ROSEBERY REFORM.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 64, 17 March 1910, Page 6

ROSEBERY REFORM.

After almost exactly a six months' in. terval, Lord Rosebery has come forward once more into the full blaze of the lime-light. It was on 10th September that he delivered, at Glasgow, the brilliant attack upon the Budget which was commonly considered to have sealed its fate. Seldom has any speech attracted a more eager attention, but Lord Rosebery's habit of subsiding after a great effort was emphasised in this instance by his failure to draw the conclusion which his arguments appeared to justify. He refused at Glasgow to urge the House of Lords to throw out the Budget, and he afterwards refused either to vote for its rejection or to take part in the bizarre platform campaign by which the aristocrats sought to justify their i ejection of it. And 5} Lord Rosebery has been ploughing bis lonely furrow in darkness over since ln-> Glabgow *pcecli. but the lime-light \vm turned oa uncc move, when on luce-

day last, before an audience which crowded the gilded chamber, and included the Prince and Prince's!! of Wuloii, he moved his resolution on HouAit of Lords' reform. The subject i« win i>f burning interest just now, and w<- run well believe that the speech, wlii< )i is described as "closely reasoned and *itrn pst," was also eloquent and witty, lint the motion itself tail h.udly lio n.iid l<> shed a single ray of practical li^ht upon the solution of a problem which in no longer as academic as when Lord Jtowbery first adorned it with his graceful and polished periods. That a strong and efficient Second Chamber is a necessity ; thai such a chamber can be best obtained by the reform and reconstruction of the House of Lords ; that a necessary preliminary to this reconstruction is tho abolition of the right to a seat in the House of Lords by virtue of birth alone — these aro in substance the three j parts of Lord Rosebery's motion. How much further would the matter be carried by the acceptance of all the three propositions of this motion? The crux of the constitutional problem raised by tne Lords' rejection of the Budget would still remain untouched, and a rational judgment, even upon so apparently axiomatic a matter as the first of these propositions, really pre-supposes j the passing of a judgment upon the very j point which Lord Rosebery elects to ignore. If, for instance, a reformed but still non-elective House of Lords is to be allowed to exercise the same arbitrary power over Education Bills, Licensing Bilh, and even Finance Bills, which the unreformed House has successfully arrogated, a democrat may reasonably argue that the reformed House will be worse than the unreformed on« just in proportion to its advance in strength and efficiency. A strong tyrant may be a better man, but he is certainly a worse nuisance than a weak tyrant. Again, as an abstract proposition, th© nroposa l to limit the operation of the hereditary principle is absolutely sound ; but if the peers are to be constituted, as the proposals of Lord Rosebery's committee would have constituted them, an electoral to select, and therefore to control, a, majority of the reformed House, what will tho democracy get by the reform bnt an equally irresponsible but more presentable, and theretore more dangerous, master? Lord Morley seems to us have pricked Lord Rosebery's brilliant Bubble when he said that the emergency confronting them had been ignored by the nation, and that "what was needed was an effective means of settling differences between the two Houses." When that question has been settled, the other one will be a much simpler and less concentious matter than it is at present. That reform will follow the limitation ot the power of the Lords seems inevitable, and Sir Edward Grey pleads very strongly that the Liberals should not leave the worn to the other, side, if they do, he declares, in language almoit as 6trong as Lord Jlilner'p, .hat "the Liberals will be courting aisaKter, death, and damnation." Sir Edward Grey considers that the solution is to be found in an elective Chamber ; and. subject to the satisfactory s-ettlement of the crucial point indicated by Lord Morley, we feel satisfied that he is right. It would surely be better that the people should elect both Houses, though, as Sir Edward Grey 6ays, not necessarily at the same time nor from the same areas, than that the same peers who threw out the Budget last year should be empowered to elect a smaller number to repeat the opeiation now.