TWO VIEWS OF THE LORDS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 1352, 15 June 1907, Page 3

TWO VIEWS OF THE LORDS.

In a recent speech, Mr Lewis' Earcourt, First Commissioner of .Works, said that behind all their hopes ot legislation and their dreams of regeneration stood the House of Lords. (Cheers.) It had one fetish — property —and it loathed as the plague the very name of progress. (Renewed cheers.) It had no pretence to be called a revising body, for during a Tory administration it revised nothing. But now the Liberal party was in power, by some mystical transmutation, the, sloth turned into a porcupine — (laughter) — prickly at every approach by the representatives of the people. He was neither an "ender" nor a "mender" of the -House of Lords. It was not necessary to abolish the House of Lords, a:id it was not possible without a revolution, and he did not grudge the geegaws of titles and robes to those who valuod them so long as their possession carried with it no invincible power to resist at all hazard, and for all time,' the popular will constitutionally expressed, 't lie immediate task before the Government was to devise a stable and statesmanlike method by which, when conflict ».nd difference arose, they might show consideration and attention to the ar^jments and even the prejudices of others; but where they were able to show that duly elected representatives of the people ''were sufficiently cohesive and sufficiently numerous in their demands, those demands should.ultimately receive the assent of the other two estates of th£ *-«ftlm. When they had solved this problem, they would have laid the foundation of a new Magna Charts for the people of the United Kingdom. " An opposite view was presented about ihe same time by Mr Claude Lowther, M.P., in an address to his constituents. He said that; as an Assembly, the House of Lords stood otit among the Senates of the world. Within its ranks, there were considerably more than a hundred ex-members of the House of Commons, whose right to legislate as accredited representatives of the people, even the most bigoted Radical must aimit. It contained great English gentlemen, who, though they might not all be sufficiently brilliant to shine as political lights, or sufiiciently noisy to attain notoriety, yet for the most par^t possessed solid endowments of character, judgment and understanding ; men whom to know wus to trust; men unbiased, unprejudiced , who were invaluable during a national crisis, because they were proof against the fever of party, and could examine big questions in a big way. It contained men who, as Ministers of : the. Crown, had served their country" i-t home, and'inen who> as Governors afd representatives to various parts of the Empire, had served their country abroad. It contained men pre-emi.i-ent in the world of science, men in the front rank of commerce rtnd industry, men distinguished in literature, men supreme in the conduct of jurisprudence, men illustrious in the anntls of warfare, Kelvin, Rayleigh, Lister, Halsbury, James, Alverstone, St. AlJwyn, Spencer, Selborne, Devonshire, Rosebery, Milner, Croiher, Lnnsdo*rnV>, Wblseley, Kitchener, Roberts. Tneae were names of which' any Assembly would be justly proud. What intellects in the House of Cbmm'ons^-ospec^ jally among those members wh<f wuhed ■to nßoKsh the Lords-^fcould/^hejr^os-sibly pit Against the of these peers? % Imagine Mr'lteir Ha|"die on the Woolsack, speaking in terms of flattering encomium of some friendly cannibals who had massacred a British regiment; or picture Mr Lloyd-George delivering a panegyric to a group, of privileged admirers" on his own predominant genius; while, simultaneously from a tub in the corner, Mr Will Crooks was orating about a pin's head through a megaphene. To abolish the Lords and raise up these gentlemen in their stead would be singularly like the eclipsing of a star for the aggrandisement of a nightlight. It would be the victory of lung power over brain power.