 
 who laug^hs last, will be Mr. Gladstone's answer. It is, of 
 course, true, — it is obvious, — that Mr. Gladstone relies 
 upon this overwhelming Conservatism, however brought 
 about, as the lever by which he, or his successors, when 
 the time for action comes, will raise popular passion 
 against the Lords. They will ask the people to over- 
 throw the Upper House, on the ground that this supre- 
 macy of Conservative voting power is intolerable, — that 
 it is the last rag clinging to the tatters of the musty gar- 
 ments of a moth-eatenToryism, — that it is unsuitedto the 
 wants of these advanced and enlightened days, — and that 
 the People's voice cannot be heard while it is smothered 
 by the majorities of the Chamber which is now in the 
 hands of a Conservative despotism, and exists alone for 
 the purpose of preventing the passing of all Liberal, — 
 or what Liberals call Liberal legislation, such as, 
 for instance, the Bill for Home Rule in Ireland, and the 
 dismemberment of the Empire. In a word, Mr. Glad- 
 stone says : " Grant that your majorities are created by 
 "my policy, and are my doing, you think — infatuated 
 "beings! — they are benefits, — You will find them your 
 "condemnation, — your ruin, — your destruction. — If 
 " I have made them myself, as you say I have,
 
 47 
 
 " I have made them, not to be your salvation, but to 
 "be a scourge wherewith to scourge your august 
 "assembly. You will find my gift to be the goblet which 
 " contains the poison, which is now, so it seems, pleasing 
 " to your eye, but which, in due time, will paralyze your 
 "body and dissolve your frame into thin air." Very 
 good. But to speak more seriously, if Mr. Gladstone 
 is successful, well and good. But what if he 
 and his party fail ? Victory is always uncertain. 
 What if the Lords survive the coming conflict, and 
 if the close of the struggle leaves the Lords as they 
 are now ? And it may be so. Could a more disastrous 
 failure of statesmanship be conceixed than that which 
 the policy of Mr. Gladstone would ha\e incurred if it 
 were found at the end of the conflict, that the Lords were 
 in existence, and the Conservatives were still the pre- 
 dominant party, through his own policy, and his own 
 acts? And it is on the cards. If the Lords do 
 survive, Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Morley's calculations 
 will have so ruinously miscarried, that Democratic 
 statesmanship will receive a blow, both in the Upper 
 House and in the country, from which it would take 
 generations to recover. And it is the perception, 
 that there is a chance of the Lords being the victors 
 and Mr. Gladstone and the Democrats defeated, which 
 sheds a strong light upon the vastness of the vital issues 
 on which Mr. Gladstone and Lord Rosebery have 
 thrown down the gage of battle, the immeasurable 
 greatness of the stake, the impossibility of conciliation 
 or compromise between the two parties, and con- 
 sequently the dangerous probability of Civil war.
 
 48 
 
 If, in one sense, the majorities so overwhelmi 
 
 are gratifying to the victor, and good for the party who 
 
 opinions they represent, it is very doubtful whether su 
 
 very great majorities are, on many grounds, equal 
 
 gratifying to the leaders who lead them in th 
 
 Legislative House. Majorities, so overwhelming, a. 
 
 by no means unmixed blessings. Majorities often to oii 
 
 are sometimes as undesirable as very small ones. The' 
 
 very largeness is a defect. Party Government is nc 
 
 benefitted by over-matched minorities, and the wise:, 
 
 best-wisher for good Government would prefer smalk 
 
 majorities and more equally proportioned part 
 
 victories. 
 
 XVL 1 
 
 I am anxious to show to those who think that thi 
 movement may subside and be no more heard of, tha 
 the Ministers of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Part; 
 are too far pledged to withdraw from the conflict 
 There is no case in Parliamentary history of a questioi 
 adopted by a great political party, adopted by all tht 
 chiefs of that party, involving great principles and objects, 
 being withdrawal, not even after a defeat, certainly 
 not without a struggle. It is true that Home Rule has 
 disappeared for the moment, but it is far too soon to 
 quote that Bill as a precedent, and say that it will 
 not come again to the front of political questions. 
 Speaking from precedents, we have a right to assume 
 that this question will not be unlike other great j 
 state questions, which have gone before. Let us see 
 how far the Ministers and ex-Ministers of the Queen 
 have pledged themselves, their party, and their country
 
 49 
 
 to this particular question. I will show how they are 
 pledged to the hilt to advance. We give Mr. Gladstone 
 the pride of place. What does he tell us, at a moment 
 when, if ever there should be in a statesman's breast a 
 feeling oi^ responsibility heavier than before, a solemnity 
 of utterance befitting the occasion, when he was leaving 
 his political legacy to the nation, and bequeathing with 
 cdl the authority of an experience of fifty years in the 
 ront rank of English statesmen, this legacy? He says: — 
 
 " I must observe that the sacrifice of the Bill forms part of a 
 
 inost serious question — a question which has long' been serious, 
 
 which, I am sorry to say, has grown more and more serious with 
 
 the lapse oi' time, and which, during- tiie present Session, has 
 
 arrived at a stage of peculiar acuteness and peculiar magnitude. 
 
 We look, therefore. Sir, at the question of the acceptance of these 
 
 1 amendments as part of a whole. We look at the acceptance of 
 
 p them not as closing a controversy, but as part of a controversy, 
 
 which, according to our judgment, it will be the duty of Parlia- 
 
 nent to continue until it has arrived at a satisfactory settlement. 
 
 >Jow we have come, as I have said, to a more acute stage. The 
 
 question is whether the judgment of the House of Lords is not 
 
 iierely to modify but is to annihilate t'ae whole work of the House 
 
 Df Commons — work which has been performed at an amount and 
 
 sacrifice of time, labour, and convenience totally unprecedented. 
 
 yVell, Sir, we have not been anxious — I believe I speak for 
 
 iiy colleagues — I know I speak mj' own convictions — we 
 
 lave not been desirous to precipitate or unduly to ac- 
 
 entuate a crisis. We have been desirous to save some- 
 
 hing from the wreck of the Session's work. (Cheers.) W'e 
 
 ieel that this Bill is a Bill of such value that upon the whole, 
 
 freat as we admit the objections to be to the acceptance of 
 
 hese amendments, the objections are still greater and weightier 
 
 ID a course which would lead to the rejection of the Bill. We are 
 ompelled to accompany that acceptance with the sorrowful de-
 
 5° 
 
 claration that the differences, not of a temporary or casual nature 
 mereh', but differences of conviction, differences of prepossession, 
 differences of fundamental tendency between the House of Lords 
 and the House of Commons, appear to have reached a development 
 in the present 3'ear such as to create a state of things of which we 
 are compelled to say that, in our judgment, it cannot continue. 
 (Loud and continued cheers.) Sir, I do not wish to use hard words 
 which are easily employed and as easily retorted. It is a game 
 that two can play at — but without using hard words, without pre- 
 suming to judge of motives, without desiringor venturing to allege 
 imputations, I have felt it a dut}" to state what appear to me to be 
 indisputable facts. The issue which is raised between a delibera- 
 tive Assembly elected b}- the votes of more than six millions of 
 people, and a deliberative Assembh* occupied by nian}- men of 
 virtue, by many men of talent, of course with considerable 
 diversities and varieties, is a controversy which, when once raised, 
 must go forward to an issue. (Loud cheers.) The issue has- 
 been postponed, long postponed, I rejoice to say. It has been 
 postponed in many cases to a considerable degree by that dis- 
 cretion, circumspection, and reserve in the use of enormous 
 privileges which the House of Lords on various occasions in my 
 recollection, in the time of the Duke of Wellington and Lorct 
 Aberdeen and other periods, have shown. But I am afraid. Sir, 
 that the epoch, the age of that reserve and circumspection maj' 
 have gone by. I will not abandon all hope of it, but I must say 
 of the present, I do not like to sa\- that the situation is intolerable, 
 because that is a hard and ma}- seem a dictatorial word ; but I 
 think hon. gentlemen opposite must feel as I feel that in some 
 way or other a solution will have to be found for this tremendous 
 contrariety and incessant conflict upon matters of high principle 
 and profound importance between the representatives of the 
 people and those who fill a nominated Chamber. (Cheers.) It is 
 not with the House of Commons to pronounce a judgment on this 
 subject. The House of Commons is itself a party in 
 the case. I have no difficulty in pronouncing on behalf 
 of the JNIinistrv in the issues that have been raised
 
 tliroiijjlunil this year belwoeii the two Houses. We take 
 frankly, fully, and finally the side of the House of Commons. 
 (Loud cheers.) The House of Commons could not be a final 
 judge in its own case, and I am by no means anxious to precipi- 
 tate proceedings of that kind, hi>\vever they may be invited by an 
 impatience most natural in the circumstances of the case. No 
 doubt, Sir, there is a higher authority than the House of Commons. 
 {Cheers and counter-cheers.) It is the authority of the nation 
 (renewed cheers) which must in the last resort decide. 
 (An hon. metnber, — " At once," and cheers.) Happily, we know 
 that we all of us are sufficiently trained in the habits of consti- 
 tutional freedom to regard that issue as absolutely final upon one 
 and upon all alike of every one of these subjects. The time when 
 that judgment is to be invited, and the circumstances under which 
 it is to be invited, of course, constitute a question of 
 the gravest character and one which the Executive Government 
 of the day can alone consider and decide. My duty terminates 
 by calling the attention of the House to the fact, which it is really 
 impossible to set aside, that in considering these amendments, 
 limited as their scope may seem to some to be, we are considering 
 a part, an essential and inseparable part, of a question enormously 
 large, a question which has become profoundly acute, which 
 will demand a settlement and must receive at an early date that 
 settlement from the highest authority. (Cheers.)" 
 
 XVII. 
 While we read this speech we are struck with 
 the remarkable fact that, while Mr. Gladstone is very 
 emphatic and clear in declaring his views and hostile 
 animosity to the Lords, he gives no intimation what- 
 ever as to the methods by which his policy of destruction 
 could be consummated. If it be a remarkable fact that, 
 although all the Liberal Statesmen and Ministers have 
 declared themselves prepared to destroy the Upper 
 House, not one of them has ever had the courage to tell
 
 52 
 
 us how he would destroy it, 5-et it is a still more strange 
 and significant omission on the part of Mr. Gladstone. 
 There is, usually, no statesman living more courageous^ 
 than Mr. Gladstone in carrying his convictions into 
 execution, and he certainly, as a rule, never flinches 
 from telling the methods by which he proposes to do so. 
 It must, therefore, be some over-mastering reason and 
 influence on this occasion which would compel him 
 to conceal the methods by which he proposed to give 
 eff"ect to his bitter intentions against the Upper House. 
 What his real reason is must, of course, remain a mere 
 conjecture — but some may doubt if they would be far 
 wrong if they thought that Mr. Gladstone hesitated 
 to declare his method, by which alone his policy could 
 be successfully carried out, because he shrank, with 
 one of those "touches of nature which make the 
 whole world kin," from embittering the declining years 
 of the Sovereign he had served so long, b}- unveiling 
 to her the dark storm coming which would cloud 
 the sunset of her glorious life. He would feel 
 (they would say), and he would shrink from the 
 thought probably, that he would have to tell his 
 Royal Mistress that the legacy he had to leave to his 
 country was to shatter the House of Lords — and, as an ) 
 inevitableconsequence, thethrone of the Sovereign he had 
 so often sworn to defend. If this is the reason for the 
 omission of details by Mr. Gladstone, what could be more 
 significant ? Mr. Gladstone is the most gifted orator of 
 his century. His eloquence has been for half a century 
 the admiration of the cultured world. But never has this 
 gifted statesman, even in his loftiest flights of oratory.
 
 53 
 
 been so eloquent as he is now in his silence. Minds, 
 however, less sentimental and more cynical, would, 
 perhaps, with a truer appreciation of realities, attribute 
 the silence of the great Statesman to other and less 
 worthy causes. They mig^ht be so far iconoclastic as to 
 think that Mr. Gladstone was like Canning's " needy 
 knife-grinder" — and had "no story to tell," — at any rate, 
 that he chose to tell. And some, still more illnatured, 
 might suspect that, after having summoned the fortress to 
 surrender, Mr. Gladstone preferred to leave it to others 
 to carry on the siege — and that, finding the walls of his 
 Jericho did not crumble into dust at the first blast of his 
 trumpets, is now quite willing to leave it to his suc- 
 cessors to burn their fingers as much as they please in the 
 flames he had himself lighted, and which he now could 
 watch in safety at a distance. Time alone — and not a 
 very distant time — can discover which is the truest 
 explanation of Mr. Gladstone's unwonted silence. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is still alive — we are all glad such is 
 the case — and I will treat him as still the living leader 
 of the Democratic Party. But what a position it is that 
 Mr. Gladstone now holds. He is on the horns of a 
 dilemma — or rather a trilemma. Either the attack on 
 the Lords will, to use a common expression, "fizzle out " 
 before it reaches the Lords, or it will be made, — and 
 fail — Or it will be made — and succeed. If it "fizzles out" 
 Mr. Gladstone will have staked his reputation upon a 
 worthless — rotten cause, — and lost it. Or if it is made — 
 and fails — he will have to drain to the bitterest dregs
 
 54 
 
 the cup of humiliation ; and realize what Byron called 
 "the Hell of failure." If it is made — and succeeds— !Mr. 
 Gladstone, beyond all other men, will be most respon- 
 sible for the serious events which will follow. A pleasant 
 set of alternatives ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 We now pass on to Mr. Gladstone's successor. It 
 Mr. Gladstone was silent as to his methods of operation 
 not so is Lord Rosebery. Lord Rosebery has no 
 scruples in that respect, and is restrained by no 
 influences, political or personal, and he tells us at 
 once what Mr. Gladstone did not venture to declare — 
 that the Lords can only be abolished by force and that 
 he. Lord Rosebery, is prepared to resort to force if the 
 electorate will support him. 
 
 He says in his speech at Edinburgh, March 19th : — 
 
 " In the one case we have the two Chambers under a Liberal 
 Government ; under a Conservative Government we have a single 
 Chamber. Therefore I say that we are face to face with a great 
 difficulty, a great danger, a great peril to the State. When I first 
 began to agitate this question we were, perhaps, a third of the 
 House of Lords. Since then by frequent creation and frequent 
 conversion (laughter) we are reduced to a tenth of the whole 
 number, and not I think always a tenth. But is it possible to be- 
 lieve that in these daj^s, with the democratic suffrage that we have 
 established, that a House of Commons, elected bj- the democratic 
 suffrage, will suffer itself to be constantly thwarted, hindered, 
 and harassed by the action of an hereditarv" Chamber (cheers), in 
 which the proportion of Tories to Liberals is no less than ten to 
 one ? We are told that heroic measures ma}- be recommended. 
 We were, in fact, face to face with that last week in the House of 
 Commons, when a resolution, not, I think, conceived in a verv
 
 33 
 
 serious or practical spirit (laughter), was carried on this very 
 question. But it was carried by a majority of two (laughter and 
 cheers), and what I deduce t'mm that circumstance, as to which 
 one hardly knows whether to laugh or to cry (laughter), is that 
 there was no feeling contained in the majority against the present 
 Government ; quite the reverse. How strong then must be the 
 feeling against the House of Lords that could make so many 
 Liberals put the Government into a minority. Gentlemen, I say 
 that that is a great danger to the State. I have been talking of 
 remedies for many years past, constitutional remedies, remedies 
 within the four walls of the Constitution. I have not been able to 
 find them, for the simple reason that a Bill to be legal, whether 
 as modif3'ing or as going further with the House of Lords, must 
 be passed through both houses of Parliament before it constitu- 
 tionally becomes law. But I leave that subject to your serious 
 consideration. If it is to be dealt with by the present Government 
 it can only be dealt with with the backing, and on the summons, 
 and on the inspiration of a great popular feeling. (Cheers.) With- 
 out that backing, without that inspiration, and without that 
 summons we in this matter are absolutely impotent. (Cheers.) We 
 await your guidance and your direction ("You shall have it"), 
 and when we have it we shall be prepared to take what measures 
 you may inspire." 
 
 XX. 
 
 Observe in the first place that the Prime Minister 
 believes that " It is impossible in these days with a Demo- 
 " cratic Suffrage that a House of Commons will suffer 
 "itself to be constantly thwarted, hindered, and harassed 
 *'by the action of an hereditary Chamber." What does 
 this mean, but that the present House of Lords cannot 
 exist with a House of Commons, with a Democratic 
 Suffrage ? This was at Edinburgh — but at Birmingham, 
 Lord Rosebery went further and made an admission of ex- 
 ceeding gra\ ity which must be read in conjunction with
 
 56 
 
 his Edinburgh pledges. He said, " I have never met a 
 " reasonable man who could tell me of a Constitutional 
 " Measure by which we could put an end to the 
 " House of Lords." But only a moment before Lord 
 Rosebery had himself, "as a reasonable man," pro- 
 pounded at Birming-ham a '-Constitutional measure (as 
 " he thought) for ending the House of Lords," when he 
 stated dogmatically that "a Bill passed by the 
 " two Houses conjointly will put an end to one 
 "branch of the Legislature." How Lord Rosebery 
 can reconcile these marvellous inconsistencies and 
 contradictions does not concern us, — but his 
 own party. At Edinburgh he is undeterred by 
 any obstacle, and without the fear of Constitutional 
 restraints or penalties, he boldly declares " If this 
 "subject (the destruction of the House of Lords) 
 " is to be dealt with, it can only be dealt with on the 
 "summons and inspiration of a great people. We 
 "await your guidance, and your direction, and when we 
 " hear it (a remarkable pledge!), we shall be prepared to 
 ' ' take what measures you may inspire. " We will be your 
 slaves, and do your bidding ! We will do, not what we 
 think best as loyal Ministers of the Queen, but as your 
 humble servants, whatever you, our re\-olutionary 
 masters, may be good enough to inspire. 
 
