THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 152, 30 June 1927, Page 6

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

As was only to be expected, the singularly inopportune proposal to reform the House of Lords has raised a storm which Mr. Baldwin may find it somewhat difficult to weather. The scheme put before the Upper House was vague and tentative enough, but it had the effect of inducing several peers to attempt a defence of the hereditary principle. The inevitable consequence has been a vehement protest from the Labour party, which sees in the Government proposals an attempt to entrench the House of Lords on a hereditary basis more strongly than ever, and thus enable it to defy the people's will once more. At the same time the motion of censure which Labour intends to submit to the House of Commons denounces the Government for attempting to inflict an outrage on the Constitution by instituting changes for which it has received no mandate. The Liberals, who see in these proposals au indication that the Conservatives are initiating their long-threatened onslaught upon the Parliament Act, are up in arms already. The Conservatives are endeavouring to disarm suspicion by suggesting that the Act should bo amended in such a way as to relieve the Speaker of bis present responsibility of deciding whether a given measure is or is not a Money Bill, and therefore may or may not bo amended or rejected by the Upper House. There is evident even among Mr. Baldwin's supporters a general conviction that it would not be desirable or wise to attempt any radical reconstruction of the Upper House without further preliminary discussion. But the Earl of Oxford is still seriously alarmed about the Parliament Act, and he has expressed himself as "unalterably opposed'' to any attempt to limit the power of the Crown to "swamp" the Upper House by creating new peers. It was only the threatened use of this prerogative that in 1532 and 2910 enabled the country, in the Earl's words, "to escape from revolutionary situations," and the House of Commons is not likely to forget this warning. But the outcry against the Government proposals for "mending" the Upper House shows plainly that Mr. Baldwin has once more committed the cardinal political blunder of laying before Parliament an important measure under unsuitable conditions and at the wrong time.