LEGISLATORS-HEREDITARY OR ELECTIVE?

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXV, Issue 13054, 23 April 1910, Page 4

LEGISLATORS-HEREDITARY OR ELECTIVE?

Britain’s conservative clinging to a hereditary Second Chamber seems likely to land her in the midst of hideous possibilities. Were' the Upper House an elective cne. as is the case: with the Australian Senate, it would be representative of the people’s thought, and any tendency to reaction would'be speedily followed by the offending member’s relegation to private life. Even if the members of the Upper House were appointed by the Government of the day, whether for life as in Victoria, or for a term as in Hew Zealand, this course, though many objections can bo urged against it, would be preferable to the present constitution of the House of Lords. A member thereof could not at least train up a son in his own ways of thought and habits of voting, with ruy certainty that the son would have a chance of inflicting tho same upon a suffering country in .the guise of a legislator. But as it is. a man has only to be born the eldest son of a peer, and no matter whether he be stupid, or lazy, or indifferent to any interest but his own, he is privileged to have a share in making tho 1 -ws, though the same is denied to, many a better. man to whom the accident of being born a peer’s son did not befall. And so ti is that the Government finds itself in a difficulty. It wants to clip tho peers’ wings, but can’t do so without the peers' consent, and that they are not likely to give. Its only course, therefore, seems io be to create a sufficient number of new peers who can be depended on to vote for the clipping process, and as this means the giving of about 500 new titles, poor old Britain threatens to be over-run with a frightful crop of brand new dukes, marquises, and carle. It is stated that the Government finds the contract a stiff one. but it seems the only way out of the difficulty. Apparently there aro some features of the British Constitution which tho country would be better without.