THE HOUSE OF LORDS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7868, 2 August 1911, Page 6

THE HOUSE OF LORDS

The suggestion of Lord Stanmore (who, by the way, as Sir Arthur Gordon, was sometime Governor of Not Zealand) that tho House of Lords has power “to discharge a now peer from the service of the House” gives rise to several reflections. First, it seems to involve tho supposition in Lord Stanmoro’s mind that the peers tho Government is prepared to create if circumstances demand such a course (which it is practically certain will not be tho case) are to bo “life peers.” That is to say, they will not have the hereditary status enjoyed by all the present members ot tho House of Lords except tho four law lords and one ex-lord of appeal appointed under the Act of 1876. Wo do not know what ground there is for such a notion, but at the -present stage in tho proceedings his lordship’s remedy for tho ills which threaten the peers rather suggests the spectacle of a drowning person clutching at a straw. For all practical purposes, tho principle of hereditary legislators is almost as dead as William Shakespeare. Tho Parliament Bill about to pass states very distinctly that “it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second. Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis.” Tho peers themselves passed a resolution last year declaring (in part) “that tho possession of a peerage should no longer of itself give the right to sit and vote in tho House of Lords.” Lord Newton was responsible not long ago for tho melancholy prediction that “We have all got to go,” while oven Lord Lansdowne has launched a scheme to greatly reduce tho hereditary element in the Second Chamber.

The precedent upon which. Lord Stanmore bases his idea has naturally been the point of prolonged discussion by historians and other writers. The course taken by the peers- in refusing Lord Wonsleydale the right to sit is described by Freeman as an act of “ matchless impudence,” in defiance of precedent and of law, and in gross contempt of tho. authority of the Crown. Bagehot says that on that occasion “ The House of Lords rejected the inestimable, the unprecedented opportunity of being tacitly reformed. Such a chauce does not come twice. Tho life poors who would have been then introduced would have been among tho first men in the country. Lord Macanloy was to have been among the first; Lord Wensleydale—the most learned and not the least logical of our lawyers—to h© tho very first. Thirty or forty such meu, added judiciously and sparingly as years went on, would have given .to the House of Lords the very element which, as a criticising Chamber, it needs so much. It would have given it critics. . . .

The • very element which was wanted was, as it were, by a constitutional providence, offered to the House of Lords, and they refused it. By what species of effort that error can be repaired , I cannot tell; but unless it is repaired the intellectual capacity can never be what it would have been, will never be what it ought to be, will never be sufficient for its work.” The Select Committee appointed in 1907, after tho introduction of Lord Newton’s Reform Bill, included among its recommendations the appointment of life peers up to a maximum of forty. The report of this committee has been aptly described as forming an epoch in the history of the House of Lords. It is appropriate to mention just now that its conclusions, which, in effect, strongly condemn the present constitution of the Second Chamber, were arrived at practically unanimously with the notable exception of the Earl of Halsbury, who seems to oppose everything, and is now loading the remnant of revolutionaries marching under the

banner of “No Surrender.” No doubt the recommendations of that committee (over which Lord Rosebery presided), the various resolutions of the House of Lords, and the numerous reform schemes that have been put forward will receive due consideration when the timo comes, as it will como in proper sequence, for reconstruction of the Second Chamber. For the present, the Government is compelled to ignore all the peers’ offers and promises of self-improvement—first, because they axe all designed to wholly or partially defeat the intentions of the Parliament Bill which the Liberals were elected to pass; and, secondly, because it is merely beating the air to talk of reform while the veto exists. Withdrawal of the veto leaves the Lords extensive powers of revision and delay, quite ample to suffice until the permanent character of the Upper House can be considered.