 Lord Rosebery says, in language perfectly unmis- 
 takable, " I find I cannot abolish the Lords b}- con- 
 stitutional means. It can only be done by unconstitutional 
 means — that is the only way — and if you give us your in- 
 spiration and guidance 1 will do b\- unconstitutional 
 means what I have found is impossible to do by constitu-
 
 57 
 
 tional means." Now what can "unconstitutional " means 
 be but force ? If his words do not mean that they are 
 simph' meaning-less. Force, simple unadulterated force — 
 that is the language of the Prime Minister of England ! 
 if this is not inciting the masses to violence, what is it? 
 It sounds very like high treason. We are often told 
 that these fiery harangues are empty nothings, and that 
 those who attach some sort of importance to them, are 
 making- political mountains out of political molehills. 
 Are we doing so ? — or are we not trying to deal seriously 
 with matters that are serious — instead of treating them 
 with ill-timed levity? No one contests for a moment that 
 there are many who, in all sincerity of mind, believe that 
 Lord Rosebery's threats are stage-thunder, — and nothing 
 more. They hold a sincere conviction that, if he had the 
 will, he has not the master-mind, the intellectual strength, 
 to destroy a Constitution. They ridicule the notion that 
 he has either the power or the will to do so. They 
 feel quite happy and contented in the thought that 
 the best and only wise way to treat these irrational 
 " faddists," these " mannikin " revolutionists, is with 
 contemptuous ridicule. They are satisfied that Lord 
 Rosebery, in trying to pose as the leader of a Revolu- 
 tion, in which his own order, to which he owes 
 whatever success he has obtained in his social and 
 political career, would be destroyed, is simply mas- 
 querading in a garb which, if he has donned it seriously, 
 is curiously unfitted to him. They profess utter dis- 
 belief both in his power and his sincerity. They are 
 moved to much laughter when they pretend that to see 
 this statesman struggling with all his puny strength to
 
 draw a sword from its scabbard, which it would take a 
 ifiant's strength to draw and to wield, is, to their minds, 
 to see nothing" but a ludicrous and side-splitting exhi- 
 bition ; and these irreverend scoffers go further (much 
 further it would be impossible to go), and, with an 
 audacity which almost savours of profanity, assert 
 their unshakeable conviction that the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer when he threatens to exterminate the 
 Peers is very little better than what the French would 
 call a "Cromwell du Cirque a cinq sous!" If these 
 sections of political thought choose to deal lightly with 
 the events of the moment, they are, at any rate, howev^er 
 deluded, perfectly consistent and honest in their course ; 
 but what excuse, — what palliation can there be for 
 trifling on the part of the leaders of what promises to be 
 the greatest upheaval of political and social forces since the 
 days of Charles the First. It is trifling with the patience of 
 every intelligent class of politicians, to tell us that Lord 
 Rosebery's words are not to be taken literally and 
 seriously, that Mr. Labouchere is a mere political farceur 
 and charlatan, not worthy of attention, and that all these 
 leaders are speaking, to use a phrase more common 
 than refined — with their tongues in their cheeks. 
 It is time to have done with this trifling, and 
 to tell these leaders that there aie thousands of 
 earnest men in both political parties, who are 
 determined to take them at their word and to keep them 
 to their utterances. If the leaders of the Democratic 
 Party are laughing in their sleeves at their Democratic 
 followers, they will find the Democratic masses are in 
 earnest, and, if thev try to fool them bv leading them
 
 59 
 
 into very dang-erous paths for electioneering" objects, 
 without any intention to do anything- but land them in 
 a ditch when they have served their purpose and 
 when it suits them to throw them over and leave them to 
 their own devices to g-et out of the ditch as well as they 
 can, they will probably find that the democratic 
 masses will teach them a lesson the}' will remember 
 that they cannot trifle with such political edg^ed tools as. 
 the aspirations and ambitions of a larg-e Revolutionary 
 party. Are we to treat the Prime Minister's utterances 
 when he threatens the Crown, as the babbling- of a school- 
 boy ? Are the harangues of the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, when he condemns the House of Lords to 
 death, to be treated as the cries of a peevish suckling- in 
 its mother's arms ? No one knows better than Lord 
 Rosebery that an attack on the Lords is really an attack 
 on the Throne. One cannot exist without the other. Ls 
 treason to the Crown, — Is treachery to your oaths, a lig"ht 
 and laug'hing- matter ? What is the oath of a Privy Coun- 
 cillor ? " You shall be a true and faithful servant unto 
 " the Queen's Majesty, you shall not know of any manner, 
 " of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her 
 " Majesty's person, house, crown, or dignity royal. You 
 "shall lett and withstand the same to the uttermost of 
 " your power. . . . And generally, ///«////;/;/_§•.?, you 
 " shall do as a true and faithful servant ought to do to 
 "Her Majesty." Is a Minister a "true and faithful 
 servant " to Her Majesty, who agitates for the 
 destruction of a portion of the Constitution which, 
 in its ruin, would eventually entail the fall of the 
 Throne ? We here then have the pleasant spectacle
 
 6o 
 
 of a Prime Minister —and a Privy Councillor, who 
 has taken the oath of a Privy Councillor that he 
 would allow nothing" to be done which could affect the 
 "Dignity" of the Crown — not only pledg'ing' himself to 
 overthrow a portion of the Leg'islature, and of the Con- 
 stitution of which the Crown is the head; but also 
 pledging" himself to destroy it by "unconstitutional 
 means" if necessary, and if he receives the proper 
 amount of "guidance and inspiration" from below. 
 Oaths seem to sit but lightly on these Ministers'conscien- 
 ces. The Privy Councillor in his oath, swears that he will 
 suffer nothing that will affect the "Dignity" or House 
 of his Sovereign. How can a Priv^y Councillor support 
 a movement for establishing a "paramount Chamber," 
 "paramount" over the authority of the Crown, without 
 affecting the " Dignity" of the Sovereign, and how then 
 can a Privy Councillor affect the "Dignity" of the 
 Crown without being false to his oath? Mr. Gladstone 
 is a Privy Councillor, Lord Rosebery is one, Mr. 
 Morley is one also, and when these Privy Councillors 
 readily assent, not only to this attack on the Lords, but 
 to the demand for superior authority over the Sovereign, 
 I will ask them how they find it possible to reconcile 
 their pledges to the Democratic Party with their oaths 
 to their Sovereign as Privy Councillors. If the con- 
 sciences of these Ministers are not troubled when they 
 remember their oaths, there must be something peculiar 
 in democratic principles which enables Ministers to for- 
 get the sacredness of an oath, and to act as public men 
 in a fashion which would be called dishonourable in 
 prixate life.
 
 6i 
 
 XXI. 
 
 We will now deal with the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer's speech at the meeting- at Portsmouth on 
 February 14th, on the occasion of the gathering- 
 of the National Liberal Association. The occasion 
 was remarkable for two events. It was remarkable 
 as being- the occasion on which a Cabinet Minister 
 of high standing, ability, of great influence in this 
 country, of an experience and an authority far 
 greater than those possessed by his Chief, pledged him- 
 self, in the face of his nation, by supporting the Resolution 
 adopted by the Federation to the policy of placing all 
 the powers of Government in the hands of one assembly. 
 But the occasion was perhaps even more memorable 
 for an incident which marked it. The Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer was the guest at the meeting. A naval 
 officer was the Chairman of it.* In this free country 
 there is nothing to prevent the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer from attacking the Lords and the Throne as 
 much as he pleases, except, of course, his oaths, which 
 seem to be easily forgotten when a democratic minister has 
 to gain the applause of a democratic gathering. But a 
 naval officer in her Majesty's service, wearing her 
 Majesty's uniform, and holding her Majesty's com- 
 mission is bound, whether a democrat or not, to take 
 notice, as chairman, at any political meeting, of any 
 outburst of disloyalty of any kind if it comes before his 
 notice — at least that has hitherto been the usual custom 
 in the Royal services. But what happened at this 
 Portsmouth meeting? When the National Anthem was 
 * Captain the Hon. Thomas Brand.
 
 62 
 
 commenced the assemblage rose, not to join in it but to 
 drown it with yells, hooting, jeers, and shouts, and to 
 insult the Queen by this open disloyalty — and this at 
 Portsmouth — with a naval officer in the chair !* What 
 did that officer do ? Either he would not or dared not 
 interfere with a single protest against this insult to his 
 Queen. Not a syllable of remonstrance, not an 
 attempt, however slight, to use the authority of a chair- 
 man to stop this disloyal outbreak was made by the 
 officer who was in the chair. Ought not this officer 
 to have left the chair at once when his Queen was 
 insulted ? Or, at the very least, to have publicly 
 explained his conduct afterwards? It is difficult to under- 
 stand why the conduct of this officer was not brought 
 to the notice of his superior authorities or submitted to 
 the notice of the Service Clubs to which it is understood 
 this gentleman still belongs. How long would a na\ al 
 officer, at a time not very distant, have been allowed by 
 his brother officers to continue in their societv if he 
 had allowed the Queen's name to be insulted in 
 public and had not had either the courage or the 
 loyalty to denounce it from the chair he occupied ? 
 Fortunately for our country, it is not always 
 that the National Anthem is dealt with in that manner 
 by those who wear the Queen's uniform. We have lateh 
 read of that gallant band of Englishmen in Matabeleland 
 who died in their country's service with the notes of that 
 loyal Anthem of their country the last words uttered b_\ 
 them in life — true and loyal men to the death. Compare 
 
 * See Mornt?i£r Post, Da j7_y A'e7i's, Portsmouth Papers of Feb. 15. 
 
 1894.
 
 those heroes who died face to face with the savages of 
 Africa, with words of loyalty on their dying lips, with 
 the officer who held her Majesty's 'commission, who 
 had not a word to say as a protest, when these civilized 
 Englishmen shouted down the Anthem of their country. 
 In the heroism of the one there is something that will 
 make an Englishman's pulse beat quicker with pride as 
 long as history records the tale. In the act of the officer 
 there is something which jars terribly with the confidence 
 and trust which Englishmen have hitherto reposed, with- 
 out questioning, in the loyalty of the officers of the Royal 
 Navy, a confidence which has been as rudely shaken by 
 the silence and inaction of the Naval Authorities and 
 the Naval Clubs, as by the disloyal act of this officer 
 itself. Whatever may be the explanation of this 
 Naval Officer, the fact remains that an officer in Her 
 Majesty's service was Chairman at a meeting of the 
 National Liberal Association which declared that the 
 Chamber of the People should be "paramount" over the 
 authority of the Queen. And this is what the Navy 
 tolerates in these days ! As an illustration — and it is 
 nothing more — of the licence allowed to democratic 
 action, it is complete. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 It was at this meeting the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer indulged in one of his usual tirades against the 
 Peers to which we are long accustomed — that was to be 
 expected — but what gave his speech value and importance 
 was that he supported, as the mouthpiece of Lord 
 Rosebery's Administration, the resolution which had
 
 64 
 
 been proposed and adopted by the National Liberal I 
 Association, and that resolution was, as we have seen, as ' 
 
 
 follows : — 
 
 " That ihe habitual disregard of the national will, manifested 
 by the House of Lords in delaying, mutilating, and rejecting 
 measures demanded by the country and approved by the House 
 of Commons, is an intolerable abuse of the powers possessed by 
 the hereditary and non-representative Chamber ; and that the 
 Ministry may be assured of the enthusiastic and strenuous support 
 of the Liberal party in whatever measures it adopts to secure that 
 the House of Commons shall be the paramount authority in the 
 State." 
 
 In his speech, and also by his presence, the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer enforced the demand 
 and supported the Resolution for the complete 
 independence, the "paramount authority," of the 
 Lower House. It is this claim on the part of a single 
 Chamber to exercise "paramount authority" over 
 the Crown, which can never be permitted, and will en- 
 danger the peace of the country. And it is to this grave 
 and almost seditious enterprise that the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer stands pledged. Could he, as an honourable 
 statesman, utter such an indictment against the Lords 
 and fail to take action against them ? It cannot be 
 supposed that he could withdraw from the attack he 
 has done so much to inspire, or would be content with 
 some harmless, inoffensive, half-hearted action. To 
 take a slight liberty with Horace, shall we have to 
 say at some future time " Moiis parturit : — iiascitut 
 ridicuhis Mus?" Can it be supposed for a moment that 
 like another illustrious statesman, on another state 
 occasion, he would chalk up on the walls of West-
 
 65 
 
 minster, " Down with the Lords, "and then run away to 
 the g-lens and glades of the New Forest? 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 True it is that the magnificent promise of the opening- 
 of the campaign in the earHer part of the Session in 1894 
 against the House of Lords, so successfully inaugurated 
 by Mr. Labouchere, was not sustained or fulfilled in Par- 
 liament during the rest of the Session, whatever may 
 have been the case in the country outside Parlia- 
 ment. The cannonade tailed off into a dropping fire of 
 small shot, of the peashooter kind, against the fortress. 
 The valiant heroes of the besieging force thought better 
 of storming the House, and preferred an underground 
 method of attack, and prepared and sprung a mine under 
 the Chairs of the unoffending Clerks of the House — as 
 they sat at the table of that House, a non-combatant 
 body of men — and as perfectly innocent of any of the 
 frightful charges brought against the Members of the 
 House as the very chairs themselves. It was, undeniably, 
 a brilliant and original conception of genius of a very high 
 order to imagine a tactical operation so grand and so 
 sure of attaining its end, as the commencement of the 
 demolition of the Peers of England by stopping the pay 
 of the Clerks of that House ! And this was the sub- 
 lime act of Democratic Statesmanship ! But whatever 
 we may think of its petty malignity — however we may 
 despise and laugh at it for its contemptible absurdity — 
 we must not forget that it narrowly escaped being 
 crowned with the same success as Mr. Labouchere 's 
 more bold and straightforward proposal. it was a bare
 
 66 
 
 majority of nine which saved the Clerks, — and of course, 
 the Constitution ! Perhaps when the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer introduces his next Budget — no, I beg^ 
 pardon, the next Finance Bill — after having- invoked 
 Heaven and Earth to witness the iniquities of the Peers, 
 he will propose, in the lofty tones befitting the subject, 
 to abolish the pay of the Charwomen of the Chamber I 
 And why not ? If the Clerks at the Table are to be 
 "ended," why are the Charwomen to be neither 
 "mended" nor "ended"? Surely the crimes of these 
 "enemies of the People" are very much the same. If 
 the Clerks are to be "ended" because they sit 
 m chairs at the Table of the Lords, why are not 
 the Charwomen — humble but dangerous personages ! — 
 whose degrading duty it is to dust the crimson benches 
 of the " hereditary miscreants "* — to be " ended," or 
 "mended"? If the "hereditary miscreants " are not 
 so easily to be turned out of their Chamber by resolu- 
 tions, it is, indeed, a noble thought to attack the Peers 
 by stopping the pay of the Clerks of that House. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Jesting, however, is out of place, beyond a passing 
 laugh at the extravagance of a section of irresponsible 
 democrats who have broken away from the main body 
 and followed their own devices and tried to force the 
 pace of their own leaders and party. If the onslaught 
 upon the unoffending Clerks in the House of Lords was 
 calculated to bring ridicule and contempt upon the 
 whole movement, it would be a terrible mistake to 
 * Sir \V. Lawson's speech at Leeds, June, 1894. 
 
 i
 
 67 
 
 imag'ine that underneath these follies there did not lie a 
 deep and g-rave seriousness of purpose. The Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer is a leader of very different 
 mettle to these untrained skirmishers. He will 
 neither lead them into ridiculous positions nor will 
 he abandon them in the hour of need. Marshal 
 Soult once said that the presence of Napoleon in 
 the field of battle was always worth 10,000 men. If 
 the extreme and undisciplined section of his party, 
 probably of his Irish Brig-ade, have run riot and placed 
 themselves in a position of ridicule, the ingenuity of 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have little 
 difficulty in retrieving the lost laurels, and his presence, 
 as that of a leader in whom they confide, will prove of a 
 Napoleonic value to his regular, as well as irregular, 
 troops in the coming struggle. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 A man and a statesman credited with the possession 
 of honour and personal integrity, he will stand to his 
 guns. Such a chief will not retreat from the head of 
 his forces in the face of the enemy and leave his followers 
 to carry on a guerilla warfare, such as has hitherto 
 given these attacks the character of unreality and 
 harmlessness. At least, we are bound to suppose 
 that such will be the case. No doubt there are 
 sceptics in this world. But he is bound and pledged 
 to the hilt to follow up his Portsmouth philippics with 
 deeds to prove to a somewhat sceptical world that his 
 brave words were not empty hectoring. It is the fact 
 of the honour of these great English leaders being
 
 68 
 
 pledg-ed to advance on this path of revolution that g-ives 
 (as it is so important, so vitally important to' insist upon) 
 such gravity and darkness to the future. There is not a 
 statesman in England who is more fully aware than the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer that, when the two 
 antagonistic lines of Constitutionalism and (if such a 
 barbarous word can be coined) the " Unicameranism " 
 of democracy are advancing to close quarters against 
 each other, as they are now doing — one line or the 
 other — as in battle with armed battalions — must 
 give way if a collision is to be avoided. Maidas 
 do not occur every day, either in actual war or in 
 political strife. But in this crisis what can prevent a 
 political Maida ? If neither line gives way (and which 
 will do so ?) the shock of a collision is, of course, inevit- 
 able. If that be so and neither line will give way (as at 
 Maida) after (still to use warlike metaphors) the crash of 
 fixing bayonets has been heard and two bristling lines of 
 glittering cold steel are levelled to the charge, what 
 human force can prevent a collision ? As in war, so in 
 political conflict. And, if this is so, will not those, who, 
 like the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have encouraged 
 their rank and file by their Rhodian rhetoric and their 
 inflammatory appeals to the people to follow them as 
 their heaven-born leaders, be bound in honour to lead 
 this crusade, or at any rate to couch their lances against 
 the enemy, whether or not this crusade leads to the fall of 
 the Crown and plunges their country into all the hellish 
 horrors of civil war ? The hour has struck ; — the 
 "Jehad " has been proclaimed ; — the " Sacred Shirt "* 
 
 * Mr. Labouchere has announced, iirbi et orbi, — the gratify-
 
 69 
 
 has been unfolded ; — the Prophet has arisen ! — the 
 Mahdi is there ! Surely the last faint hopes of 
 avertini^ a collision must vanish when the chiefs of the 
 army advance to the front, as they are advancing now, 
 and sword in hand, lead the charge at the head of their 
 troops. And this is the perilous position of the two 
 contending factions — and the fearful responsibility of 
 the Ministers who now rule the destinies of England. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 But another Cabinet Minister has spoken. This 
 time it is the Secretary for Ireland, who has been 
 frank and outspoken, even to the verge of sedition. 
 As, however, in the whole of his speech against the 
 House of Lords there is not a single new argument, it 
 is not necessary to go over old ground to answer the 
 old, tattered, and well-worn arguments. But if his 
 arguments were old, his threats were new, and very 
 significant. This is what he says : — 
 
 " I would on\y say, do not forg-et that there is very Httle chance 
 of our being- in practice and effect other than what is called 
 unicanieran, because the House of Commons will never tolerate the 
 creation of a rival, equal, or co-ordinate rival authority." 
 
 A Single Chamber — unchecked — uncontrolled ! 
 And again : — 
 " As Mr. Gladstone said, the time of taking- the people's 
 
 ing fact that, when the time comes for him to "strip" — to do 
 battle against the Lords, — he is ready not only to take off his coat 
 and waistcoat, but his shirt also ! Mr. Labouchere's shirt, like 
 Mahomed's, would, of course, rouse the wild enthusiasm of " the 
 Faithful " to the very verge of phrenzy in the day of battle ; — like 
 the "White Plume." of Henry of Navarre, — wherever the fray was 
 the thickest, — there would be seen the maddening, soul-thrilling 
 sight of the shirt of Mr. Labouchere !
 
 70 
 
 judgment on this question must rest with the Cabinet of the 
 day. (Hear, hear.) We may depend upon it, gentlemen, that 
 whatever we may decide upon this movement, which entered 
 upon a new phase at Leeds, must go on — (cheers) — because the 
 diversity between political judgment and political sentiment in the 
 House of Lords and in the House of Commons is unfortunately 
 not likely to grow less as time goes on, but the contrary. The 
 more people like you find the possession of political power in your 
 hands, the more will political demands be made which the House 
 of Lords will be disinclined to accept. Therefore we cannot look 
 forward — I regret it — to a time when the divergence between the 
 House of Lords and the House of Commons will grow less. We 
 must look forward to a constant widening of that divergence, and 
 therefore, gentlemen, the movement — let them mock as they like 
 — the movement which was begun at Leeds was a spontaneous 
 movement, it was not an artificial movement, it was a movement 
 which arose out of political urgency, and it is a movement of 
 which we shall not hear the last until some effective step has been 
 taken to carry out the will of the people." 
 
 This gives us the full programme of the Revolu- 
 tionary Party. A Unicameran Government — (we owe 
 this uncouth word " unicameran " to the Secretary of 
 Ireland) — to exercise "paramount" authority without 
 control or check over English legislation. 
 
 But Mr. Morley falls back on a great authority to 
 support him, as he imagines. He calls Mr. Bright into 
 court to bear witness against the Lords. But if ever a 
 case was damaged by its own witness, it is Mr. Morley's 
 — Mr. Bright has answered Mr. Morley. Mr. Morley 
 says, it must be remembered, that the Commons wil' 
 not tolerate a "co-ordinate" authority such as the 
 Lords possess at present. Very good ! What says 
 Mr. Bright? 
 
