committing the excesses and abuses of power which might only too surely have brought about their ruin. The Peers themselves have, as we have said, also shown noble exceptions from class prejudice; and the conduct of the great Whig party in the political history of Reform is a magnificent tribute to the patriotism and statesmanship of the English hereditary nobles.

Left to themselves, the Tory Peers who were ignorant, prejudiced, or narrow-minded, would long ago have rendered an Hereditary Upper Chamber impossible in England; they were the worst advisers of the Crown, and the most reckless antagonists of the will of the people, while at the same time the Whigs were hated and reviled by the Court party. In the latter days of the Stuarts, and later still in the Georgian era, the Whigs became more distinctly a political sect. There was a rude stoicism and a literary and intellectual worth about the old Whig families of the early part of this century which affords to the English nobility of the present day not only a noble model which they might well copy, but a monument to the integrity of a privileged class which finds scarcely any counterpart in the history of civilised Europe. They had their faults like other political sects, and a love of power and office may have been one of their weaknesses; they were however led and represented by great families with enormous stakes in the country, and they not only often opposed the Crown, but they cut themselves off from sympathy, and at one time almost friendly intercourse, from a large body of their social equals, sooner than truckle to the pretensions of the Court party. How different was their conduct from that of La Fronde, and later on of the followers of Philippe Egalité and the suckling Voltairians of the Revolution! If there is one thing above all others which should recommend the English aristocracy to this country, and should be brought up in defence of the hereditary system, it is the history of the great Whig families of old. Their ancestors laid the lines of English freedom; their descendants spent their lives in maintaining its integrity; for their sake the institution should be sacred, if for no other. The Cavendishes, Russells, and others, who at a critical time in English history assisted in securing the Protestant succession and the advent of a constitutional sovereign to the throne, have remained the greatest and wisest defenders of its just rights and privileges, while at the same time they have on occasions been its most outspoken and fearless antagonists.

It may be said that the work which the circumstances of the time called upon the Whigs to perform is done; that the hereditary principle which succeeded then, is no longer necessary now that England's liberties are secure, and that the people have had their full political rights accorded to them.

We must answer, Is it well for a country ever, without the very strongest inducement, to break away completely with its past history

and association? We do not say that this never can be the case; on the contrary, there are periods when nothing but a revolution can clear the political atmosphere. Yet at what a cost are these revolutions bought; what loss of energy, what individual suffering, do they not cause! France, with all her political changes of the last hundred years, has remained more distinct in class feeling than England ever was at its period of greatest autocratic power; and America, the home of republics, is as conservative in its truest instincts and as deeply imbued with veneration for its Washington's constitution as England is of its limited monarchy.

Revolutions do not alter the inward spirit of a people. Progressive education of the lower classes can alone do this. A revolution can only affect the outward form; its conditions are eminently unstable unless the country in which it takes place is fully educated up to its potential consequences. Thus in England, the Protectorate gave way to a complete restoration of the Royal prerogative. In France the Reign of Terror and the Rights of Man succumbed to the grinding despotism of a Napoleon, followed by a feeble sovereign and a counterfeit representative of the Napoleonic Idea. Again things have come round in that country, yet it must depend on popular education and political instinct among the people, not on the accident of the elections or the reverses of a great war, what form of institution the country can remain stable under. England's revolutions of latter years have been all discounted beforehand; and if the time has come when the purely hereditary principle of an Upper Chamber must succumb, no amount of intrigue, no power of exertion, could preserve it against decay.

