THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JUNE 21. 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9086, 21 June 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JUNE 21. 1888.

It is the happy characteristic of AngloSaxon development that its greatest revolutions are bloodless. It is further to the happiness of the race that these revolutions are slow, comparatively silent, and coming to pass without dislocating social order,and hardly disturbing the even flow of ordinary life. Now and then an ebullition of feeling occurs, but it only slightly stimulates the progress of reform that is steadily working onward to the compassing of revolutions that our forefathers hardly dared to dream of. People were imprisoned and hanged, or exiled, only a few generations ago, for the crime of thinking what is now recognised by everyone as right principle in constitutional government; and theories now denounced as seditious, revolutionary, and dangerous will, in the evolution of experience, be accepted in a similar way. But in the long-continued course of silent revolution proceeding in the British Empire, there has been no more significant, more decisive step taken than the new departure proposed by the Prime Minister of England for reforming the House of Lords. Indeed,* the issues involved in such a proposal can not be taken in at a glance; for it is hardly too much to say that if this scheme is carricd into effect it will introduce such a radical alteration as must ultimately remove what has been regarded by many as one of the fundamental principles of the British constitution.

As announced to us in the cable message which appeared in the Herald yesterday, the Marquis of Salisbury has introduced a Bill for the reform of the House of Lords, proposing the creation of life peers, limited in the meantime to the number of fifty, those nominated in any year not to exceed five. These life peers are to consist of judges, admirals, generals, privy councillors, both at home and in the colonies, ambassadors, governors, and also persons of special merit. It is the. first step that costs, and this concession to the advance of democratic feeling cannot in the nature of things bo otherwise than merely the first step in a course which will result in the cessation of the hereditary peerage, and the filling of tho House of Lords by men ennobled only by personal merit. With few exceptions, the peerage of England is of comparatively modern growth, and had it not been for fresh creations the House of Lords would have ceased to be; and as neither the hereditary interests of the present peerage nor the spirit of the times will be enlisted for the addition of new hereditary peers, in the very nature of things it is likely that the principle of life peerage conferred for personal merit must prevail. No one can conceal from himself the fact that there has been a growing feeling among the masses of the people—who now hold the suffrage against the existence of an order with hereditary rights of legislating or vetoing legislation for the whole community; and any one noting the signs of the times, must have concluded from the development of public opinion that the time was within measurable distance when the continuance of such a state of things would be no longer tolerated. Many incidents had gone to show to the Chamber of hereditary legislators the handwriting on the wall ; and it is not merely in the chivalrous spirit of selfsacrifice that the head of the ancient house of the Cecils has invited the House of Lords to re-adjust its relations to the advancing forces of democracy. Looking at this limited measure of reform as but the prelude to the inevitable change from the hereditary to the life membership of the Upper Chamber of Legislature, it cannot be questioned that it will assure to the House of Lords a force in the government of the country which has been gradually passing away. Though abuse and favouritism will probably characterise many appointments for a certain period, until the spirit of reform has attained strength, still on the whole the life peerage is likely to be an aristocracy of talent. For, from whatever sphere its members may be taken, they will be likely to have risen to distinction above their fellows by excellence of some kind ; and as an aristocracy of personal merit, such a House of Lords will present a better check to undue growth of power in the representative Chamber, and all the better maintain an equipoise in the State.

That such a reform as this when complete should meet the requirements in the advance of popular institutions, seems entirely likely. In democracy properly so-called there is nothing antagonistic to the conferring of personal distinctions as the reward of merit. The hostility which has been manifesting itself against the House of Lords, has had its origin in repugnance to the principle of hereditary privileges descending, not for any merit in the recipients, but from the mere accident of birth ; and to an earldom or a marquisate, conferred as a reward for public service or exceptional merit, and expiring with the recipient, pure demooracy should have no more objection than to the conferral of the title of Doctor of Laws. Nor would it, when the high distinction was purged of the elements of injustice and unreason involved in the hereditary transmission of titular distinctions. When the mind of the community became disabused of prejudice, as it would gradually become as the reform of the House of Lords became complete, a Dukedom or a Baronetcy would be . no more

an object of dislike to rightly constituted democratic feeling than is a Governorship or a Mayoralty while the prospect of such honourable distinction being placed within the possibility of attainment by the humblest, would serve as a stimulus to effort in the service of the State throughout every portion of the British dominions, and would probably exercise a most potential influence over the community, in the cultivation of excellence in every department of life. That the hereditary Peerage was doomed in the natural order of events, was patent to every intelligent and impartial observer of the growth of public opinion, and the development of social forces in the United Kingdom ; and in a matter full of the elements of danger, the reform introduced by the Marquis of Salisbury seems to open the door to that quiet reform which constitutes some of the greatest and most startling revolutions of the Anglo-Saxon race.