 "Why not enact that if the Peers have rejected a Bill once,
 
 71 
 
 and it has been considered in a subsequent Session by the 
 Commons, and after due dehberation has been again sent up to 
 the Peers, it would pass and should receive the Royal assent and 
 become law. (Cheers.) Now, I said years ago that a House of 
 Legislature, hereditary and irrespcmsible, cannot be a permanent 
 institution in a free country. (Cheers.) Bear in mind I said 
 hereditary and irresponsible. By some method the two Houses, 
 if they are io continue to exist, must be reconciled. They must 
 be equally or sufficiently responsible to the national wants and the 
 national conscience. That, perhaps, is difficult, but it is not im- 
 possible. I say no more about it. This is not the time, but I 
 recommend the observations I have made upon it to the calm con- 
 sideration of the people of this countrj\" 
 
 Although the House of Lords has known no more 
 determined adversary than Mr. Bright, his objection to 
 it was founded on the ground of its composition in its 
 " hereditary principle and irresponsibility," and not to it 
 as a Second Chamber. 
 
 Every word, therefore, of Mr. Bright is fatal to Mr. 
 Morley. Mr. Bright says the two Houses could be 
 reconciled. Mr. Morley thinks it impossible to recon- 
 cile the Upper House with the Lower House. Mr. 
 Bright holds an opinion exactly the reverse, and 
 believes that such a reconciliation " although difficult, 
 is no^ impossible ! " 
 
 Mr. Morley objects to any Chamber whatever, 
 whether it was elective, nominated, or hereditary. 
 
 Mr. Bright objects to it because of its "hereditary 
 principle and irresponsibility," both of which could be 
 reformed without its destruction. 
 
 Mr. Morley wants to abolish the House of Lords. 
 Mr. Bright would rather save it by reform. He wants
 
 72 
 
 to reform it, if by so doing" he would save it, and so 
 recognizes its vital necessity as a part of the Parlia- 
 mentary machinery. Exactly the reverse are the views 
 of Mr. Morley. Mr. Bright, in condemning- the House 
 of Lords as an " hereditary and irresponsible " Chamber, 
 laid the greatest stress on the fact that his 
 objection to the House of Lords was solely on account 
 of its " hereditary and irresponsible character," not 
 because it was a second Chamber. Mr. Bright says 
 " Reform it and let it be reconciled to the Lower 
 House." Mr. Morley says exactly the opposite, " Let it 
 die, root and branch, it cannot be reformed or recon- 
 ciled," and this is Mr. Morley's own witness. 
 
 Mr. Bright, then, has not helped Mr. Morley one 
 iota, for the purpose for which he was specially invoked, 
 in his crusade for suppressing, instead of reforming, the 
 Upper House. On the contrary, when as I repeat, Mr. 
 Bright stated his objections to that House he guards 
 himself by saying, " Bear in mind I said 'hereditary and 
 irresponsible, '"that is to say, " Reformthe House in these 
 respects, and it will work with the Commons." Reform 
 the Upper House, but do not destroy it, if you can 
 possibly help it — that is Mr. Bright's argument. Could 
 there be anything more diverse or antagonistic than 
 the views of Mr. Morley and Mr. Bright whom the 
 Secretary for Ireland has called to support him ? 
 
 And, clearly, while we find that Mr. Bright "states 
 that an hereditary and irresponsible Chamber could not 
 be a permanent institution in a free country," laying 
 stress upon the words " hereditary and irresponsible," 
 it is of great importance to observe that he never
 
 73 
 
 uttered a single word in favour of the abolition of the 
 House of Lords, pure and simple, if it could be re- 
 formed. Much less has he ever uttered a word in favour 
 of that " Unicameran " theory which would be log-ically, 
 absolutely, and diametrically opposed to the views 
 he took, that the two Houses could be, and 
 mig-ht be, reconciled. To reconcile the two Houses, 
 which Mr. Bright believes possible, and Mr. Morley 
 impossible, would be clearly fatal to Mr. Morley's 
 Unicameran idea of parliamentary government. The 
 very fact of Mr. Bright being in favour of 
 a reconciliation between the two Houses and his 
 belief in its feasibility, proves that he was distinctly 
 opposed to the "Unicameran " system of Mr. Morley, 
 which would not as he expresses it "tolerate the existence 
 of an equal, or co-ordinate authority," such an authority 
 that is, as the House of Lords possesses at present. 
 
 In fact, if the principle of hereditar}- legislation had 
 been abolished(andit is quite possible that atsome future, 
 not very distant, day it may be found wise to jettison 
 that part of the cargo of the vessel of State) and if 
 some kind of elective principle or a non-hereditary selec- 
 tion or some nominative process had been introduced, Mr. 
 Bright would have been satisfied with the Upper House. 
 Mr. Morley and his friends would be exactly the reverse, 
 because such a reform would not only have recognized 
 the necessity of the House itself, but would give it a 
 new vitality — a new lease of viseful life, and an increased 
 power to the LIpper Chamber — which is the very thing 
 least desired by the democrats of the da}'. 
 
 And this difference, which is so marked, between Mr.
 
 74 
 
 Bright and Mr. Morley, is an excellent example of the 
 wide gulf which separates the old Constitutional 
 Radicalism of sixty years ago — if we can call it so, and 
 the new democratic demands. The old Radicalism 
 asked for reforms to make the old institutions run more 
 smoothly together and work more harmoniously. 
 The modern democrats ask for their complete destruc- 
 tion so as to grasp supreme power in a form of 
 government which would be entirely at variance with 
 the doctrines of Mill or Bright. When the Radicals 
 sacked Nottingham and burnt Bristol, and when 
 Birmingham threatened to march on London, it was to 
 obtain a Reform of the Electoral system, not to shatter 
 a Throne — and upset a Constitution. The Democrats 
 now ask for a Unicameran Government. This is not 
 Reform. It is not Radicalism. It is Revolution — pure 
 and simple, and we have a right to say that to such a 
 form of government we will never submit. Mr. Bright, 
 unlike Mr. Morley, was a Reformer, but never a Revo- 
 lutionist. He was true to the People — but he was as 
 true to his Sovereign — and he would have opposed to 
 the death the Unicameran Chamber which was to 
 supersede the authority of the Crown — and be the 
 " paramount " authority in the State. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 When Mr. Morley, who proposes to make the 
 authority of the Commons "paramount" over the 
 Crown, ventures to call Mr. Bright as a witness to 
 support his views, let him remember that Mr. Bright 
 always repudiated the charge of being a " Democrat,"
 
 75 
 
 He said, on more than one occasion, " I am not a 
 ' Democrat.' " Certainly, he never was a " Democrat " 
 in the sense of the word as it would be used by 
 Mr. Morley. At Manchester, December loth, 1858, 
 he says in his Reform speech, " We will mention 
 ' two or three thing's that we do not want. We 
 ' do not propose in the smallest deg-ree to call in 
 ' question or to limit the prerog-atives of the Crown. I 
 ' believe we are prepared to say that if the throne of 
 ' England be filled with so much dig'nity, and so much 
 ' purity as we have known it in our time, and as 
 ' we know it now to be, we hope that the 
 ' venerable Monarchy may be perpetual. Nor do 
 ' we wish to discuss even, much less to limit, 
 ' the leg-al and Constitutional privileges or pre- 
 ' rogatives of the House of Peers." What would 
 the Democrats of to-day say to such Radicalism ? 
 Would it be possible to reconcile these views of Mr. 
 Bright's with the Unicameran doctrines of Mr. Morley ?' 
 Mr. Bright, to whom thousands of the masses of the 
 people still look with veneration for guidance as to what 
 they should do, was the Radical Champion of the 
 people — the advocate of Free Trade — the opponent of 
 this country's Foreign policy and the wars it pro- 
 duced — the foe of class oppression — the advocate 
 of all civil and religious liberty ; but never by 
 word or deed, was Mr. Bright disloyal to his 
 Sovereign. He never by word or deed has given 
 the slightest suggestion that he would consent to 
 any such organic alteration in the Institutions of 
 the State as the substitution of the Sovereignty of the
 
 76 
 
 People in a Sing-le Assembly for the Sovereig-nty of 
 the Crown. *Nor will it ever be forgotten how* Mr. 
 Bright in London on an occasion when his Queen's 
 name was treated lig^htly before some Radical g^athering 
 leapt to his feet, and with indig-nant eloquence, in burn- 
 ing words, defended his Queen as only Mr. Bright could 
 do. We know how a Naval Officer of the present day 
 behaved when his Queen was insulted. We know too how 
 Mr. Bright behaved, and the difference between the 
 Radical of the past and the Democrat of to-day is com- 
 plete ! In the same speech at Manchester, Mr. Bright 
 declares : "If anybody says that we are for levelling 
 "doctrines, that we intend to have a President instead of 
 " a Queen, you, at least (at Manchester) will not believe 
 "them." He repudiated with scorn the very notion of 
 superseding the Queen by a President. What would he 
 have said to the notion of superseding both Queen and 
 President by one " paramount " Chamber? 
 
 Again, after emphatically stating that he "was not 
 a Democrat " he, at Manchester, on November 20th, 
 1866, in a speech on Reform, says, " I believe that if it 
 (that is, the extension of the Suffrag"e to certain classes) 
 " w^ere so extended we should arrive at a point at which 
 " so long as any of us are permitted to meddle with 
 " the politics of our country no further change would be 
 " demanded. I am in accord with our ancient Con- 
 " stitution " (no " Unicameran " Government ! no 
 Abolition of the House of the Peers !) " and I will 
 " stand by it !" Memorable words ! and words that 
 Mr. Morley would do well to ponder upon before he calls 
 Mr. Bright to give testimony in his favour again. 
 * Bright s answer to Mr. Ayrton at St. James's Hall, Dec. 4th, iSob.
 
 77 
 XXVIII. 
 
 And why should Mr. Brig-ht's theory of reconcilia- 
 tion of the two Houses be impracticable? 
 
 Although it is the object, of course, of these remarks 
 to show the value of the House of Lords as a Second 
 Chamber, in doing so, it is not in the least necessary to 
 deny for a moment that the hereditary principle in the 
 Lords is the weak point in the line of the defence. It 
 is the point on which hitherto, in the days of the old 
 fashioned Radicalism all attacks were concentrated, 
 and there are thousands of voters now who would 
 vote for the abolition of the Peers solely on the 
 ground of that hereditary principle, and who would 
 not vote against an Upper Chamber unless such a 
 principle existed. Now it must be remembered that 
 the hereditary principle, which is absolutely indefensible 
 in theory, and can only be defended by the fact of its 
 having worked well and peacefully for centuries, is not a 
 vital necessity to the Upper House. On the contrary, 
 if the hereditary principle ceased to exist all the essen- 
 tial powers, all the powers which make it the co-ordinate 
 authority in the State with the Commons, would still 
 survive and be considerably strengthened. But however 
 that may be, it cannot be too strongly insisted upon, that 
 in the present day it is not against the hereditary 
 principle that the democrats are crying, but against the 
 existence of any Second Chamber whatever, and I would 
 ask those who are going to vote against the Lords on 
 account of the hereditary principle, two things : — First, 
 is it a very reasonable thing to abolish the whole of a 
 Chamber in order to reform a part of the whole which
 
 78 
 
 can be reformed ? And I would also ask them to bear in 
 mind that even now a very large proportion of the Peers 
 who vote in the Upper House, do not vote by hereditary 
 right. In the House of Lords there are about 500 Peers. 
 Of these, including Archbishops, Bishops, Irish and 
 Scotch Representative Peers, Lords of Appeal, and about 
 65 "first creations," in all about 140 do not vote by 
 hereditary right. So that nearly 25 per cent — or a quarter 
 of the voting power of the Upper House — is in the 
 hands of those who are no more hereditary legislators 
 than members of the House of Commons. But it might 
 be deemed advisable to save the most valuable part of 
 this branch of the Legislature by getting rid of the whole 
 of the least valuable, and so do away with one of Mr. 
 Bright's objections. 
 
 If a permanent and complete reconciliation between 
 the two Houses could be effected at the cost of the 
 ending the hereditary principle, it is possible that a 
 maximum of benefit to the nation might be obtained by 
 the minimum sacrifice and cost of what is now a danger 
 and a weakness. 
 
 * XXIX. 
 
 If the Portsmouth meeting, where the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer sounded the keynote of this threatened 
 revolution by demanding that there should be one 
 " paramount " Chamber, the Leeds Conference so far 
 altered the mode of attack as to disguise the demand 
 for the abolition of the LTpper House under the very thin 
 veil of a curtailment of the Peers' powers, such as by the 
 •ending of the Veto. Of course the ending of the \'eto
 
 79 
 
 is the same as the ending of the House, and it is not 
 necessary to discuss the two separately. On one point 
 the Leeds Conference were clear and definite, that the 
 Veto must be abolished. We have, then, united on this 
 one point, the late Prime Minister, the present Prime 
 Minister, the whole of the present Administration, the 
 Liberal Association, the thousand Delegates represent- 
 ing, doubt it as much as you please, a large mass of 
 opinion, at the Leeds Conference. We must, indeed, be 
 living in a fool's paradise if we under-estimate what is 
 passing before our eyes. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Significant as the Leeds Conference undoubtedly was 
 in its political decision, it marks, in one respect, a very re- 
 markable advance upon the Portsmouth meeting. At 
 Portsmouth, at any rate, there was not a speaker who had 
 the courage to speak in terms of approval of the murder 
 of a king. At Leeds was heard, for the first time in public 
 for many years, from an educated Englishman, an open 
 approval of regicide. Since this controversy began no 
 such violent and treasonable language has been heard 
 as was uttered by Sir W. Lawson. It was reserved for 
 this Apostle of Temperance to openly express approval 
 of regicide, besides using other choice expressions, such 
 as calling the Peers " hereditary miscreants." In tones 
 of pride, he states that he is " proud to belong to a people 
 who beheaded ' their King. '" A precious sample oi 
 the eloquence of Temperance ! There is not a drunkard 
 in England who would not be ashamed of the language 
 used by this Apostle of Temperance !
 
 8o 
 
 In this case, under the garb of the democrat, 
 you find the heart of the regicide ! Allusion is made 
 to this gentleman's utterances principally to illustrate 
 the lengths to which Parliamentary authorities as well 
 as judicial will, very unwisely, permit seditious harangues 
 to pass unchallenged in these times. I would, however, 
 venture to ask why this approval of regicide by a 
 Member of Parliament — which was uttered as an 
 open incentive to the masses to follow the example 
 he approved of (or it would be without meaning) has been 
 allowed to pass unnoticed by the Speaker in Parliament? 
 Is there no one in the House of Commons wuth sufficient 
 courage to call this mischievous agitator to account for 
 this attempt at high treason ? Surely there is not a very 
 wide difference between the politician who is " proud to 
 belong to the nation which beheaded its king," and the 
 anarchist who carries that approval of regicide into 
 practice and assassinates the ruler of a country. Sir 
 Wilfrid Lawson applauds those who beheaded their 
 sovereign. Has Sir Wilfrid forgotten the Parliamentary 
 oath he has taken ? Contrast these two cases. A 
 wretched printer named Cantwell is put into the dock! 
 for threats against the sovereign. The Baronet is 
 "proud to belong to a nation which beheaded its king,'] 
 and was not placed by Cantwell's side. If ever there was 
 a political casefor the Public Prosecutorit was this. It wasS 
 a gross and glaring injustice that Cantwell was punishecj 
 and Sir Wilfrid Lawson allowed to go free. And i 
 was all the more grossly unjust because this approval 
 of regicide, with the suggestion it would conve; 
 — cominsT from an educated man — a Member O/j
 
 Parliament — holding a good position in that class of 
 society which he delights in befouling — a leader in the 
 Temperance Party — is far more likely to produce evil 
 results than the vapouring menaces of the uneducated, 
 wretched, half-starved printer Cantwell. And the time 
 which the Baronet chooses to expound his regicidal doc- 
 trines is a moment when there seems to be a dangerous 
 epidemic of assassination spreading throughout Europe 
 and attacking civilized countries. Crispi and Carnot 
 show that the doctrine of assassination does not want 
 for willing hands to put it into execution. As the Public 
 Prosecutor had not the courage to prosecute this Member 
 ■of Parliament he has failed in his duty. Cantwell was 
 punished. Sir W. Lawson was unpunished. One 
 law for the rich man, another for the poor! This seems 
 to be a bitter truth, when the sedition happens to be 
 ■on the part of the poor man — when the poor man is 
 picked out for punishment — because he is a poor man — 
 and the rich man is allowed to escape — because he is a 
 rich man — as in this case !
 
 82 
 
 PART III. 
 I. 
 
 When the leading statesmen of the Liberal party 
 deliberatelyadopt a policy which no one denies is a revolu- 
 tion, and when they ask the nation to alter the system 
 of government and its whole Parliamentary and Consti- 
 tutional system in order to establish a form of govern- 
 ment exactly the reverse to that which had been in force 
 for centuries ; their only justification for the serious step 
 they are taking, which will imperil the internal peace of 
 the Empire, and consequently must involve the most 
 serious responsibility, must be that the general feeling of 
 the masses of the nation was ripe for such a revolution- 
 ary change. That the country has become more 
 democratic in its opinions and customs (and especially 
 if democracy is coupled with deterioration), may be 
 admitted as an undeniable truth. Social signs are perhaps 
 as significant in that respect as political symptoms. Free 
 fights in Parliament, fisticuff's between members, scenes 
 in the House of Parliament which would have disgraced 
 an American backwoods Court House — scenes con- 
 doned by the Prime Minister, and not condemned 
 by the Speaker by any word of censure in the 
 journals of the House — freedom of manners of an 
 American type permeating through all the sections 
 of the social community, Prime Ministers leading in 
 their winning race horses, to please a howling
 
 83 
 
 racing mob, are as much tokens of the advance of what 
 most English people understand as democracy, as the 
 thunders of the Leeds Conference. Such a spectacle as 
 the last, which must make not only the Nonconformist 
 conscience but the "judicious "grieve, marks at once the 
 strides with which democratic habits have socially ad- 
 vanced since the premierships of Lord Derby and Lord 
 Palmerston. Both these statesmen owned racehorses and 
 would have been proud to know that they were winners, 
 but it would have been as probable in those days to have 
 seen Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston lead in their 
 winners on the Derby Racecourse as it would have 
 been to have seen Lord Aberdeen or Mr. Gladstone — or, 
 for that matter, the Archbishop of Canterbury — riding 
 themselves the winning mount. 
 
