HOUSE OF LORDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 83, 9 April 1934, Page 10

HOUSE OF LORDS

ITS STATELY DEBATES OLD FORMS AND NEW IDEAS POMP AND DEMOCRACY The House of Lords in session consists of more than meets the eye, although the Ho.use that meets the eye is a lovely eyeful, writes Blair Price in the New York Times. Ykni must imagine a Gothic chamber like the nave of a small cathedral, with the upspringing walls toned to a dull gold and kings instead of saints pictured in the stained glass of the pointed windows. Between the windows there arc niches with statues in them, but these are not saints either. So much. Gothic is apt to lead unaccustomed visitors to erroneous assumptions in this respect. The statues are the statues of the barons who compelled King John to sign Magna Carta. The whole sumptuous throne room is a little cathedral of constitutional doctrine. Running through the decorations are the emblems of the throne —the roses of York and Lancaster, the double rose and portcullis of the Tudors, the thistle of Scotland and the shamrock of Ireland, the lion and unicorn, the garter, the crown —all culminating in the rich colours of the frescoes and the exuberant carving of the great canopy at the head of the chamber. The actual thrones, the centre and the whole point of all this grandeur, hidden by their crimson drapery, form a background for the black-aud-grey figure of the Lord Chancellor seated on the edge of the crimson woolsack, his balloon sleeves like those of a stray bishop. The benches run lengthwise of the chamber. There is no semi-circle of, desks and chairs facing the SpeakeY, as in the legislative chambers of other' countries. The peers sit facing one another on long, straight benches padded with crimson morocco and arranged in rising levels, at both sides of the chamber. Frame of Brilliance. The peers themselves are the least impressive of all the \ arious items within this beautiful frame. On days when the King attends for the opening of a new Parliament, the scene is a very different one. The chamber then becomes a subdued and almost humble frame within which the doctrinal trinity of Kings, Lords, and Commons takes form with bewildering brilliance. But at ordinary sessions there are no peeresses in the galleries and. neither coronets nor ermined robes on the floor of the chamber. Ait such times the

peers are less impressive than their own clerks, who at least wear wigs. Compared with the rich crimson of their benches, marquesses in morning coats and viscounts in lounge suits are modest violets. It may be that the visitor who looks down upon them from the gallery can conjure up an appropriately feudal feeling by reflecting on the advantages which these hereditary legislators enjoy over the legislators of other countries. For example, they never have to fight an election. They never have to listen to people with votes who want jobs. They "never have to shake hands with people whose hands they have no desire to shake. From all the racket of democracy they enjoy an Olympian detachment. And this detachment reflects itself in the House of Lords manner, which is utterly unlike the manner of elected assemblies. Stately Calm. No gust of emotion, no sudden caprice of feeling ruffles the calm of this stately chamber. No uncertainty tickles tiic expectant visitor as he ascends to Ins place in the gallery. Unless he comes new to the Loids, he knows that down in the centre of the floor, between the front benches, he will see a crimson-topped table piled with red dispatch boxes and brown law-tonics. He knows that peers who feel moved to address the House du so from this table; that when two or more peers are simultaneously moved to speak, the one who gets the floor is the one who reaches the table first; that when both reach the table simultaneously, the House itself indicates whom it prefers to hear. Thus the House conducts its own affairs, studiously ignoring the black-and-grey image ou the wool sack. The visitor soon learns that the sound of a peer standing at the table is like the sound of bumble bees droning in the warmth of summer sunshine. The key varies as the peers vary, some of them being gigantic silver-haired old. men who totter to the table on*antiquated legs to drone with a thin and far-away quaver, others having more massive frames and a faintly rumbling quality in their tones. Whatever key it is pitched in, the soothing drone from the table may be understandable by the sixty o. eighty peers on the crimson benches (out of 600 or 700 entitled to attend), but it is far from understandable in the gallery. However, this failing has been remedied. Nowadays there are microphones on the table, and in the gallery you need only reach, beneath your seat for the headphone in order to get the shock of your life —the sound of the drone from the table transmuted into a deafening shout! The Same Flow. Whether the House of Lords is debating the Firearms Act (1920) Amendment Bill or the Road Traffic (Emerg-

eiiey Treatment) Bill or the Agricultural Marketing Bill or Indian constitutional reform or some aspect of disarmament which makes all of Europe prick up its ears—whatever the subject, the same even flow is observed. Some of their Lordships may be politicians, bankers, industrialists, and traders whose translation occurred only the day before yesterday, but they soon acquire the ways of the old. Tories, the high churchmen and the great county folk who . have never known any world but that of old oak, old leather, and old port. There are no exclamation points in this famous House of Lords manner, no unfinished sentences, nothing ragged or merely conversational. The whole picture moves in stately, rounded periods which accord with the superb scene that frames it. Less than a bundled yards away, the House of Commons is recognisably like any other legislative assembly. Anything can happen in the incalculable Commons. It can coo as softly as any turtle dove. It can sob until its drenched handkerchiefs drip salt tears. It can go purple in the face with laughter. It can fall sound asleep, and in a flash it can leap to its feet, shaking its lists and screaming with rage. And in between times its members can filter out into the central hall to act as the most patient of guides to parties of constituents up from the country to see the great Palace of Westminster. Within the last hundred years the strange new' force of democracy has created a powerful engine of its own in the trinity of party, Commons, and Prime Minister. But this new force has been received within the existing constitutional doctrine of the country. Much as this capacious body of doctrine has creaked at tunes beneath the strains to which it has been subjected, it has always yielded in time. It has never cracked. The trinity of democracy is still contained within the much older trinity of King, Lords, and Commons. The Difference. This brings us to the great point of difference between the English State and other States. It might almost be said that the English have no State in the sense in which the term “State” is understood abroad. What they have is an aristocracy which, down to about a century ago, has repeatedly disputed the pretensions of its kings, but had had no other rivals at home. Some of its disputes with its kings were of great historical importance, some were not. But the rights won in these disputes were jealously guarded, for nobody knew when some hard-won and long-forgotten right might prove unexpectedly useful. Thus the aristocracy has accumulated a vast amount of right and. precedent which has aged into accepted constitutional doctrine, and. in this way, without ever quite intending anything of the kind, it has hammered

out the unwritten constitution whose, stern symbols frown upon the King whenever he enters his Gothic throneroom to open Parliament. Within the last century this same aristocracy has turned Io share a part, of its power, first with trade and finally with democracy. Having struck its purely political bargain with democracy, it scrupulously adheres to all the forms of political democracy.