The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1906. THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12722, 6 February 1906, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1906. THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Everybody who knows anything about it knows that the New Zealand Upper ■House is anything-tout an edifying spectacle. It has been variously described t>y unfeeling critics as a political old men's refuge, a reti'eat for political dead-beato, a depot for derelicte, and so on, while the Premier—who more than any other 'man, is responsible for the parlous condition to which the Legislative Council has <been reduced —lias been impelled to dedaure on sundry occasions itihat Ibis wretched •bjandiwork would have to be either mended or ended. He is, ■however, careful to refrain from taking 'him&e'lf seriously,' and the public have •in consequence become somewhat resigned to tihe apparonitly inevitable. But while long custom may have rendeavd it natural for us to regard our own little Legislative Council as a sort of political -veirniiform appendix, while we may with some justification treat it as a joke or laugh alt it as the faroical fagend of our Parliam'&ntary pantomime, iwe cannot with equal serenity contemplafce a" spectacle of similar' decadence in .the Britifih 'Houee of Lords. Yet that venerasble institution is to-day being as soaltihingly attacked at Home as ever its puny ..imitation 'has been in this colony. For instaince, there is an a. reoerit -number-of the '■ Saturday Revienv " a si'ngulaiiiy sbinging iaa*fcicle devoted to what it is pleased to call the " Adulitefratdon of 'the Peerage." The writer, without any reeervaibkm, contends that Mr OBalfour's ilateet" " creations " owe tiba ih&niofiir that has been bestowed upon ■fhem Botely to their wealth. He exempts, of courss, the titles conferred upon Sir M. HicksJßeach, Mr Ritchie, •and Mr Grenfell, but he is particularly caustic concerning that which !has beefi ■won by Sir Alfred Haa'mswoitih. The second (Pitt used to say that " every man with £10,000 a yeiar is entitled to a peerage," and, allowing for the alftered value of money to-day, if this dictum were accepted as correct, tho poeeessor of £20,000 a year would naturally look for the high honour of the coveted title. The " Review " does nothesitate to ea.y that df the present furious ennoblement of mere financiers continues, Mr Zangwill and his friends may as well abandon the dream of founding a Zion I>eyond taie seas. " The House of Lords," dlt says, " will have superior attractions; and every jobber in agiotage between Bremen and Berlin will pack his valise and repair to London." And yet it was only tihe other day that Mr Andrew Carnegie, one of the greatest kings of finance, declared that " he would rather be the grandson of one who could teach tihe.art of cobbling than be the desoendent of thirty -worthless dukes." More startling still to those who love the lords —'and the lords have no more ardent lovers than the lords themselves —is tihe fact that two prominent members of "the new Cabinet have from the hustings declared war upon the House of Lords. <Mr John Morley, Secretary of State for India, has made tihe emphatic pronouncement that the House of Lords must be either " ended or mended"; and )Mr John Burns, from !hia ißatt-ea-s&a platform, announced that " he is in favour of abolishing the House of Lords." Mr Burns is not a multimillionaire like Mr 'Carnegie; but, what is 'far more significant, he is a Minister of tihe Orown, and in that character he necessarily commits his colleagues to any measure that he may identify himself witHi on the hustings. The " Age." Mi an 'interesting article on uh© subject, points out that to a certain extent John Burns 'may claim the laird of Ski'bo Oastie as an -adherent of the cause, for it co happens that five of the Dukes whose ancestors he treats so disrespectfully eat in fhe Upper Chamber by virtue of titles wheedled out of What' merry monarch Charles 11. by the pretty orange wench Nell Gwynne, the French adventuress Madame Carwell^ as she was called, and Lucy Walters. Indeed, one of the greatest Peers of the Realm to-day 'has only to take down Macaulay from his bookshelf and read that the ■founder of the family was " a man who awed 'his rise to his sister's dishonour ; wlio !hlad been kept by t/he onost .ptrofuse and shameless of liarlots, and whose whole public life, to those who can look stea,d)ily tlhirough tlie blaze of genius and iglory, will appear a prodigy of turpitude." (Macaulay himself writes in hiis diary:—■" I >am quite certain tliat in a few years tihe Peers must go after Gratton and Old Sarum. Nobody seems to care one gitinaw for what the Upper House says about any public matter. The institution of the Peerage is evidently dying a natural death." This opinion was expressed by iMacaulay more tihtan sixty years ago, hut the Peers remain and multiply. And the Peerage wall, remain, although in all probabi'ifcy i'ta conatifcution will be materially " mended." The Peerage will remain because it is a desirable adjunct of the Royal Court, and because it affords the Empire an opportunity of xecogaieing in is, tangiible '.manner its appreciation of any extiraorddnairy service rendered to the Throne or pe-op'le. yhe.. Peerage ■■will rormain, 'but it will in time A ceasfe to be a mero ihereditary preserve: People are apt to'forget .that all the1 * fouhdec'S' "of what are now the great1, *ristoc r ratip house.3 were men of pleb^anj^ginijdDhei' anoestora of the Nerillce); Petty»;> ;Qr«rilles, Northumberlands, rShaifteSburys/ Dudleys, Coventrys, Fitjßwilli«mß, and

Oanringtons were tailors, skinners, wood staplers, goldsmiths, grocers, money 'brokers, attorneys, and cadets in the 'hard-working army of industry; and it is, as our Australian contemporary pithily reminds us, to the commonplace and unehivalric virtues of the shop that their descendants owe it tihat they sure sitting on the velvet cushions of the Housa of Lords, making laws, by right erf inheritance, for the British Empire, and net running a " tota " or building up an unblemished reputation on the sale of trotters. When Voltaire visited London a century and a, half ago what struck him most was that the Earl of Oxford, who wais a Cabinet Minister, should have a brother earning his living in a fatetcary at Aleppo, while a near relative of another Secretary of State, Lord Townshend, was soliciting custom in a counting houss in the city. Since Voltaire's day the process of plebeianising the Peerage has been going on at <an accelerated irata and with excellent results. It has brought to the work of statesmanship administrative qualities tbalt have foea-ii f ostsa-ed by the discipline cf the -bank parlcour and the counting house, and the transfusion of city blood is still going on, as may b© seen by the 'list of Peers who figure in the " Gazett*" whenever a (Ministry goes out of office. The danger is, of course, tihat the process should be spoilt by rendering it subservi&nlb to purely party purposes, as the " Saturday Review " eeems to suggest has been the case in connection with th© elevation of Mr Harmsworth to the Peerage.'