 IL 
 
 Granted, however, the advance of democratic senti- 
 ments socially, there is a wide difference between such an 
 advance and the political necessity for an alteration of 
 government in obedience to the preponderance of these 
 peculiar doctrines and customs which is more social 
 than political. It is by no means proved that the 
 vast majority of Englishmen are ripe for any alteration 
 whatever. But, even if this were the case, and if it could 
 be shown that there was a preponderance of democratic 
 opinion over the present constitutional doctrines, even 
 then these revolutionary statesmen, before they could 
 justify their policy and theories, must prove a 
 great deal more than merely that a large mass, 
 of not perhaps the most intelligent opinion, had 
 
 :
 
 84 
 
 become so impregnated with democratic opinions as 
 to be ripe and ready for a democratic revolution. 
 They must prove to demonstration first of all that the 
 present form of Government, of an Upper House and a 
 controlling- power, is absolutely incompatible with the 
 fullest supremacy of democracy. Allow, for a moment, 
 that democracy is absolute in England, and that the 
 countr}- is ready to admit itself a democratic nation, 
 to be governed by the usual forms which exist in 
 acknowledged democratic countries, even then these 
 statesmen have still to prove that you cannot have the 
 most advanced democracy and a Second Chamber at one 
 and the same time, and in the same country. It is 
 perfectly immaterial whether the Second Chamber 
 is elective or non-elective, so far as it concerns the 
 existing agitation in England, because the Democrats 
 demand that there should be no Second House what- 
 ever, however constituted. It is no matter whether 
 such a House was elective, as in some other demo- 
 cracies — or non-elective — as it is, mainly at any rate, 
 in this country. If it can be proved beyond all doubt 
 that a democracy can exist, and have its will fully re- 
 spected and obeyed — in perfectgoodworkingand harmony 
 — with a Second Controlling Chamber, it is useless and 
 more than useless for the revolutionists to point simply 
 to the prevalence, and if they please the predominance, of 
 democratic sentiments and political ideas as their 
 justification for destroying a chamber which can be 
 made to work well with democracy in other countries. 
 Does France with her Universal Suff'rage find it im- 
 possible to reconcile her democracy with the existence
 
 85 
 
 of her Senate? Universal Suffrage in France affords to 
 the Revolutionists in England an example which is 
 absolutely fatal to their contention that democracy 
 requires that there should be no Second House and no 
 legislative government whatever beyond one single as- 
 sembly representing the people. If Universal Suffrage 
 in France does not insist upon a single "paramount" 
 authority, why should not the democracy of England be 
 satisfied with what is found to work so successfully with 
 the most democratic suffrage in France? It will be said, of 
 course, that those Upper Chambers, where they exist in 
 continental democracies, are elective, or at any rate non- 
 hereditary, and that is why they are accepted and accept- 
 able in those communities. No doubt that is so, but that 
 objection does not affect the argument in the least, and 
 is, as I have already pointed out, perfectly immaterial, 
 because the objection of the English democracy is not to 
 the elements or the constitution of an Upper House, but 
 to the very principle of its existence, in any shape or of 
 any elements whatever. And so with the American 
 Senate ; — the difference in the constitution of the 
 three Senates — vast as it is — has nothing to do with 
 the question before us. As the opposition of the English 
 abolitionists is not to the constitution of the English 
 Senate, but to its existence as an obstacle in the way of 
 an omnipotent paramount People's Chamber, it is 
 obvious that even if an American Senate could be 
 brought to this country and planted in English soil 
 with all the methods of democratic institutions, it 
 would still possess what to an English democrat is the 
 fatal fault, the fault of the existence of a Senate
 
 86 
 
 at all. So extreme are the demands of the English 
 democracy, that it is very doubtful whether the American 
 system, even with the power given by their Constitution 
 to check the authority of the President, would find the 
 smallest favour in the eyes of those who, more demo- 
 cratic than democratic America, are clamouring for the 
 absolute supremacy of the Single Chamber. In America, 
 the Constitution provides that majorities of four-fifths 
 of both Houses — Congress and the Senate — shall over- 
 rule the Presidential V^eto. But these powers would be 
 repudiated by the latter-day democracy of England, 
 which refuses to submit the people's sovereign will to 
 any veto whatever, however limited, whether of an Upper 
 Chamber, or of a President of a Republic, or a crowned 
 and sceptred Sovereign ! In America — and no one can 
 dispute that the American constitution is most admir- 
 ably adapted to an intensely and purely democratic con- 
 gregation of States — does Universal Suffrage any more 
 than in France find any friction between the people 
 and its Senate ? It would be an interesting matter 
 for speculation to think what would be the result 
 of a proposal made to the intelligent American nation 
 by some "robust" Liberal to abolish their Senate, 
 and with it their President, in order to put the whole 
 executive power of legislation in the uncontrolled grasp 
 of Congress. And yet this is the revolution in the 
 government proposed to be established in England, and 
 proposed by the democrats themselves. 
 
 III. 
 If it is argued by the democrat that there is no
 
 87 
 
 analogy between the French and American Senates 
 and the Enj^lish Upper House, because the first are 
 differently constituted to the latter, and are elective, and 
 that the existence of the English House is repugnant 
 to the democrat because it is non-elective and tainted 
 with the hereditary principle, it can be answered or asked 
 by the constitutionalist why, if only the hereditary 
 principle and the absence of an elective process, 
 which make the difference between the French and 
 American and the English Upper Houses, are to be 
 reasons (which they are not) for the demand of the 
 Liberals for the destruction of the Peers, why should 
 they not agitate solely for the ending of the hereditary 
 principle, and for the introduction of some elective pro- 
 cess, instead of demanding the destruction of the whole 
 House ? That would be a fair legitimate constitutional 
 reform. It would be Reform — not Revolution. But for 
 our purposes it is not necessary that there should be any 
 analogy between the Upper Houses in two different 
 countries so far as their composition is concerned. 
 All that is necessary is to show that the French and 
 American constitutions — representing the democracy of 
 Europe, and the democracy of the West — recognize the 
 necessity of a Second Chamber. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But even if the democrats can show that a Second 
 House is opposed to democratic measures, and therefore 
 an obstacle in their views to good government on demo- 
 cratic principles, they would still have to satisfy the 
 country and their consciences that the form of govern-
 
 88 
 
 inent they proposed to create, after having got rid of the 
 Senate or Upper House, would be really a Democratic 
 Government based on democratic principles. But would 
 it be so if all the legislative power of the country was 
 centred in one chamber ? It would be nothing of the 
 kind. Freedom is surely the boasted essence of demo- 
 cratic opinion. Where would freedom of speech be 
 in a Single Assembly ? How could party government 
 exist ? Decentralization is the very watchword of 
 democracy. But what should we see in this case ? A 
 Single Chamber; a centralized authority; with no check 
 nor control ; a simple unadulterated dictatorship and 
 despotism. A Single Chamber would be a thoroughly 
 undemocratic chamber. Its powerwould be concentrated 
 in the hands of a single chief. Whoever was leader of 
 the majority in a Single Chamber would, for the term of 
 years during which he was the leader, be the absolute 
 despoticuncontroUed dictator of this country. The classes 
 he chose to injure, the interests he wished to ruin, would 
 be at his feet, to be destro5'ed without appeal or mercy. 
 We have seen by the last democratic budget the fate in 
 store for those classes who represent the better interests 
 of the country opposed to a democratic Chancellor 
 if the democrats gain the day. The Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer of the present day has shown what little 
 mercy or justice is to be expected from democratic 
 statesmen where the}- are determined — from personal 
 caprice or partisan hatred^ — to revenge themselves on 
 the classes who are the objects of their personal and 
 political animosity, and when they are determined to 
 overburden and ruin the interests of any section of the
 
 community who happen to be the objects of their envy 
 and hatred as a class. 
 
 If the Liberals object to the House of Lords as it 
 exists now, because it is, as they allege, a purely Con- 
 servative Chamber, where no Liberal measures have a 
 chance of passing, would not the Conservatives, with 
 much greater truth, be able to use precisely the same 
 argument against a Single Chamber, namely, that it 
 was a purely Radical Chamber, where no Conservative 
 interest would have the slightest chance of fair play, 
 or even toleration ? and where in reality no Conserva- 
 tive Party would be allowed to exist ? 
 
 V. 
 
 It will, I think, be seen that the English democratic 
 leaders are asking for a revolution which is not even 
 considered essential to the development and success of 
 democratic government in purely democratic countries, 
 which is utterly opposed to the true principles of 
 democracy, and which, if successful, would place our 
 interests, our political freedom, our political existence 
 even, in the hands of a party who would show us no 
 quarter, whose aim would be to destroy every interest, 
 every authority, every class, which came into conflict 
 with it. I have quoted France and America to refute 
 the democrat in England. I will go further afield — to 
 younger and fresher democracies — and I will summon 
 the democracy of Australia to refute the democracy of 
 this country. 
 
 In the Australasian Colonies will be found the fullest 
 development of the purest type of democratic opinion —
 
 90 
 
 A Democratic Government for a people essentially 
 democratic. A Goverment, therefore, in consonance 
 with the character and feelings of the people it has to 
 govern ; and based on the widest democratic suffrage. 
 But what do we find in these Australian democracies ? 
 What is their Parliamentary system ? A Legislative 
 Assembly, and a Legislative Council. So not only is 
 there no single Chamber "paramount" in authority over 
 all other legislative bodies, but there is a Second 
 Chamber with a modified Veto — not, it is true, as abso- 
 lute as that of the Lords in England — a Suspensory 
 Veto, — still a " Veto," that is to say, a power of reject- 
 ing a Bill until it has passed twice the Legislative 
 Assembly. In these Colonies the existence of a Second 
 Chamber with this ' veto ' has been found to be perfectly 
 compatible with the opinions and interests and aspira- 
 tions of a people imbued to the core of their hearts with 
 the most genuine and undiluted principle of pure 
 democracy — the principle, that is to say — that the 
 majorities of a community shall have the freest and most 
 unchecked voice in the legislation of the country so 
 far as is compatible with the good government of 
 the people. But even these democratic communities 
 have found it necessary for the sake of good govern- 
 ment to have a Second Chamber. They tolerate a 
 Second Chamber but not an imperial Veto. This 
 Imperial control is of very little use to the 
 Imperial Government. The Imperial "veto" has 
 vanished. If the Imperial Government had dared 
 to use its "veto," it would, in the opinion of those 
 best able to judge, undoubtedly have used it on three
 
 91 
 
 different occasions — in each of the three colonies — within 
 the last five years, to prevent the passing- of such 
 measures as the Kanaka Labour Bill in Queensland, 
 or the Divorce Bill in Victoria, or the Tariff Bill 
 in New South Wales. But it dared not use it. 
 The Governors of those Colonies were perfectly aware 
 that if the " Veto " had been put in force ag-ainst 
 those measures Australian loyalty would not have stood 
 the strain. In England, the "veto" of the Sovereign 
 is in abeyance. In Australia it is dead, that is to say, 
 Australia will tolerate a " Veto "of a Second Chamber, 
 but will not tolerate the "Veto "of the Imperial authority. 
 This is a very strong proof that the existence of 
 a Second Chamber is perfectly compatible with the 
 existence of the pvirest democracy. It is more than that. 
 It is amoststriking-evidencethata democracy so advanced 
 as to be ready to refuse its Sovereign the power to interfere 
 in its decisions, is ready to accept the principle of its 
 Second Chamber controlling the legislation of the Lower 
 House. Australian Democracy is ready to give a power 
 to its Second Chamber which it is ready to refuse to its 
 Sovereign. It is therefore through ignorance of 
 facts that partisans of the Liberal party arg-ue — 
 as they so often do — in the press and in their 
 public meetings, that the destruction of the Second 
 Chamber in England is a necessary and logical con- 
 sequence of advanced democratic opinion. Why should 
 it be so in Eng^land if it is not so in Australia? 
 If, then, these fiery young democracies in the 
 Southern Seas have never ventured to go so far as to 
 suggest that their Second Chamber, or Legislative
 
 92 
 
 Council, should be dispensed with, and the whole 
 g-overnment centred, without control, in a Single 
 Chamber, in order that the will of the people (no mere 
 phrase in Australian politics), should be paramount, is 
 there not something marvellously absurd in the de- 
 mocracy of our ?/«-democratic England outbidding 
 the most fiery democracies in the universe by propos- 
 ing to overthrow, in the name of democracy, a 
 system of government which the purest democracies 
 known in modern times are willing to accept without 
 a murmur ? 
 
 VI. 
 
 Does any human being of ordinary intelligence, 
 or of the most advanced views, judged even by an 
 Australian standard, believe that a system which 
 would be too democratic even for the palate of 
 the Australian democracy, would be really adapted 
 to the tastes, and character, and temperament, 
 and traditions of the English nation ? Why are we then 
 to reject a Second Chamber when Australian democratic 
 •opinion believes it to be indispensable to the good 
 government of the Colony. No doubt, as in France 
 and America, the fact that there is no hereditary 
 principle in the constitution of the Legislative Council 
 accounts very considerably for the acquiescence of the 
 Colonial communities in the power of veto in the second 
 chamber. But, we must repeat again, and again, that it 
 must be borne in mind that the democracy in England are 
 clamouring not for the reform of the House of Lords, but 
 ■its cessation, not on account of its hereditary privileges,
 
 93 
 
 but because the democracy does not intend that any 
 Second Chamber whatever, whether hereditary, or elec- 
 tive, or nominated, should stand in the future in the way 
 of its " paramount "and supreme authority. Australians, 
 of course, would laugh to scorn the very notion of an 
 hereditary Chamber ; at present at any rate. For at 
 present these communities have not existed long enough 
 to enable them to possess a class which would 
 provide the material from which an aristocracy could be 
 formed as in European States. Australian opinion at 
 present cheerfully submits, though democratic totheback- 
 bone, to the control of a Second Chamber — untainted, 
 it is true, by the objections to an hereditary Chamber, but 
 still armed with a power of rejection. How then do we 
 stand ? English democracy objects to the principle of a 
 Second House and to its obnoxious existence. Australian 
 democracy agrees to it. It is then the mother country 
 which is now seeking to destroy what her own offspring 
 — the wayward, and strong-willed democracies under the 
 Southern Cross — are quite willing to accept with perfect 
 and absolute contentment. 
 
 VH. 
 
 If these democracies are at all inclined to show 
 a turbulent and restive spirit, it is not against 
 that portion of the governmental system, the Second 
 Chamber. There may be a simmering of political 
 unrest in Australia, but it comes from a very 
 different source. It comes from the proud conscious- 
 ness those young Colonies feel of their approaching 
 manhood and the sense of the maturity of their own
 
 94 
 
 powers — the feeling" that they are now far more ripened, 
 far more capable of working out alone the problem of 
 their political destinies than were the North American 
 Colonies when they revolted from English rule, and, in 
 their anger and hatred, swung back the political 
 pendulum from Monarchy to a Republic. When the 
 American Colonies revolted they could not boast one 
 tithe of all those ingredients, so indispensable as a basis 
 of prosperity to a new born nation, and which alone 
 can place a new country on a secure foundation, which 
 the Australians now possess in abundance. The 
 North Americans had very little stock-in-trade to start 
 with when they setup a Republic. Australia has now all 
 those attributes of a nation in which the North 
 Americans were wanting, in railways, in communications 
 by land and sea, in the development of Parliamentary 
 systems, by the extension of endless industries, both 
 pastoral and commercial, in social progress, in 
 the freedom of the Press, and by the innumer- 
 able advantages which the civilization of the end 
 of the nineteenth century can give to a rising colony 
 which has been carefully and wisely nurtured by the 
 care of England, over the colonies of the eighteenth 
 century. If, then, the democracy of Australia feel any 
 desire whatever for any alteration in their present system 
 of government it is not to be found in opposition to their 
 Second Assembly. Whatever dissatisfaction there may 
 be, it arises, and arises only, from a feeling which does the 
 Colonials credit, that the hour is near at hand when, 
 without the slightest semblance of a feeling of ingrati- 
 tude, much less of hate, towards the mother country,
 
 95 
 
 they may fairly claim to be strong- enough to take their 
 place unaided among^st the independent nations of the 
 world, whether as a federated continent of nations, or, 
 as it must be eventually, a single united nation and free 
 from the leading strings and tutelage of the mother 
 country. It is against that tutelage that the 
 Australian democracy chafes and frets, and against 
 it it will eventually rise. And it would, indeed, 
 be wise for English statesmen to accept the inevitable, 
 and abandon the useless and discreditable exhibition of 
 sham Governorships, with mere fictions of an Imperial 
 legislative power which they dare not use, and let the 
 Australian Colonies go unfettered on their glorious way 
 towards the independence and position of a free and 
 separate nation, still bound, as they would then be, by the 
 ties of affection, by every chain and link, except those 
 incompatible with national independence. Better a 
 hundred times to give up in peace and friendliness those 
 chains of dependence and control which are now begin- 
 ning to gall the minds of the Australian communities, 
 than see them torn asunder in times of anger and ill- 
 blood ! However that may be, and, of course, it is a 
 controversial point, and one in which a great variety 
 of opinion exists, more, perhaps, in England than in 
 Australia, probably all Colonials and most Englishmen 
 will, at any rate, agree in the one point which is 
 essential to this argument, namely, that whatever feeling 
 there may be against any portion of the mode of Govern- 
 ment of the Australian Colonies, it is not against that 
 part which is represented by the Second Chamber.
 
 96 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Federation will precede independence. But, when 
 the Australian Colonies in the course of time pass 
 from Federation to Independence and become an 
 independent nation, there will be no greater testimony to 
 the success of a controlling Chamber than the introduc- 
 tion of such a legislative power again into the new 
 Constitution, which will have to be framed anew to 
 govern under its new auspices united and independent 
 Australia. Will it be so ? To answer that question it is 
 interesting to know the opinions of those leading 
 Colonial statesmen who are now working strenuouslyin 
 favour of federation (which is naturally the first step on 
 the way to independence) and to know what they pro- 
 pose should be the machinery for the Government of a 
 new Australia — a United Australia, but not as yet 
 independent of an Imperial Supremacy. 
 
 Sir George Dibbs, the Premier of New South Wales, 
 has only very recently borne invaluable testimony to the 
 fact that the example of Australia proves conclusively that 
 a Second Chamber can work, with perfect success, in 
 harmony with a genuine democracy. It is true Sir 
 George Dibbs is not an advocate of the Federation 
 scheme, that is to say, as understood by Sir Henry 
 Parkes — but he has taken the lead in the Colonies in 
 advocating a united Australia. Sir (George Dibbs 
 has proposed that the four Colonies of Australia should 
 be united in the future into one ' Colony — with one 
 Government, under one Constitution, under one 
 supreme authority. We may be assured that if the 
 control of a Second Chamber had been found bv ex-
 
 97 
 
 perience unsuited to the Australian democracy, a Colonial 
 statesman of the experience of Sir George Dibbs would 
 never have sug^gested that the Legislative Council should 
 again be included, without any modification, as part of 
 the machineryof the new constitution of United Australia. 
 But Sir George Dibbs, by proposing that the Legislative 
 Council should still take its place as a Second Assembly, 
 stamps with the seal of his long Colonial experience of 
 democratic necessities, his testimony to the fact that 
 a Second Assembly has worked with such success 
 in the past that he proposes to make it an integral 
 p.ortion of that new constitution which is to be the 
 starting point of a new stage of Australian existence, 
 and to guide and strengthen the Australian Colonies in 
 their attempt to be a united nation. If Sir George 
 Dibbs can carr}- out his proposal, if he can assuage 
 the jealousies of the various Colonies, if he can unite 
 them, if he can settle the very burning question as to 
 whether the capital of the L^nited Australia is to be 
 in New South Wales or in Victoria, in Melbourne or in 
 Sydney, he will have proved himself one of the ablest, 
 certainly the most successful, of Colonial statesmen. 
 But sufiicient for our purpose is it that his opinion, his 
 experience in questions of government, is of the highest 
 importance in discussing the contrasts, as well as the 
 analogies, of English and Australian democracy, and the 
 forms of government best adapted for them. And his 
 testimony therefore is most valuable. 
 
 We may therefore assume that as in the youth of 
 Australia so in the maturity of Australia, the system 
 which has proved itself successful as a part of a
 
 98 
 
 Democratic Parliamentary authority will be accepted 
 in the new constitution which must mark the new depar- 
 ture of Australia, in the form of a united and independent 
 State, and that a Second Chamber — • a Leg'islative 
 Council, will still be found in its old place to exercise a 
 controlling- power over Australian legislation.
 
 99 
 
 PART IV. 
 I. 
 
 Now that the eventful moment has come when 
 democracy in its worst form is face to face with the old 
 order of things, it is well to remember that the Demo- 
 cratic Party cannot, with justice or truth, say that, so 
 long as their claims or ends were leg^itimate, the Con- 
 servative Party did not recognize them and meet them 
 fairly. The principle of the extension of self govern- 
 ment, the granting of the widest liberty which could be 
 given to the people to manage and control their own 
 affairs, has been of late years as fully recognized by the 
 Conservative Party as by the Liberal. It should never 
 be forgotten that it was the Conservative Government 
 and Party, of which the House of Lords is supposed to 
 be nothing but the mouthpiece, which first gave, through 
 the Local Government Act, the system of County 
 Councils to the people. It was the Conservative 
 Party, with their Chamber — the Lords — which 
 gave to the rural ratepayer the same right to have a 
 voice in the control of the management of the rates 
 which he was paying, as the urban population had 
 acquired through the Municipal Corporations Act. 
 For fifty years afterwards the extra-urban ratepayer had 
 to pay his rates to an irresponsible authority, without 
 being allowed the slightest control over the authority 
 which imposed these rates. For fifty years not a word 
 was heard from Liberal Governments in favour of
 
 equalizing- the positions of the two classes of ratepayers, 
 and wh)- ? Solely because the votes of the towns, which 
 were to be benefitted by the Municipal Corporations Act, 
 were principally given to the Liberals, and the votes of 
 the rural populations which were ig^nored, were given to 
 the Tories. This was Liberal Government ! It re- 
 mained for the Conservative Government, and their 
 servile henchmen, the Lords, to deal impartially with all 
 sections of ratepayers and remedy the evil, and to place 
 the ratepayer in the country on the same footing as 
 the ratepayer in the town. 
 
 II. 
 
 To give such self-government to the country was a 
 step in the direction of Democratic Government, which 
 showed that the Conservative Party and the Lords, would 
 meet the requirements of the people — of the Democracy, 
 to use the word in its best sense — as far and as fully 
 as was reasonable and legitimate. We are told that the 
 Conservative Ministers oppose all measures for the 
 benefit of the masses. We may answer with a clear 
 conscience that the greatest extension of self-g-Qvernment 
 in later times was given to the people by the Tories who 
 abolished — what the Liberals had failed to do — the 
 irresponsible power of the Country Magistracy to levy 
 rates without those from whom the rates were levied 
 having, through a proper representation and system 
 of popular election, any control over this taxation. 
 What the Liberals did for the towns with the Municipal 
 Corporations Act, the Conservatives fifty years afterwards 
 did with the Local Government Act for the counties.
 
 That is to say, they remedied a state of gross 
 inequality by a concession to democracy, because 
 the inequality was obviously gross and unjust. And 
 now the principle of self-government has been even 
 more extended by the creation of Parish Councils. It is 
 difficult to see how the self-government of localities can 
 be carried much further than by the adoption of such 
 parochial centres of authority — organized down to the 
 very smallest divisions and sections of the rural commu- 
 nities. Parochial self-government is another concession 
 to the democratic idea of the people's affairs being 
 managed and controlled by the people themselves in their 
 own localities. It would be impossible to discover for 
 the purpose of self-government any fraction or sub- 
 divisions of a community more minute or microscopic 
 than the parochial unit. The Conservatives and their 
 henchmen, the Lords, have admitted that this concession 
 is a legitimate concession to a legitimate demand for 
 fuller powers of self-government on the part of a people 
 advancing in education, and, as no sane person denies, 
 becoming day by day more fitted to exercise the fullest 
 development of Local Government that can be reason- 
 ably claimed. 
 
 III. 
 
 We, therefore, may assert with truth and justice, in 
 the solemn hours that are coming, that the Conservative 
 Party — and the Lords who have just passed the Parish 
 Council Bill — have not been deaf to the claims of the 
 Democracy so long as they were fair and legitimate. It is 
 only when Democracy bursts all bounds and threatens
 
 102 
 
 to destroy Parliament in order to g"rasp supreme power 
 for itself, so as to override all other classes in this Em- 
 pire, that the Conservative Party and the Conservative 
 Chamber, as they attack it, refuse to listen to their appeals 
 or their threats. It is one thing- to ask for self-govern- 
 ment ; it is another to ask for the overthrow of a 
 Parliamentary system. Whatever may betide this 
 question, the Conservative Party can say with a clear 
 conscience that they have gone to the extremest limits 
 of political consistency in order to conciliate the Demo- 
 cratic party.
 
 PART V. 
 
 I. 
 
 Well, then, the House of Lords is finally abolished. 
 It is all over, I will assume peacefully — not a bone has 
 been broken — and a Unicameran Government is safely 
 enthroned in all its glory on its ruins. Frivolous, care- 
 less, heartless, as we are said to have become as a nation 
 under the new ' ' Spirit of the Ag"e, " the country, I suppose, 
 has some moments at times of serious reflection. Let 
 it reflect on this picture, now only in imagination, 
 before it is too late. It is now only imagina- 
 tion. It may become a hideous reality. Well, let 
 us stand in the midst of the ruined columns of 
 what was once a portion of the English Constitution 
 and reflect on the consequences of its downfall. What 
 the verdict will be of generations of English yet to come 
 when they read the page of history which tells them 
 that their fathers refused to draw the sword to defend 
 the throne of this Empire, can only be contemplated 
 with bewilderment and humiliation. The very stones 
 would rise and cry aloudagainstsuch a craven generation. 
 But we need not dip into the future, the present is quite 
 sufficient, and the present not only in this country but 
 in countries far from our shores. 
 
 II. 
 
 What would be the effect of this change upon the
 
 I04 
 
 minds of foreigri nations? It is very well to say with 
 lofty insular scorn that continental opinion is nothing to 
 us. But if we are not utterly destitute of all feeling of 
 national self-respect, surely we must have some feeling 
 of shame awakened in us when we picture the spectacle 
 we should present to nations who had respected if they 
 had not loved us. The feeling- of those who had looked 
 to England for light and leading in their political pro- 
 gress, and found their idol shattered and worthless, would 
 be that of wonder and consternation, to say nothing of 
 the dread of that infectious influence throughout all 
 monarchical nations. Those who do not love us would 
 point with the finger of scorn at the shattered pieces of 
 our vaunted institutions, and hail this ruin with rejoicing 
 and contempt. Every Constitutionalist in Europe would 
 feel sick at heart at the breaking up of a political system 
 that he had learnt to revere. Every revolutionist 
 would take courage, and rejoice that the downfall of 
 the English system at the summons of the people, 
 might shake every throne in Europe, and bring his 
 evil hopes nearer their fulfilment. And what of India? 
 It is just possible the enlightened statesmen of the New 
 Era would give back that great Dependency to its 
 Native Princes — to be again the victim of mis-rule, 
 religious feud and massacres, corruption, and oppres- 
 sion, and probably a prey to Russian agression. If 
 surrender however, was not their policy, would the Indian 
 Princes who have accepted with only a sullen submission 
 the sway of the Sovereign of England as Empress of 
 India, submit for one moment to the rule of a country 
 whose government was the outgrowth of a day — a
 
 mushroom g'overnment — without the traditions, founded 
 on centuries of power which they had felt and bowed 
 before, of the old dominion, and which would possess 
 what in the eyes of the Native Princes in India, 
 from Comorin to the Himalayas, would be taken as a 
 fatal weakness — uncertainty, and instability in its 
 system ? India, if it was not surrendered, would have 
 to be re-conquered. 
 
 III. 
 
 England is, then, to embark on an experiment of 
 Government which has never been tried in the states 
 of the old world, except in the case of a short 
 period during the French Revolution, and in England 
 about 1656. But neither in France nor in England did 
 the experiment succeed and it vanished from the un- 
 congenial soil. It is true that in the Hellenic kingdom 
 the Parliamentary system is unicameran, and it is 
 also true that the Scandinavian Constitution of 1814, 
 provided two of the northern Scandinavian States, 
 Norway and Sweden, with Unicameran Parliament. But 
 in both of these cases the unicameran legislature is 
 checked and controlled by a royal Veto. In neither 
 case can these States be quoted as affording pre- 
 cedents for Unicameran Government, as far as 
 this particular argument is concerned, inasmuch as the 
 Scandinavian and Greek Unicameran Parliaments are 
 subject to the Veto of the Crown, and have never 
 existed without it. Unicameran Government in England 
 will brook neither King nor Royal Veto. It is an 
 experiment which has not only never been really tried in
 
 io6 
 
 the old world, but has been scouted by American 
 Republicans and has not found favour in the eyes of 
 the fiercest and most genuine democracies in the world, — 
 in our own Australian Colonies. No republic has ever 
 existed without a President with some pretence of legis- 
 lative power. But, the essence of our future legis- 
 lative system is that it should have far more republican 
 power than any republic ever knew, and brook a 
 President as little as a King. 
 
 But what is this Unicameran Government to be for 
 which the old system is to be sacrificed? A single chamber, 
 which, based on universal suflFrage (for naturally the 
 suffrage would be extended to its very lowest limits as 
 soon as Democracy came into power), would have to 
 carry out the behests and mandates (for mandates they 
 would be), of the lower electoral classes, down to the very 
 dregs of the population, whose numbers w-ould swamp 
 the voting power of those classes who would represent 
 the wealth as well as the best educated intelligence 
 in the Empire, and who were therefore the safest 
 guarantees for the stability and peaceful progress of 
 the nation. In establishing such a Chamber Mr. 
 Morley would set at defiance the teaching of Stuart 
 Mill, an authority to whom, I imagine, all Liberals, 
 at any rate, — will bow. Mill laid down emphat- 
 ically the doctrine that education and intelligence, in 
 matters of the suffrage, must never be subordinated to 
 the brute force of mere numbers. Yet mere numbers, 
 overwhelming education and intelligence, would be 
 the basis in which Mr, Morley's Unicameran Govern- 
 ment, elected by universal suffrage would inevitably
 
 loy 
 
 rest. In such a Chamber based on this suffrage, with- 
 out the control of any other legislative authority what- 
 ever, there would be absolutely no obstacle to the utter 
 confiscation of all the property of those whose property 
 is a sin in the eyes of the lower democracy, if this un- 
 controlled House of Democrats so wished. There is 
 to be literally no appeal from an}- measure, however 
 monstrous in the eyes of the whole civilized world, 
 however abominable and atrocious it may be. There is 
 to be no appeal against the most monstrous tyranny, the 
 vilest oppression, the most cruel legislation — the Single 
 Chamber is to be omnipotent. Its will is to be final, and 
 laws, which for capricious persecution and crueltv might 
 pvit in the shade an Eastern Pachalik, may be passed 
 without the slightest power of resistance or appeal from 
 the ruined classes who would have no political status or 
 influence in the Chamber or the country against this one 
 despotic autocratic assembly. Democracies are gene- 
 rally warlike, and a gust of Democratic passion might 
 hurl the country into war with foreign powers, which 
 a little cool reflection or brief moment of calm considera- 
 tion, interposed in a moment of national excitement 
 by the action of a Second Chamber, might 
 avoid. This Chamber will be composed of the delegates 
 of caucuses, acting as lifeless, conscienceless machines, 
 not as the free representatives of the old system, but 
 as the mere tools of intriguing, intimidating com- 
 binations — slaves, and paid hirelings, as they would 
 soon be, of party combinations, formed to send them to 
 this Single Chamber ; to vote as they are bid, and as 
 the}- are paid to vote ! And could any reasonable being
 
 io8 
 
 doubt what these delegates would be hired and ordered 
 to vote for ? To plunder the rich, to impoverish the 
 interests of the classes they detest, to put all burdens on 
 the wealth-possessing- community, beyond their fair 
 share, and none, if possible, on the backs of the 
 democratic electorate ; to ruin the Churches and 
 probably religion (the Chapel would soon follow the 
 Church — and vanish) ; to remember that their own 
 interests, in the name of democratic impartiality, are 
 to be preferred to all others. A machine copied from 
 Trades' Unionism — with all its tyranny, its violence, — in 
 its worst form, destroying individuality to obtain 
 brute power (not forgetting for one moment the 
 good attributes of Trade Unionism if legitimately 
 used, — such as the assertion of the right of 
 combination, the protection of labour against the 
 oppression of capital)— a form of Trades' Unionism, as 
 a parliamentary machine, would be the model in which 
 the future caucuses would shape their government — 
 despotism and organised tyranny. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 has pointed out that the wider and deeper the franchise 
 amongst the lower masses the greater must be, 
 not only the chance — but the danger — of a suppression 
 of individuality — and the restriction of individual liberty. 
 His warning's have been verified with unpleasant 
 rapidity. Individuality of action, would be destroyed 
 wherever it was possible. No better illustration o( 
 Democratic legislation in that character could be 
 found than in the course adopted by the Demo- 
 cratic Government with regard to the " Emplovers' 
 Liability Bill. " The Lords the oppressors of the people I
 
 log 
 
 proposed that the workhij^-man should have the right, 
 in the exercise of his individual liberty, to g"o out- 
 side the "Act," if he so pleased, and make, if he 
 thought he could do so, a better bargain than 
 he would get under the "Act." " The enemy of the 
 people" said, "allow the working-man to make his own 
 " bargain in his own interests as he thinks best; " the 
 Democrat said to the working-man, "No ! You shall do 
 " as we order you. The ' Act ' shall be compulsory, or 
 " you shall not have the ' Act ' at all." The Democrats, 
 therefore, refused to allow the working-man freedom of 
 contract, which the Lords asked in his behalf, and 
 proposed to make the " Act " compulsory. That is the 
 spirit in which Democratic legislation is to be conceived 
 in the future. Let us reverse the case I have just 
 quoted. If the Lords had proposed to make the clause 
 in the " Employers' Liability Act " compulsory, and the 
 Democrats had proposed to give freedom of contract to 
 the working-man, and the Lords had opposed it, what 
 a tempest of indignation and fury would have thundered 
 at the doors of the Lords Chamber ! What oceans of 
 declamation would have been poured forth against the 
 tyranny of the Lords, the oppression of the working 
 man, against that hardness of heart on the part of 
 the Lords, who were once more showing their rooted 
 hatred for the people ! And this illustration is a very 
 fair one of the character of the tyranny of Democratic 
 legislation, and a warning to those who believe that 
 the People themselves are likely to fare better in the 
 hands of the Democrats than in the hands of the present 
 Constitutional parties.
 
 no 
 
 IV. 
 
 If the Finance Bill (usually styled in pre-democratic 
 times the Budget), which was so skilfully piloted 
 through the Commons by the learned Attorney General, 
 with the able assistance of the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, is to be taken as a specimen of the class 
 legislation to which even now the landed and pro- 
 pertied interests of this country can be subjected to, 
 we can only too easily see what would be the fate 
 of these interests if the proletariat were really to succeed 
 in establishing a Unicameran Government, which would 
 exist to levy taxation according to the wants and man- 
 dates of the democracy. The democrats are proud of 
 their Finance Bill, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 withhisfinancial adjutant, the Attorney General, has been 
 feted in celebration of their triumph. If the democrats 
 are proud of their Bill and their Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, the constitutionalists have reason to be, if not 
 proud of them, grateful to them for the lesson 
 they have taught the world. Nothing could well be more 
 opportune than the late Finance Bill. The note of warn- 
 ing is sounded at a moment when it is important to bring 
 home to the minds of the people of England what they 
 are threatened with. To shift the burden of taxation 
 from the shoulders of the people on to the shoulders of 
 those who can bear it is the burden of the lay oi' the 
 democrats who have carried a Finance Bill which will 
 act with ruinous unfairness and harshness on certain 
 classes. To talk of shifting those burdens from one 
 class to another so as to equalize the taxation is an 
 admirable profession. In the mouths of the Democrats
 
 it is simply a jarg'on to cover the flimsily disguised 
 policy of the confiscation of the property of certain classes 
 in order to destroy them as political opponents. To resent 
 with extreme measures fair, though heavy imposts, 
 is senseless. But are the death duties fair ? The 
 death duties in this democratic Budget will drive 
 the owners of many of those properties either out 
 of their estates, or at the least oppress them with 
 burdens a thousand times greater than, compared 
 especially with the lower classes, they ought in 
 justice to bear. Fiscal tyranny is now to be used as 
 a kind of political dynamite to destroy political classes, 
 to break up all large landed estates for political objects, 
 to put an end to territorial influences, to ruin propert}' 
 for partizan purposes. This is the policy of English 
 statesmanship at the end of the nineteenth century. 
 When Sir Rob'ert Peel repealed the Corn Laws, he 
 injured, if he did not ruin, the agricultural interests, 
 but is there a sane man who would venture to 
 say that Sir Robert Peel opened the ports of England to 
 foreign grain, not to save England from an impending 
 crisis, not to give a vast population cheaper food, but 
 to gratify a partizan hatred, and to revenge himself 
 on a political class? Contrast the old statesmanship with 
 the new. Are the death duties fair taxation ? It is ad- 
 mitted that the amount payable in many cases under this 
 
 I arrangement of the death duties will be at least for four 
 or five years the rental of the estate in which these duties 
 
 jwill be levied. If you deprive a possessor of an estate 
 of his whole rental for four or five years, I submit 
 
 ^that such legislation is not taxation, but a complete
 
 confiscation of the whole rental of that property for four 
 or five years. I submit that this is not taxation, but 
 spoliation and robbery of a class — not for the benefit of 
 the nation — but to break up a political class for party 
 purposes. We may well ask : if this is so now, what 
 have we to look forward to when a Unicameran 
 Government is in power ? 
 
 At first sight it would, perhaps, appear as if the 
 abolition of the Chamber which has only the power to 
 reject — but not to alter — a Money Bill sent from the 
 Commons, and the creation of a Single Chamber for 
 general purposes of legislation would not produce anv 
 very great disturbance or alteration in the financial 
 system as it exists at this time — and which is, for all 
 practical purposes, "Unicameran" so far as finances 
 are in question. No doubt the system is now 
 financially " Unicameran." But, still, if the adoption 
 of the Unicameran system for general legislation, as 
 well as financial, did not essentially alter the actual 
 machinery for imposing taxes and raising revenue, the 
 iibolition of the Second Chamber, although it had no 
 practical control over taxation in theory, would very 
 materially affect — not the methods — that would 
 be impossible, — but the motives and causes which — 
 some directly and some indirectly — contribute to guide 
 the financial policy of the country. There is no 
 greater mistake than to suppose that the House of 
 Lords exercises no influence over the taxation of the 
 people. Although the Commons have absolute power: 
 in matters of finance technically, the influence of the j 
 Upper House is felt- and felt to a far greater degree! 
 
 d
 
 "3 
 
 than is g'enerally acknowledt^ed, upon the opinions and 
 votes of the constituencies through the peculiar influence 
 which it possesses owing to the attributes of its func- 
 tions, its calmness, its dignity, and, above all, that 
 complete independence, which the Commons do not 
 possess, and which gives that indefinable power and in- 
 estimable value, in a manner difficult to describe and to 
 a degree impossible to gauge, — which must always dis- 
 tinguish an opinion given under fear of a constituency, 
 from an opinion absolutely independent of all disturbing 
 influences and unbiassed by any of these considerations 
 of the consequences of that opinion, which must always 
 weigh on the minds and warp the judgments of the mem- 
 bers of the Lower House. Besides this, the debates of 
 the Upper House have this additional value, — which 
 makes them, on occasions of great discussions, possess 
 almost greater authority in guiding opinion and convinc- 
 ing the educated intelligence of the country than the 
 debates in the Commons, — that their Councils are, 
 even more than in the Commons, the deliberations of 
 veteran statesmen and the most experienced leaders 
 of the time. Expenditure depends upon policy. Policy 
 guides taxation. Policy rules the lines on which 
 revenue is raised,- that is to say, it determines on what 
 class the imposts should be placed, on what interests 
 the burden should be laid. Policy regulates the character 
 — the bias — the justice or the iniquity of tax- 
 ation. And who will deny that the House of Lords 
 whatever may be its technical powers over finance, does 
 influence the general policy of the nation ? If the Lords 
 cannot amend a Money Bill they can alter or influence
 
 114 
 
 the policy which inspires the Bill. They can call the 
 attention of the country to misgfuided policy or to ruinous 
 statesmanship. In its debates on great state questions, 
 such as foreign policy, for instance, the influence of the 
 Upper House has always been undeniably great. The 
 debates, from the eloquence -the high standard of in- 
 tellectual excellence requisite to command attention in 
 those deliberations, afi'ect the mind of the nation to an 
 extent hardly less powerful than those of the 
 Commons. They help to shape the policy of the 
 nation which shapes the finance of the Lower House. 
 If, then, you abolish the Upper Chamber, you abolish 
 an influence most valuable of its kind, which assuredly 
 aftects finance. An unchecked proletariat Chamber 
 would possess both the power of guiding the policy of 
 the country as well as the power over its purse. It 
 would be both the controller and the originator both of 
 of finance and polic}". If the taxing power in the Lower 
 House is the mainspring in the parliamentary watch, the 
 guidance of the LTpper House, in matters of policy, acts, 
 in some measure, — and in a much greater measure 
 than the Liberals care to allow — as the regulator 
 in that instrument of Government. Abolish the 
 regulator and the mainspring would lose a 
 valuable control and an appreciable guide in 
 time of disturbance as well as in times of quiet. 
 In losing this regulating control Lhiicameran finance 
 would take the bit between its teeth and run riot, 
 and would probably soon prove the soundness of the 
 contention that although Unicameran Government 
 will not necessarilv alter the machinerv of taxation, it
 
 will introduce entirely new policies, based on success- 
 ful revolution, which would influence finance in a 
 disastrous degree, and make the void created by the 
 sinking- of the Lords more obvious and more regretted 
 hour by hour, until the very hottest Constitutionalists 
 would pray for another Cromwell to arise — not perhaps, 
 the Cromwell of 1649, but the Cromwell of 1653. Crom- 
 well, after six years' experience of Unicameran Govern- 
 ment, turned the Unicameran gentry, bag and baggage, 
 with their " Bauble," into the streets. Will history 
 repeat itself? Or are its teachings, with eternal sameness 
 to be ever as " pearls before swine?" 
 
 We have seen already with dread and alarm how a 
 new policy affects finance, and have had an edifying 
 lesson of the way in which under a democratic adminis- 
 tration of finance, taxation, instead of being a legitimate 
 instrument for providing the revenue of a nation, by a dis- 
 tribution of the incidence of the necessary imposts over 
 the various interests of the community, as equitable and 
 fair as political human nature will permit, is to be used 
 as a weapon for the pursuance of a policy which has for 
 its object the destruction of political opponents, the 
 gratification of personal spite and vindictiveness, 
 and can become, only too readily, a facile instru- 
 ment of political injustice and oppression. What, 
 after all, is the active living policy that guides so 
 obviously the Chancellor of the Exchequer's political 
 finance ? It is the policy to make the State the owner 
 of all property, — the "State" in the future, be it re- 
 membered, being in the uncontrolled hands of the Chief 
 of the Democratic majority for the time being, in a Single
 
 ii6 
 
 Assembly. All individual ownership will cease, and will 
 be merged into the ownership of the State. How this 
 can be effected, without the most tyrannical usurpation 
 of private rights, without the most piratical robbery of all 
 personal and individual rights of possession of property, 
 will defy all ingenuity of explanation. Can this be 
 tolerated? Sir Robert Peel may speak again and say, 
 " Will such tyranny be borne ? Never." 
 
 V. 
 
 Again, if Unicameran system of Government is 
 adopted, how is an administration to be formed ? The 
 Duke of Wellington asked in a political crisis, " How is 
 the King's Government to be carried on ?" What if 
 there is to be no King? How can a Government, not only 
 be carried on, but formed ? If there is to be no King or 
 Chief Magistrate — no President even — no Head of the 
 State — who is technically to form a Ministry ? It is 
 possible that the Prime Minister, who would possess, 
 we may suppose, the power of selecting his subor- 
 dinate "colleagues, who would be his slaves, and who 
 would, when made the Chief Minister, possess the un- 
 controlled authority of a dictator over them, and the 
 Chamber, and the Country, might be chosen by some 
 process of election by the Chamber itself. Of this 
 process we are told nothing, we know nothing. But 
 we can guess everything — and it requires but little 
 prescience to know the intrigues, the corruption, the 
 \ enality, the degradation of the politicians, the qualifica- 
 tions which will best befit a Minister for the post, and 
 the character of the man who would hold it. — What
 
 would be the legislation of such a Ministry, such a 
 Chamber, such an Electorate, to which the propertied 
 classes of this country would be exposed ? It requires 
 but little reflection for even the most temperate and 
 least impulsive temperament to see that it would be 
 an impossibility for the threatened political parties to 
 submit to such a ij^overnment. 
 
 VI 
 
 Political prophecy is generally as futile as it is foolish, 
 but it does not require the g'ift of prophecy to predict 
 the complete change that would come over and darken 
 all the happiest conditions of English social life which had 
 hitherto distinguished us beyond most other civilized 
 communities, if the aims and objects of political life were 
 so completely transformed as they would be when 
 elections became deadly struggles for autocratic power 
 in a Unicameran Government, superseding the struggles 
 for Constitutional supremacy in a system such as we 
 possess now, where the passions of the elective and 
 popular chamber, however violent and dangerous, were 
 controlled and modified by the calmer influences of a non- 
 elective Legislative Authority. The character of English 
 life, social and political, would be completely changed. 
 
 South American States were not usually accepted as 
 models of good government, nor were the populations 
 supposed to be patterns of idyllic contentment and 
 docility. But, if Unicameran Government is foisted 
 upon the nation we shall find ourselves entering upon 
 such an era of disturbance as only South America, in its 
 worst days, could rival. Count}- Councils and Parish
 
 ii8 
 
 Councils, for g-ood or for evil, will, as it is, keep the 
 country in a perpetual ferment of petty electioneering- 
 agitation. But what would that state of unrest be com- 
 pared with the fever of politics which would run through 
 the body of the nation when each Parliamentary election 
 was to give, not the reins of administration to a 
 Constitutional Minister, but the power of a Dictator, 
 as the head of a faction, to the chief of the section which 
 won the day ? And when the election was ended, would 
 peace ensue ? These contests would not be elections, 
 in our acceptance of the word. They would soon 
 become armed conflicts, with the continual prospect 
 of civil war ever before the country. A chronic 
 state of alarm, of mistrust, of fear, would keep the 
 nation in ruinous unrest. Trade would inevitably w'ither 
 and die in such an atmosphere of dread and threatening. 
 Revenue would of course diminish because the sources 
 of it would be dried up ; and the end of it would 
 only be one thing — National bankruptcy. Is this picture 
 overdrawn ? Let those who think so show how it 
 would be possible to be otherwise — if the Chamber was 
 to be without a President or Head of the State outside 
 the Chamber — or any controlling power- — able to control 
 its extravagances and to curb the factions. I am 
 dealing, I need not say, with the system of Government 
 proposed by the National Liberal Association, and my 
 remarks from beginning to end are based on the 
 resolution of that meeting, speaking in the name of the 
 whole Liberal party of this country. The Chamber 
 itself would be broken up into a number of turbulent 
 factions, each with a pretender at its head and a
 
 119 
 
 following in the country, more or less considerable, and 
 ravenous for the loot of the Treasury, which would fall 
 to the winners. As the chief of the ruling faction would 
 be the dictator of his country and his Parliament, 
 would anyone believe, when such supreme absolute 
 personal power is the prize of the elections, they will be 
 carried on upon the model of Constitutional England 
 — peacefully and legally — and not upon the model 
 of a South American State ? People will answer ac- 
 cording to their knowledge of human and political 
 nature and their reading of history. But would any one 
 on reflection, venture to believe that considering the 
 character of the contesting factions and their leaders 
 with their frequent elections, there could be peace in 
 England? If the Government is Unicameran, and its 
 chief the possessor of absolute power, this unfortunate 
 country would pass from its happy tranquillity into a 
 period of continuous ever-bubbling turmoil, to which the 
 cauldron of South American politics would be but the 
 gentle simmering of a tea-cup. We know what South 
 American politics were. Does the English tradesman 
 who loves peace, wish to find every two or three 
 months, on his breakfast table, an application for his 
 vote, with, probably, an additional request to him to 
 look up his drill, and to clean his rifle and get his 
 cartridges from the stores ? South American elec- 
 tions were generally accompanied by conflicts of armed 
 bodies. Do we wish to see the England of our day 
 transformed intothe condition of the restless discontented 
 nations, that under the Equator were accustomed to a 
 revolution, with the regularity of the "revolution" of the
 
 earth round the sun — once a year ? Are we really to be 
 so senseless as to plunge the country into a cycle of 
 countless years of sleeplessness and unrest? In South 
 America political forces, like the volcanic agencies in 
 that disturbed soil, were never at rest, always active, 
 always threatening. There was no rest, no breathing 
 time, no repose. A mere truce marked the advent or exit 
 of a party, even if they were not heralded or saluted by 
 the clash ot arms. In many cases the polling booth was 
 a barricade, and a change of Ministry was made at the 
 point of the bayonet. Movimentos and Pronunciamentos 
 took the place of the peaceful return of the writ to Mr. 
 Speaker. And then to the fallen Minister it was " Vce 
 victis'' with a vengeance! The defeated Ministers 
 of the " late Government " often disappeared to lament 
 their defeat, not on the comfortable benches of the 
 opposition, as in England, but on the stones of a prison 
 floor, manacled and fettered to the neck, where they had 
 leisure to indulge in pleasing meditation on the fickle- 
 ness of fortune, and their own chances of being shot — 
 without trial — before the sun went down. Is the future 
 history of England to be as a history of a South 
 American State? Assuredly the forward step to such a 
 catastrophe will be taken when a paramount Chamber 
 with a Parliamentary Dictatorship, is our Parliamentary 
 system, where every election would be the scene of diff'er- 
 ent contending sections scrambling for supreme power 
 in the State and ready to go to extreme measures to win 
 the prize, recruited by the Democratic suffrage from the 
 lowest ranks, led by unscrupulous leaders to whom 
 supreme power, if onlv for a few months, made the
 
 difference between wealth and poverty, to the ruin of the 
 peace of the country and the destruction of its prosperity, 
 which depends upon that peace. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Every measure passed by this proletariat Chamber 
 is to be law at once. Whether the measure is passed in 
 a g"ust of passion or not it is to be the law of the land 
 as soon as the majority of the Chamber have so willed it. 
 If two years ago Unicameran Government had been in 
 existence. Home Rule might have been imposed at this 
 moment on the neck of Irish Loyalists — without a 
 check — and the Democracy might have scored their first 
 great victorv, though not a bloodless one, over the 
 Lovalists of the Sister Island — and Irish Loyalists would 
 do well to remember that if Unicameran Government 
 takes the place of the House of Lords, and Home 
 Rule should come to the front again, there will be 
 no House of Lords then to stand between them 
 and oppression, and nothing, indeed, save their 
 own strong arms and determined hearts. To 
 abolish the Lords is to give Home Rule to Ireland. If 
 indeed, nothing could prove the value of the 
 House of Lords more clearly than its action in 
 rejecting Home Rule, it is equally certain that nothing 
 would show so well how these Democratic attacks 
 should be met in this country as the example of the 
 Northern Loyalists in the Sister Island — who, if the 
 Peers had by any chance passed this revolutionary 
 measure, were prepared to constitute themselves a 
 House of Lords in their own fashion, in their own
 
 Province, and would have undertaken the duties of 
 that House in another shape, and would have summarily 
 rejected the Bill, if it appeared in Ulster, with the point 
 of the bayonet. 
 
 The Unicameran Goverment then, being unchecked 
 and entirely at the mercy and bidding- of the lowest 
 electoral classes, would be a system to which 
 we would not submit. Even if we were madmen 
 enough to allow the House of Lords and Throne 
 to be destroyed, we would not submit to the 
 form of government which is to take its place. 
 And why then are we to have this Unicameran Govern- 
 ment thrust upon us ? Because the Spirit of the Age 
 requires it. But what is this Spirit of the Age? And 
 why are we to bow our head before it ? Let us see 
 what it is. Are we to be thankful for it ? Why should 
 we ? We are told that the Spirit has been upon us 
 for the last three decades, that its influence is 
 all-per\^ading, that it has altered the whole mind 
 and character of the nation — that we must bow 
 to it, and acknowledge it as irresistible. But what 
 has the Spirit of the Age effected since it came 
 upon us ? Has the nation advanced or retrogaded under 
 its influences during the last thirt} years ? It is not an 
 exaggerated pessimism to say that in everyway in which 
 a country can retrogade England has retrogaded under 
 the influence of this democratic advance. In art and 
 science where are the men comparable to the leading 
 scientists of the pre-democratic period — in literature
 
 what have we to compare to Macaulay, to Thackerayj 
 Dickens, and a host of others ? Decadence and 
 democracy have appeared at one and the same time. 
 Our trade is falHng- into other hands, and our merchant 
 navy is manned three-fourths b}- foreig"n sailors — 
 great industries are falHng- off before the superior 
 excellence of the rival countries abroad. Agriculture is. 
 a vanishing — if not a vanished — industry. Once the 
 staple industry of the country — and now ! — wheat selling- 
 at 1 8 shillings, and the cost of production to the farmer 
 remains at 44 shillings, or as nearly as possible the same 
 cost as it was when, in the time of the war with France, 
 wheat was selling at 104 shillings ! Whatever military 
 credit or reputation we have abroad, is the capital we 
 laid up in olden times — and on which we are now 
 trading. We are trading upon Waterloo and Trafalgar 
 in the days of the Monarch}-, and the heroism of 
 our troops in the Indian Mutiny of the Sepoy Army. 
 What could be stronger sympton of the decadence 
 of the nation than disaster on the field ? We 
 have had one military success in the East — the 
 Egyptian Campaign, which was darkened, mini- 
 mised, ruined, by the abandonment of the Soudan 
 as soon as we had conquered it — to set against the 
 Majuba Hills, Maiwands, the Isandulas, which have 
 ushered in the march of the glorious Democracy. 
 Is this a retrogression, or an advance ? Where 
 are the statesmen now who will be placed within 
 a year's march of the Peels and Cannings, Russells, 
 Palmerstons, and a long and glorious roll of 
 statesmen such as they? We have indeed amongst us.
 
 124 
 
 the veteran leader of the Liberal Party — now the Chief 
 
 of the Democratic Party — but the Gladstone of the days 
 
 when he served in Liberal Ministries more than thirty 
 
 years ago, is not the Gladstone of 1894- Democracy 
 
 has changed him from the champion of Free Trade, the 
 
 defender of the Church, the eloquent foe of Bourbon 
 
 tyranny in the South of Italy, into the Irish Home 
 
 Ruler, the foe to Established Churches, the traitor to 
 
 the Constitution, the destroyer of the oldest branch of 
 
 the Legislature. It is not to be wondered at that 
 
 the statesman who left the liero Gordon to perish at 
 
 Khartoum is now the statesman who bequeathed as his 
 
 departing legacy to his country the traitor's duty to 
 
 destroy the constitution and throne of his country. And 
 
 this conversion of a noble mind has been one of the 
 
 greatest triumphs of the Democratic Spirit of the Age ! 
 
 And what of English statesmanship apart from Mr. 
 
 Gladstone? Has that increased the prosperity of this 
 
 country ? Thirty years ago England was a tranquil 
 
 country, peaceful, without a symptom of internal danger. 
 
 Surely the peace of England ought to be the end and aim 
 
 of English statesmanship ! Where has it landed us now ? 
 
 Where has this Democratic statesmanship led us to ? 
 
 To the very limits of a position from which there can 
 
 be no escape but through bloodshed or disgrace. The 
 
 statesmen of the Democracy have succeeded in placing 
 
 the peace of England in jeopardy, by trying to destroy 
 
 what thev should not permit to be destroyed, and to 
 
 humiliate and destroy a party as brave and as determined 
 
 iis themselves. This is the result of thirty years of this 
 
 Spirit of the Age statesmanship. These Democratic
 
 statesmen, acting- in the Spirit of the Ag^e, now dare us 
 to the conflict. Can we refuse their challenge ? But if 
 we do take up the gauntlet, do they know what that 
 answer means ? When the shadow of the Crimean war 
 was darkening the homes of England, Mr. Bright thrilled 
 every heart in England when he said, "You may, 
 even now, hear the beating of the wings of the 
 Angel of Death throughout the land." Shall we 
 ever hear the wings of the Angel of Death fluttering 
 again over our homes, to be made desolate, not in 
 conflict with a foreign enemy, but in a struggle between 
 brothers ?
 
 126 
 
 PART VL 
 I. 
 
 We see now, I hope, clearly the dang-ers to the 
 Crown and the institutions we live under from this 
 attack on the House of Lords. If the electorate 
 refuse to send a majority to support the revolutionary 
 Minister, — so much the better, — Cadit qiicestio. But if 
 the electorate in a moment of madness give their decision 
 in favour of a revolution the time will have come for 
 Loyalists to consider how best to meet the crisis. We 
 even now begin to realize the threats to which we have 
 been subjected, and to which we have for so long" sub- 
 mitted with patience and forbearance — we have already 
 seen the consequences of submission to them. It is time 
 for us even now to turn and to declare what we, who 
 are Loyalists, intend to do. Should certain contingencies 
 arise, if we are smitten on one cheek, we have no inten- 
 tion of turning the other to the smiter. We intend to 
 defend the rights of the throne and the powers of the 
 House of Lords. If the throne is attacked we will 
 defend it. If those who wish to destroy these institu- 
 tions continue to march onward, we will say to them, 
 "Thus far, and no farther!" In what would happen 
 after this warning, the onus of responsibility would rest 
 on the shoulders of those who disregarded it. We are 
 the attacked party. We defend ourselves. The onus 
 rests on the aggressor, not o\\ the defender.
 
 127 
 
 This, of course, is Civil War. In all wars the re- 
 sponsibility rests on those who provoke them. The 
 very name of Civil war is so odious, that no civilized 
 beings can utter it without a shudder. If war — foreigfn 
 war, on the justest of g-rounds, on the most patriotic of 
 issues, in defence of one's own country, is, even then, 
 an evil which our human intelligence can barely reconcile 
 with the goodness and mercy of Providence, how much 
 greater the curse, how much more appalling will be the 
 responsibility which will rest on the heads of those who 
 are trying to light up a war between Englishmen and 
 Englishmen — on English soil, by forcing thousands of 
 Englishmen in defence of what they hold most dear, to 
 face those horrors from which their very nature recoils, 
 in order to avoid evils even greater, if that were pos- 
 sible, than the calamity of war itself. If Civil war ever 
 takes place, such a responsibility will rest on the heads 
 of the Democrats. 
 
 11. 
 
 Let us clearly and distinctly understand what is the 
 cause for which we are going to contend. 
 
 We believe that the Constitution as it exists now — 
 and has existed for centuries — consisting of King, 
 Lords, and Commons, is still the system of Government 
 best adapted to the character of the vast majority of 
 the English people. 
 
 We hold that the abolition of the Upper House must 
 eventuallyinvolvethedownfall of the monarchical system. 
 
 We say that the abolition of the Upper House 
 would lead to the concentration of all the powers of
 
 128 
 
 government in the grasp of one single Chamber 
 
 absolutely uncontrolled. 
 
 We hold that such a concentration of power would 
 
 constitute a Democratic Dictatorship of the most 
 
 tyrannical kind. 
 
 We hold that such a Dictatorship would be 
 
 necessarily incompatible not only with the existence of 
 
 the Monarchy but with the freedom of the people, and 
 
 the good and impartial government of all classes. 
 
 We further state that to deprive the Upper House 
 
 of its veto is practically the same as to abolish the 
 House altogether, as it would degrade this portion of 
 
 the Legislature to a powerless nonentity. The Upper 
 House could no more exist without a veto than the 
 human body could live after the heart had ceased to beat. 
 We affirm not only that the usurpation of uncon- 
 trolled power by the single chamber, would place in 
 the hands of the leader of the majority in it the despotic 
 powers of a dictator, but that such a dictatorship would 
 be fatal to the liberties of the people. In such hands 
 we believe that legislation would be unjust, and vindic- 
 tive, and oppressive. We hold that class interest would 
 predominate to such a degree that only the interests of 
 one class would be considered and that class would be 
 embued with a determination to destroy the interests of 
 other classes without any regard to equality of rights, or 
 justice of claims. The existence of such a democratic 
 and despotic single chamber would be the death blow of 
 political justice toward those parties who have hitherto 
 opposed its creation. We believe that the democratic 
 tyranny of a single chamber, without control or check,
 
 129 
 
 would be a tyranny far more formidable and injurious 
 to every section of the people than the worst kingly 
 tyranny in the days of the Stuart dynasty. We say that 
 this tyranny is now threatened us, and that it is as much 
 to oppose this threatened tyranny that is to come from 
 democratic autocracy as to defend the House of Lords 
 as it is, that we enter the field. 
 
 We say that every well-wisher to the good govern- 
 ment of his country will approve reforms of a 
 radical kind in the Upper House, but we hold that no 
 such reforms would be accepted by the democrats because 
 they would strengthen, rather than weaken, the House 
 which stands between them and paramount power which 
 they have announced it is their object to attain. 
 
 We say that we will not submit to the despotic 
 tyranny of a single Chamber in substitution for the 
 Upper House and the Crown, and that we, as 
 Loyalists, will resist this attack with all our energies, 
 at the cost of our possessions, and at the sacrifice of our 
 lives. 
 
 That should be our creed and our war cry.
 
 I-:;© 
 
 PART VII. 
 I. 
 
 What will be the attitude of the Liberal Party in 
 the coming conflict ? We know the dut}- of the Con- 
 servative Party— and they will do it — but what will the 
 Liberal party do? It is a momentous question. It 
 may perhaps be best answered by another question. 
 Will the Liberals vote and act as their fathers, the old 
 Whig Party, would have voted and acted — or will they 
 side with the Democrat ? If the Liberals are the true 
 successors and representatives of the Whig Party, they 
 will cast in their lot with the Constitutional Party ; and 
 this union between the successors of the Whigs and 
 the descendants of the old Tories would show how 
 the two great political parties, adversaries for so many 
 centuries, foes of the bitterest type, are forced into 
 alliance and sympathy against a modern political 
 force, which would have been opposed as strongly 
 by the Whig as by the Tory of a more ancient epoch. 
 What has been the old Whig Policy ? The lines of 
 the policy of the great Whig Party stand out sharp and 
 clearly defined since the Revolution of 1642, and the days 
 of 1688. That party then took to itself the guardianship 
 of the interests of the People against the oppression of 
 Parliament as well as of the Crown. It stood between 
 the Crown and the People — to safeguard the People — but 
 with no hostility to the Throne. The policy of the W^higs»
 
 after the Restoration, and afterhavingpurgedand purified 
 theThrone from its worst attributes, by the Parliamentary 
 war, was devoted to strengthening the Throne rather 
 than weakening it, and to reforming rather than destroy- 
 ing the political system. From the Revolution, from the 
 Restoration, to the present date it has often been the 
 object of the Whigs to curtail the power of the Crown, 
 but it has never been the avowed object of the Whig 
 Party to endanger the existence of the Throne, even 
 when it was necessary to defend the claims of the 
 People as strongly as in 1832. Much less would the 
 policy of the old Whig Party sanction an attack by the 
 People on the Upper Branch of the Legislature, when 
 there was not the slightest pretext for supposing that a 
 single right, or liberty of the People, was in danger at the 
 hands of the Peers. The Whigs of the Revolution were 
 true to the popular cause, but they were also true to the 
 Throne as well. The Liberals claim to be the successors 
 of the Whigs, and the Whigs claim, rightly or 
 wrongly — as Whigs or Tories may choose to assert — 
 to have made the Constitution what it is. Whigs 
 prided themselves, and great historians, like Macaulay, 
 have supported them in their proud assumption, 
 that they were the sole rightful depositaries of the 
 traditions of the Great Revolution. They were the right- 
 ful guardians of the liberties of the nation as handed 
 down to them in trust by their fathers who made the 
 Revolution. Whig tradition boasts that every concession 
 won for the People these last two centuries was 
 a victory of the Whigs. We may grant all these assump- 
 tions — and the more we admit them the more clear be-
 
 comes the path of duty which the Liberals, as sons of 
 the old Whigs, ought to take, if they are true to their 
 inheritance of Whig principles. They should separate 
 themselves from, the Democrats as from a pestilence. 
 Contrast the Whigs of the earlier part of this century — 
 or the end of the last — with the Democrat of to-day. 
 Ask if the Whig of that epoch could have one single aim 
 in common with the Democrat. Nor is the Democracy 
 of to-day of the same character or type as the People of 
 the past. If it is true that there is not a wider gulf 
 between the Whig of the Regency and the Liberal of 
 to-day than there was between the Whig and the Tory 
 of that date, it is equally certain that there is the same 
 complete difference, diversity of character, and marked 
 variation of type and temperament, between the People 
 of those days and the Democracy of 1894. 
 
 IL 
 
 Contrast the aims and objects of the Democrats and 
 the Whigs — the people and the Democracy — the two 
 great political parties of the two periods ? The old 
 Whig party spoke as Tribunes of the People — for the 
 popular cause. But these popular causes and their 
 aims — political adversaries may now admit — were noble 
 and patriotic, and never disloyal. No Whig statesman 
 ever threatened the Throne, or, even with all his passion 
 for popular rights, ever proposed that the Commons 
 should be paramount over the Crown. The Democrats in 
 the Ministerial benchesdo both of these things. What are 
 the Tribunes of the People clamouring for now ? Each of 
 these parties is now proceeding upon perfectly different
 
 133 
 
 lines to the attainment of perfectly different ends. The 
 " People" of ninety years ago had absolutely opposite 
 ends in view to those of to-day's Democracy? Can any 
 one say that, judg"ed by the old standard of English 
 politics, the Tribunes of the "Democracy "are asking for 
 what is patriotic or loyal? Radicalism in 1810, let us 
 say, which assumed to speak for the People, claimed 
 for them, as law-abiding masses, political rights which 
 could not long be deferred, and political aspirations 
 which could not be ignored. At this distance of time, 
 even Tory prejudices may give way, and we may allow 
 that the voice of the people was often the voice of 
 justice and liberty. The Tribunes of the people in those 
 days could not speak with freedom of speech, except 
 often only at the peril of their persons, or even their 
 lives. The political consciences and skins of those in 
 power in those days were much more tender than 
 they are in these days. In confronting abuses, 
 in defending the oppressed, the People's Tribune 
 often dared much, and suffered much. Sir Francis 
 Burdett went to the Towner for offences which would be 
 ridiculed in these times. Wilkes went to ignominious 
 punishment for the very heinous crime of having in the 
 celebrated No. 45 of the North Briton ventured to suggest 
 that his august and venerated Sovereign was guilty of a 
 slight deflection from the paths of absolute truthfulness 
 (And where, of all places ? In the King's Speech, in 
 which, probably, the King had not written one syllable). 
 And yet for this awful crime the North Briton w^as 
 ordered to be burnt by the hangman. And now we allow 
 too much latitude. However lamentable it would be to
 
 134 
 
 see any attempt to stifle free speech, we may doubt 
 whether, when the Democrat Minister, without danger 
 to his Hberty, or his Hfe, is permitted with a 
 full assurance of his perfect safety and immunity 
 from any kind of peril for any outspoken treason to the 
 Throne, to try to raise the masses in revolt against our 
 Constitution and the Crown, the reasonable limits of 
 free speech have not been reached, and passed. 
 
 III. 
 
 Tories — or Conservatives — now that the unfairness 
 of party bias is buried in the past, can admit that the 
 People's voice in those days was a noble voice ; and at 
 times was raised for the noblest ends. Lord Brougham, 
 the great Tribune of the People in the early part of the 
 century, declared that ' ' in the voice of the people you may 
 " hear the thunder of the Almighty." Vox populivox dei. 
 No doubt this grand apostrophe was true, with the 
 reservation that it is only when the People are 
 crying aloud for what is just and free and ennobling, 
 and reasonable, as an intelligent, law-fearing people, 
 that the " thunder of the Almighty could be heard." 
 The People of those days, instead of crying for 
 the overthrow of a Throne and a Constitution, which 
 was the free and noble work of the statesmanship 
 of ages, cried aloud for cheaper food for their children 
 — for fairer wages for the sweat of their brow — which 
 would keep them from that state of starvation in which 
 the close of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 found the 
 lower masses of the population — a condition of national 
 distress of which we in these days can form no true
 
 135 
 
 conception. High prices — low wages — no employment 
 for labour — the people, half-starving, cried aloud for 
 mercy — they cried for reform, not to overthrow the 
 Institutions of their Country, but to reform them, in order 
 to obtain some sort of redress, which might give them 
 some chance of happier existences in this world. And not 
 only so — the People and their leaders did not stop short 
 at those boundaries which define purely political ques- 
 tions from those which appeal to the higher feelings of our 
 common humanity. They went further. They sought to 
 adorn the Statute book of England with acts which were 
 not merely political or actuated by party motives, but 
 by acts which came from the heart as well as the brain 
 ■of Liberal statesmanship — from the heart of the 
 philanthropist as well as the brain of the politician. If 
 ever the thunder of the Almighty might be said to have 
 been heard in the voice of the people, assuredly it may 
 have been when in the mouths of Wilberforce, of Clark- 
 son, of Brougham, it demanded the ending of that traffic 
 in human lives which blotted our history for so long, — 
 and told the African slave to be free ? When the 
 voice of the people spoke in the name of 
 humanity, the thunder of the Almighty may have 
 been heard. Would the thunder of the Almighty 
 be heard in the voice of the Democrat to-day, crying — 
 not for liberty to the People, who are free — not for the 
 betterment of humanity, not for the improvement of the 
 well-being of the toiling millions- — or of the poor whose 
 state appeals more piteously to our eyes and humanity 
 every day, and on every side of our path — but crying for 
 a Revolution which must darken every home in England
 
 136 
 
 with the shadow of Civil War ? Would the thunder of 
 the Almig-hty be heard in the voice of a democracy 
 clamouringf for the destruction of the Constitution and 
 the overthrow of a Crown, which for centuries has 
 never threatened to encroach upon the Hberties of the 
 people — or stood in the way of the welfare and hap- 
 piness, social or political, of the nation? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Contrast, then, the People of those days and the 
 Democracy of the present day. It is of great importance 
 to show that the Democrats of to-day have nothing- in 
 common with the Radicals, or Liberals, or Whigs of old. 
 Even in those days of provocation, in the earlier years 
 of the nineteenth century, in their sheer distress — in 
 their want of food — the People, — bitter as they were 
 against the Tory party and the Tory administrations — ■ 
 even then the People stayed their anger before it reached 
 the Throne. Riots there were — and frequent — but 
 against Tory administration, and not against the Crown. 
 The People sought to destroy a Party and a Ministry, 
 but never the Parliamentary system or the Crown. 
 However much the Parliament or the Parliamentary 
 majorities in it, were slow to recognize their claims — 
 with starvation, — so often the parent and the justifica- 
 tion of insurrection,- — staring them in the face, the 
 People spared the Crown. They asked for food, 
 not for Unicameran Parliament — they asked for a wider 
 suffrage — political justice — ampler means of obtain- 
 ing a voice in the Councils of the Nation — not for a 
 supremacy of the Commons — of the people — over the
 
 137 
 
 Sovereign. Even in the dark political hours when their 
 patience and endurance were racked to the very break- 
 ing- point, they did not ask for Revolution, but for 
 better government in the Parliamentary system as it was. 
 And now ! The " People," who could, in those trying 
 days, under every provocation, refrain from attacking 
 the Sovereign, are now, as a Democracy, proceeding to 
 overthrow the Parliamentary system of the country — 
 and then the Crown — without one single grievance against 
 them — with fulness and plenty in their homes — with 
 cheap food, liberty, and more than liberty — with every 
 comfort within the means of the lower masses — to over- 
 throw a Constitution in these days of almost perfect 
 prosperity in comparison with those old days of trial 
 and temptation — to overthrow a Crown which in their 
 most passionate hours they left vmmolested. And why 
 is there now to be this Revolution ? Not for one single 
 encroachment upon the people's freedom — not one 
 single indictment of that nature can be brought 
 against the Peers — or the Crown, — but in order, at the 
 summons of Doctrinaires or Democratic Revolutionists, 
 to place supreme autocratic power in the hands of the 
 Commons, without any check upon them — or upon the 
 use of the purse of the nation which would be at the 
 disposal of the uncontrolled leader of the majority of the 
 Commons. Would it be possible to find any political 
 parties more strongly antagonistic or more widely 
 separated than the People of the first portion of the 
 century and the Democracy of 1894?
 
 138 
 
 V. 
 
 We admit, therefore, in the fullest measure that 
 the Whigs were foremost in their aspirations for the 
 improvement of human happiness, the advancement 
 of the people, the consolidation of English institutions 
 based on justice to the varied interests of the country. 
 The history of the Whig Party is the history of the 
 People's struggles and triumphs. Be it so. Grant every 
 •claim the Whigs make. But what were those triumphs ? 
 They were battles fought and won by the great Whig 
 •champions and the Whig Party in the cause of progress 
 and liberty, in order to strengthen the Throne by placing 
 it on the basis of justice to the People of this country. 
 Will the Liberals of to-day allow the work of the Whigs 
 of yesterday to be swept away by the Democrat ? That, 
 indeed, is the vital question : Whigs, as Whigs write 
 history, built up the Constitution as it is to-day. Demo- 
 crats destroy it before their face. Will they tolerate it ? 
 How can the Liberal forget the creed of the Whigs, and 
 destroy, what is, in fact, the boasted handiwork of his 
 own progenitors ? The Whig must be changed indeed 
 to become the Democrat. In some instances the 
 ■character of the so-called Whigs of the day has, indeed, 
 undergone marked changes. It often happened that the 
 Radical — violent when unfettered with the responsibility 
 of office, was tamed by a seat on the Treasury Bench, — 
 in other, and, no doubt, truer words, a politician, hot- 
 headed and impetuous in defence or advocacy of causes 
 in which he believed, became a Statesman, when a sense 
 of the weighty responsibility of his duties was imposed 
 upon him, more calm, more cautious perhaps, but, never-
 
 139 
 
 theless, a high-minded and conscientious administrator 
 
 of the Nation's affairs. 
 
 It may have been a little libellous to say — or sing 
 
 — of the Whig as was sung of him by a contemporary 
 
 wit : 
 
 "As bees on flowers alighting- cease to hum, 
 
 '* So Whigs when taking office soon grow dumb." 
 
 But, in the case of the present descendant of the 
 Whig, the reverse, and very much the reverse of the 
 medal is the case. In these times the intoxication of office 
 and its power seems to have inflamed still further the 
 revolutionary passions of the Whig Ministers. Official 
 responsibilities certainly have not softened the 
 Philistinism of Mr. Morley, or drawn the teeth of the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. Each of these states- 
 men, when he left the freer benches of the op- 
 position, seems to have shed the remainder of his 
 Whig skin, and, with it, the remainder of his Whig 
 principles, and developed — or degenerated — as 
 soon as he had taken his seat on the Treasury 
 benches, into a still more violent and uncurbed Democrat 
 than before. But what will the Liberals who are still 
 Whigs — and who will not follow these extreme leaders 
 — decide to do ? 
 
 On the support of one section of the Liberal Party 
 we may count with confidence, the Liberal-Unionist 
 section. That section is onl}^ too well aware that the 
 abolition of the House of Lords means the success' of 
 Home Rule. Will they have given up their allegiance 
 to their old party to save the country from Home Rule, 
 and then allow the onlv barrier which exists to the
 
 140 
 
 Home Rule, the House of Lords, to be swept away 
 before their eyes ? The same cause which led them 
 to secede from the main body of Liberalism would make 
 it imperative on them to oppose measures which would 
 abolish the Legislature which was the instrument for 
 rejecting Home Rule — to oppose which they themselves 
 as Liberal-Unionists have transferred their support — 
 temporarily if you will — to the Conservative Party. If so 
 large a part — and perhaps the most influential portion 
 in political weight — of the Liberal Party acted on the 
 dictates of their consciences — not a very common 
 occurrence — and left their party in order to defeat 
 Home Rule, w^e may perhaps see another defection from 
 the Liberal Party which will be an invaluable reinforce- 
 ment to the Loyalist ranks. As one of the detached 
 sections of the Liberal Party became "Liberal L'nionists," 
 we may look forward, not without hope that another 
 section of that party which though existing separately 
 from the " Unionists," and like the " Unionists," true 
 and loyal to the principles of Liberalism, will not tolerate 
 as "Liberal Constitutionalists" the destruction of the 
 Constitution, any more than "Liberal Unionists "would 
 tolerate Home Rule. 
 
 VL 
 
 Let the Liberals who are still Whigs, and not 
 Revolutionists, reflect on the situation their country 
 is placed in. Let them ask themselves whether 
 if they wish to bear themselves as consistent Liberals, 
 attached to Whig principles, they can follow their 
 former leaders in the policy they are now placing before
 
 141 
 
 the country. The whole mass of the Liberal Party is 
 now invoked to substitute a Parliamentary dictator- 
 ship for the free Constitutional Parliament, which 
 the Whigs for centuries past, with Sisyphoean 
 labours, have been creating. Their fathers 
 have fought and bled and died for the very principles 
 which they are asked to throw to the winds. If 
 the Empire owes to the Whig Party the extension of 
 its liberties — fruits of victories raised on soil watered 
 with the blood of their Whig ancestors, if it owes free- 
 dom of speech — freedom of thought — the enlargement 
 of the suffrage on which the latter part of the existence 
 of Constitutional Government has flourished and borne 
 good fruit — if it owes these benefits as largely to the 
 Whigs as the Whigs have claimed, consistency and the 
 fame of a great party at once demand that the Liberals, 
 as descendants of the Whigs, should be foremost in the 
 field to defend these rights of Parliament which their 
 fathers fought and bled for, and which are now attacked 
 by a sacrilegious band — and to guard the trust of 
 the traditions of a great party from destruction. If 
 this be so, can the Liberals who hold these traditions 
 in trust from the Whigs, can they allow a new 
 subversive power to rise in politics — -a new principle, 
 fatal to the existing Parliament, to be successful 
 — a principle which would involve the supremacy, 
 without control, of an absolutism of Government, which 
 would be antagonistic to every principle for which his 
 Whig forefathers, fought and which they won at the 
 great Revolution. Of these the Whigs have always 
 boasted themselves the only true and rightful guardians.
 
 142 
 
 Will they be found trustworthy champions in the hour 
 of danger? We will hope so. When the value of their 
 trustworthiness is put to the test will they fail ? Or 
 will the Tories, after all, be found the truest defenders 
 of Whigf traditions and principles, in their noblest 
 and most patriotic form, when the hour for action 
 strikes ? 
 
 VIl. 
 
 If the Liberals would reflect for one moment they 
 would see that, if Liberalism has had this great and pre- 
 ponderating" share in consolidating a system of govern- 
 ment in this country, which has never had an equal for 
 freedom in the history of the world, they would be the 
 very worst enemies to these institutions they had done so 
 much to create, if they, as a revolutionary Democracy, 
 voted for the uncontrolled despotism of a "paramount" 
 Parliament, erected on the ruins of the Upper 
 House and a kingless throne. Nothing, therefore, can 
 be more clear than that to the Whig even more than to 
 the Tory — to the Liberal even more than the Conser- 
 vative — the duty must in honour rest to defend the 
 principles of the Revolution, and guard the tradi- 
 tions of 1646, as well as of 1688. The more the 
 greatness and grandeur of England is owing to the 
 Whig, the more the Liberal is bound to defend it from 
 attack or danger. In proportion as the Liberal is 
 proud of his Whig victories, so ought he to resist the 
 destruction of their glorious results. It is not the 
 Conservative, the Tory, the LTnionist Liberal alone that 
 are bound as bv a sacred trust to defend the boasted
 
 143 
 
 results of Whig policy. It is the Liberal party as a 
 whole, as a mass, who, if political consistency is still a 
 living- factor in political life, are bound to don their 
 armour, and prove themselves true to the principles of 
 the Revolution from which they date their mission. 
 It was often jestingly attributed to them that they, after 
 the Revolution, had a mission to go forth on the face of 
 the earth and multiply, and replenish the world with 
 Whig families, who should have the monopoly of the 
 duty to reform mankind; as well as to assimilate the 
 luxuries and good things of office. Seriously, the 
 Whigs went forth indeed, to take a noble part in the 
 History of England ; and the greater the measure of 
 the splendour of Whig statecraft the greater will be the 
 shame and humiliation that will fall to the share of the 
 Liberals if they desert the Whig colours. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 If any Liberals are wavering', let them remember that 
 not a single representative of the great Whig families is 
 1 to be found in the ranks of those who, calling themselves 
 Liberals, are transforming Liberalism into Revolution. 
 All, or nearly all, the great Whig families of the Revolu- 
 tion have seceded from the Liberal ranks, as they are now 
 led and constituted. They know how the old Whig would 
 despise the Liberal if he could see him in the ranks of 
 
 t those who wish to place a Unicameran Government in 
 1 the name of Democracy, with its absolute dictatorship 
 and its closure, its absolute power over freedom of 
 speech, in the hands of a single Democratic Assembly — 
 without a controlling power. If such a " shade "as that
 
 144 
 
 of the old Whig could revisit the "glimpses of the moon," 
 
 could see the deeds that are now done in the name of 
 
 Liberalism, and could contrast the memories of the old 
 
 Whig glories — and all their memorable victories in the 
 
 happy days of old, with the present state of the Whig 
 
 Party, he might indeed shed tears (if "shades can 
 
 weep ? ") of bitterness, and acknowledge the truths in a 
 
 political sense, — of the words of Dante. 
 
 " jVesstin maggior dolore 
 " Che ricordarsi del tempo felice 
 " Xella miseria." 
 
 To remember in the hours of Whig degeneracy and 
 the disruption of the Liberal Party, the Reform Act of 
 1832, the equalization of all religious beliefs, the aboli- 
 tion of those disabilities which kept whole classes of the 
 community from participating in political and municipal 
 life on account ot their creeds, to think of such deeds in 
 the days of Whig despondency, and transformation, 
 when the Whig has become a Liberal, and the 
 Liberal a Democrat and the Democrat a Revolutionist 
 crying for Unicameran Parliaments and popular 
 supremacy over the Crown, would be intolerable 
 anguish. And such recollections of such a past, 
 with its visions of political happiness, would be all 
 the more intolerable from the very brilliance of 
 what they recalled, contrasted with the darkness of the 
 present hour of grief, and regret, in which they have 
 come back so vividly to his mind. We, there- 
 fore, as Constitutionalists, look to the main 
 body of the Liberal Party to help us in this 
 great struggle. W^e say that they are W'higs, and, asj 
 Whigs, cannot tolerate a " Unicameran " Government]
 
 •45 
 
 with absolute power. The tradilions of the Liberal 
 Party are the traditions of the Whigs. These 
 traditions are as sacred a trust in the hands of 
 the Liberals as the traditions of the Revolution 
 were in the hands of the Whigs. Will the Liberals 
 — can the Liberals — join hands with the Democratic 
 Party, and destroy the principles of free Government, 
 which date from the great Revolution ? We hold that 
 to give the Commons absolute supremacy over the 
 Crown as well as the nation is a Revolution which is in 
 direct defiance of the principles of the old Whig Part}-. 
 Will the Liberals — can they help to light the torch 
 which will consign to the flames all the fruits of the 
 hard-won victories — as well as the honour —of that great 
 Whig Party which has played so glorious and noble a 
 part in the history of this country, and of which the 
 Liberal Party now holds the glorious heritage in trust. 
 
 IX. 
 
 One word to the Radicals of to-day — to the Demo- 
 crats of the future. If a statesman ever lived to whom 
 you, as the " People " of this country, owe a debt which 
 nothing can repay, it is Mr. Bright. He was your 
 friend when you had but few. He did not wait for the 
 flood tide of democracy to sail in on its flowing waters, 
 as your Democratic leaders believe they are doing now. 
 He stood alone, almost alone, when to stand alone 
 required unselfish fortitude, and the courage of a hero. 
 The smug patriots who lead } ou now do so without 
 fear of the hostility — the calumny the endless hate 
 which beat like an angry sea against the rock on
 
 146 
 
 which Mr. Bright, as it were, stood with unflinching- 
 steadfastness, and which would have daunted many a 
 heart less brave than that of your great advocate. To 
 him, more than to Sir Robert Peel, you owe it that your 
 bread is cheap. To him, more than to Lord Russell — 
 or Lord Grey--or even Mr. Gladstone, you owe the 
 possession of the political power you possess — 
 and the franchise, under which you exercise that 
 power. In those gloomy days of 3'our fortunes to 
 advocate your rights — to call for cheaper food for you 
 — was to call down on the head of your advocate the 
 penalties of social ostracism. Mr. Bright never flinched 
 from his fearless defence of you. Would Mr. Morley 
 and the Chancellor of Exchequer have fought for you 
 as Mr. Bright did ? He would be a bold man who 
 would say so. Bright cheapened your loaf and 
 championed your rights with Roman fearlessness — alone, 
 amidst a storm of political hate, surging around him — 
 when Radicalism was not as fashionable a creed for a 
 politician as Democracy is now — alone, almost, he stood 
 — with nothing but his own dauntless bravery and un- 
 alterable fidelity to you to guide and serve him in his 
 great battles for you. He was the idol of you, 
 " the People," because he understood }'our wants, 
 your necessities, your rights. Will the men of 
 the Midlands ever forget their great Member of 
 Parliament ? Do you, as Radicals, owe him nothing- 
 but empty words ? Well, but if you admit your idolatry, 
 if you owe him this debt of gratitude, if you are 
 worthy of what he did for you why not tr_\- to 
 repay it in the manner wliich would best honour his.
 
 '47 
 
 memory, by following- the great principles of policy 
 which were the guiding- star of his life — the principles of 
 loyalty to the Crown and loyalty to the People ? Will 
 you follow Mr. Bright, and be loyal to the Throne, 
 as he was, or will you follow Mr. Morley, and 
 destroy the Crown ? Follow your idol's precepts and 
 you would put your feet on the neck of Unicameran 
 Government and stamp the very life out of a Single 
 Chamber. If you have one spark of gratitude for 
 John Bright and for his memory, you would not 
 destroy a Legislature which, even in the midst of your 
 strongest trials, he never proposed to destroy. There 
 were times in your history — in Mr. Bright's career, 
 when, if he had so minded, and had lifted up his hand 
 to do violence to the Upper House and the Throne, 
 you would have followed him to the death, in your 
 tens of thousands, whithersoever he led. But he never 
 overstepped the bounds of loyalty to his Sovereign. If he 
 did not do so in days when your abject state might have 
 justified almost an appeal to violence, why are you now, 
 in your days of comfort — of comparative luxury, — to do 
 what he, as your leader, refused to do in the days of 
 your extreme provocation ? When you are asked to vote 
 for a "Paramount" People's Chamber, read your 
 champion's speeches from end to end, and you will not 
 find in them one syllable of disloyalty. You are now 
 asked to be disloyal to the Crown. Be loyal to 
 John Bright. No man can vote for a "Paramount" 
 Chamber and be loyal to the Crown. Would Mr. Bright 
 ever have been disloyal to the Crown ? If not, he would 
 never have voted for a Unicameran Government.
 
 148 
 
 If you believe — and it is impossible to disbelieve it, that 
 you cannot vote for the " Unicameran Government" 
 without being" dislo3al to the Crown ; why should you now 
 renounce your allegiance to your old idol ? Why forget 
 his teachings and his memory? It is not that time — long 
 years — have gone by and brought a change in the state of 
 the nation and the mind of the people. Ten — twenty — 
 thirty years are little in the history of a nation, and not a 
 single grievance exists now which did not exist in the life 
 of John Bright. What has changed between the time 
 when Mr. Bright left you and Mr. Morley appears to 
 )ou that should make what was right in Mr. Bright's 
 time, wrong now in Mr. Morley's? Nothing — absolutely 
 nothing! Why then will you renounce the guidance of 
 your idol before his ashes have had time to grow cold 
 in his gra\e ? Why will you be false to the doctrines of 
 the man who led you, and whom you trusted — and who 
 had, more perhaps than any other man, made you 
 what you are, great, powerful, and free ? Be grateful to 
 his memory, and show it by following his guidance. You 
 have to choose between the Bright who knew you, loved 
 you, fought for you — and the Morleys and Roseberys 
 of the day ! Will you be false to the memory of your 
 old chief and 
 
 " Forget Pizarro to shout Bolivar." 
 Forget such a Pizarro for such Bolivars ! When 
 you are asked to make the People's Chamber "para- 
 mount " in the State at the expense of the Crown, 
 do not forget the words of your dead chieftain when he 
 told you at Birmingham in 1866 — "There is no man in 
 " England less likely to speak irreverently of the Crown
 
 149 
 
 "and Monarchy than I am." Do not forget his words, 
 "I will stand by the Constitution." And he did so, — 
 and, unless he was false to every word he had uttered, — 
 and those who knew John Bright would know what that 
 assumption means — he would have "stood by the 
 Constitution " in these days while he had the 
 breath of life within him. When, as the great electoral 
 struggle approaches, — the National Liberal Association, 
 or the emissaries of that party, invite you to use your 
 voting power, which you owe to John Bright more than to 
 any other statesman — to use that very franchise to "make 
 "the House of Commons the 'paramount' authority 
 "in the State" — then, if you honour your dead bene- 
 factor, let his living voice be heard again in every work- 
 shop — in every factory — in every cottage throughout 
 the land, wherever the artizan, the mill-hand, the 
 labourer, are eating the food he made cheaper — and 
 living in homes he made happier, and let your reply to 
 those who would lead you astray from the path he 
 would have had you follow — and to which he, even now, 
 as it were, beckons you from the grave, let your reply 
 be the echo of his own living words, " I am in accord 
 ' ' with our ancient Constitution. I will stand by it — I will 
 " be guided by its lights. They have been kept burning 
 " by great men among our forefathers for many genera- 
 "tions. Our only safety in this warfare is in adhering 
 " to the ancient and noble Constitution of our country."* 
 No man ever acted more fearlessly on such principles 
 than Mr. Bright. Radical, if you please — but Revolu- 
 tionist, never, — the welfare of the People if you like, 
 * Mr. Bright's Speech on Reform, at Manchester, Nov. 20, 1866.
 
 i^o 
 
 but the safety oi' the Constitution as well. Will Mr. 
 Morley, the doctrinaire Democrat of to-day, be a safer, 
 truer guide to you, the People of England, in a day of 
 danger, than the Radical, John Bright?
 
 151 
 
 PART VIII. 
 I. 
 
 I suggest that if the movement for placing the author- 
 ity of the Lower House over the Crown develops itself, 
 and if the electorate declares itself in favour of this policy, 
 the Loyalists of this country should at once form a 
 " Loyalist League," and present an address to the 
 Throne imploring the Sovereign to refuse his assent to 
 any measure for the alteration or overthrow of the Con- 
 stitution, and assuring him of our devoted support in 
 whatever shape and to whatever extent he may require it. 
 The object of this ' ' Loyalist League " would be to take up 
 the running at the point where Conservative Associations 
 end. Conservative Unions and Primrose Leaguesbring us 
 only to the polling booths. The Loyalists' League should 
 begin where they leave off, and end — wherever our duty 
 calls us. It may be asked why there should be such need 
 for such a "League" when the Crown would have ample 
 protection and defence from the ordinary forces of the 
 State ? I answer that at the time we should come to 
 the front there would not be a soldier in the service 
 of the Crown. I am dealing with a period when, if the 
 Sovereign had refused to yield to the revolutionary 
 Commons, and the Commons had, in consequence of 
 that refusal, used the great weapon of terrorism, the 
 stoppage of supply to the Crown, the Sovereign would 
 have to rely for his safety solely on those voluntary
 
 org-anizations and forces which were independent of 
 Parliamentary g"rants and beyond the control of a 
 revolutionary Chamber. Besides, the existence of such 
 an org-anization as I propose, at the moment when the 
 Commons were only threatening- to refuse to grant 
 supply to the Crown, and so to paralyze the whole work- 
 ing- of the machinery of the State, would give invaluable 
 aid, at a most critical moment, to the Sovereig-n ; when 
 the hour had come for him to choose between surrender 
 and disg-race — and peace — on one side — on the other, 
 between a refusal — and honour — and a conflict with the 
 Commons. In that moment of incalculable interest, 
 the knowledge that thousands of loyalists stood fairly 
 well organised, ready and eager to take the place, as 
 well as they could, of the regular forces which would be 
 disbanded through the stoppage of supply by Parliament, 
 might nerve and steel the Sovereign's heart in such a 
 fearful ordeal, if (and a Sovereign's heart is not usually 
 dead to the kindlier feelings of nature) the Sovereign 
 wavered for an instant in his duty, and shrank from the 
 shedding of English blood. At that moment on this 
 "Loyalist League" might depend the final decision of the 
 Sovereign, and in its hands might rest the issues of the 
 future destinies of this Empire for generations to come. 
 The object, therefore, of this League would be to 
 neutralize and minimize as far as practicable the influence 
 on the Sov^ereign's mind of the threat to stop supplies — 
 and also to have a force ready to be something of an 
 equivalent — a very inadequate one, but still a valuableone 
 — for those forces which would be dispersed and unavail- 
 able, if thethreat to stop supply was carried into execution.
 
 Such a force would be by no means ineffective in parry- 
 ing^ the blow from the weapon — the stoppage of supplj' — 
 on which the Commons would rely, as a last resort, as 
 an irresistible force for terrorizing- the Sovereign into 
 submission. The Loyalist League would be called into 
 existence to meet as far as possible the threats or the 
 stoppage itself of supply, if any Minister, however 
 democratic, could be found who would prove so false to 
 his country as to even threaten, much less to carry his 
 threat into execution, to leave it without the means of 
 defence or resistance, naval or military, and to lay 
 England at the mercy of the first Continental Foreign 
 Power which chose to avail itself of this chaotic 
 confusion and defencelessness to march to London. 
 
 II. 
 
 We would appeal to loyal English Manhood 
 wherever it may be found — scattered it may be through- 
 out the world — in India, in Australia, in Canada, to join 
 in this Address and to support the proposed League. 
 If this Address was laid at the foot of the Throne by 
 500,000 Loyalists, its presentation would be a lasting 
 landmark of patriotism, towering above the centuries, in 
 the Constitutional history of this Empire, as well as a 
 ringing note of defiance to the enemies of the Throne. 
 And we would look to the loyal Womanhood of England 
 to help us and to give us the invaluable aid of their 
 support in this cause of loyalty. In an infinity of ways 
 they could serve the cause, and strengthen the hands 
 and the hearts of the loyalists. Not by screaming 
 music-hall ditties at farmers' ordinaries, or thumping
 
 154 
 
 banjos, but by methods better adapted to English 
 ladyhood — that is, of Eng-lish ladyhood before it came 
 under the softening influence of refined democratic 
 customs. The admirable exertions of ladies in their 
 Primrose Leagues, which have proved themselves a 
 powerful factor in politics, could be exercised with 
 graceful power in the organization of the Loyalist 
 League. No recruiting sergeant would be so irresist- 
 ible as an English lady. Shall we appeal in vain ?
 
 PART IX. 
 I. 
 
 What then is it our duty to do ? Combine and 
 organize.* Our cause is a noble one — resistance to 
 revolution — resistance to the tyranny of a democratic 
 government uncontrolled — the support of a Throne. 
 Our fathers before us were no cowards when appeals 
 were made to their patriotism. Are we less men than 
 they were ? What happened in 1848? The Chartists 
 alarmed the country with demands which were supposed 
 to be dangerous to the institutions of the country. 
 These terrible demands, which so affrighted our fathers, 
 were called the " Six Points of the Charter," and were 
 these : — Universal suffrage ; Vote by ballot ; Division of 
 the country into electoral districts ; Annual Parlia- 
 ments ; Abolition of property qualification ; Pay- 
 ment of members. Several of those alarming demands 
 are long since Acts of Parliament, some of these were 
 proposed and carried by Conservative administrations. 
 How small, paltry, and miserable these demands appear 
 when compared with th>e demand for the abolition 
 of the Lords, and the overthrow of the Crown. 
 But small and contemptible as they now seem, 
 they called forth a patriotic protest from a loyal 
 people in the form of 150,000 men, who, in the Metro- 
 polis alone, formed up their ranks to oppose the Six 
 Points of the Charter and the Chartist movement. If 
 
 * The details of such org-anization will be sugg-esled at another 
 opportunity if the proposal contained in this Essay meets with 
 approval.
 
 •56 
 
 150,000 men came forth to oppose the mere shadow of 
 a revolution what ought to be our response when 
 dangers a thousand-fold greater than those Six Points 
 are upon us ? Are we less men than our fathers ? 
 Again, in recent times, when the Ulstermen of the North 
 of Ireland saw their liberties and principles threatened 
 by the proposed creation of an Irish Parliament, 
 which would have been an unsupportable tyranny 
 over them, over their political independence, over their 
 religion ; did they hesitate to beat to arms and 
 organise their forces to oppose that intolerable 
 tyranny to the death ? Are we to be less men 
 than the Ulstermen of Ireland when we are threatened 
 with an attack on principles as sacred to us 
 Englishmen as those for which Ulster was ready to fight? 
 And again, when the Southern States of America in 
 1861 seceded from the Federal Union, the citizens of 
 the Northern States flew to arms to preserve the Union 
 of their States. Was the preservation of the Union 
 more dear to the Americans than the preservation of 
 the constitution oi' this country is to thousands and 
 thousands of Englishmen ? Are we less men than the 
 Americans ? In a word, are we to submit to the 
 destruction of our constitution and to the substitutions ot 
 an experimental legislature, and to the certain tyranny 
 and despotism of a democratic dictatorship ? In the 
 words of Sir Robert Peel, " No, never will such tyranny 
 be borne !" 
 
 Combine then, and organize. It would be folly
 
 157 
 
 to fold our arms, indulging' in dreams of a false 
 security, which does not exist. It is folly and silliness 
 to treat with contempt and neg'lect a movement which 
 is led by Mr. Gladstone and Lord Rosebery, by the 
 Cabinet, by all the Ministers, and adopted by the Liberal 
 Party, and by the National Liberal Association, which, 
 it is useless to ig'nore, are the recog^nised representatives 
 of Liberal opinion. As the Secretary for Ireland says, 
 *' The movement must go on." Therefore, shut your eyes 
 if you will, close your ears if you like, but it would be 
 a negation of the senses God has g"iven us if we, as 
 intelligent being-s, refused any longer to acknowledge the 
 sound of the rising tide of a democratic revolution which 
 is even now rippling against the very steps of the Throne. 
 The movement must go on, the conflict must take 
 place. Victory will follow the forces, the readiest, the 
 best equipped. Organized wealth and force will 
 prevail over undisciplined numbers, however great. Our 
 cause is our Constitution and our Monarchy ! We 
 have been taught by the American States that 
 after the issues which cannot be peacefully settled 
 have been submitted to the arbitrament of war, it is 
 possible for the victor and the vanquished to live 
 together again in harmony and peace. May it be so 
 with us ! But now we have to prepare and com- 
 bine. Combine and organize ! and then with un- 
 flinching hearts, in tones of defiance to our foes which 
 shall not be misunderstood, with a voice which will ring 
 not only throughout England but through the listening 
 nations of the world, we will say to our Sovereign, 
 " If you call us, we will come!"
 
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