We do not ignore the fact that there exists a restless and advanced section of politicians who are averse to the existence in any form of any Upper Chamber, or Senate, in this country; and while they profess outward loyalty to the institution of the Throne, they boldly advocate the suppression of the Lords. As we have said, however, the greater contains the less, and the abolition of an Upper Chamber implies necessarily the extinction of the Monarchy. Such was the case in France in this century. The indiscriminate creation of batches after batches of peers to pass measures in that chamber soon worked out its destruction; and with it necessarily disappeared the unworthy representative of the throne of Henri Quatre. So would it be in England, if the Peers lost their hold on the sympathy of the people. The question therefore which we have to put before ourselves is whether it is possible in the long run for a purely Hereditary Chamber to retain the respect and sympathy of the nation. We believe that it cannot. This statement may appear very revolutionary at the outset, very subversive even to certain sections of Liberal politicians, yet if we examine the grounds for this conclusion we shall find that it is by realising and appreciating the Zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, and not by

setting ourselves up in antagonism to its teaching, that we shall arrive at those true bases of conservative principles of which a certain section of unthinking and uninstructed statesmen consider themselves to be the sole possessors. We have attempted to show that the old Whig party among the Peers, and those who were their political ancestors, have been the true preservers of English institutions in the face of ignorant and dangerous opposition from the ultra-Tory party. The true Radical in those days did not exist; the twenty to thirty members of that section who found seats in the first reformed House of Commons were treated by the orthodox class of politicians as greater social pariahs and political outcasts than the ultra members of the Land League party are to-day in the House of Commons.

Since 1832 things have changed; the so-called Radical is a constituted power in the State. He has his voice not only in the House, but also in the Cabinet. It is better to count with his party rather than to disparage it. It is a portion of the Zeitgeist, which it is unwise to ignore, and folly to blindly oppose. The old Whig party, which in its early battles for constitutional freedom found itself in opposition to a reactionary party, now finds itself as it were between two fires. On the one hand it is attacked by Tories as a party of Girondists, on the other by the threat of imposing upon it a test cry or shibboleth, which if it does not accept, it shall be discarded and discredited among all true Liberals. Is there then no place left for moderate opinions, and must the only party among the Peers who are capable of reforming their own institutions either go over to the Tory standard, or ally themselves with an ultra party, who would view the abolition of all hereditary distinctions with equanimity, not to say delight? We do not see the necessity of so desperate an alternative, though undoubtedly the old Liberal programme of the Whig party must be profoundly changed in many respects, and there are many of its old adherents who show signs of having lost the courage their ancestors possessed, of accepting manfully and without fear the clear expression of a popular conviction. The conduct of the Lords in matters connected with Ireland, and the behaviour of the Whig Peers on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of last year, indicate a loss of political foresight. No Liberal Ministry will ever again come to power in this country in which the ultra section of Radical politicians will be the allies of the old Whig faction.' Nothing but the predominant power of the present Prime Minister, and the conspicuous regard felt for him by all sections of the Liberal party, could have united these clearly antagonistic elements. Let the Tory party say what they will, the landholders and privileged classes of this country will never again find a Liberal Ministry presided over and directed by so tender a hand in regard to their exceptional privileges.

The Whig party must materially reform themselves and reconstruct their political programme, if the House of Peers is to remain unim

paired in its influence on the country. Great questions of vast moment cannot be indefinitely delayed. Signs are not wanting that the reform of the representation, of the land laws and of succession, of county administrations, cannot be for ever postponed. The average opinion of the country is gradually ripening on these subjects. The constitution of the House of Lords itself is a further question looming in the background. Any of these reforms must, when they come, profoundly modify the influence of a landed aristocracy. The struggle with democracy which appears so alarming a prospect to the minds of many of the old Whig families, and which incites politicians of the Salisbury school to deliver jeremiads against the subversive spirit of the age, need not be feared if the future policy of the class principally concerned is wisely determined on beforehand. The concessions wrung from an unwilling minority in a moment of popular agitation might be conceded with far greater grace and benefit to the order if voluntarily acquiesced in beforehand. The troubles of the day in Ireland, which are not likely for many a long year to find their eventual solution, are a standing warning to an Upper Chamber which has used its direct and indirect influence for eighty years to impede and stave off all reform, until it has endangered not only its own just rights of property, but also the very integrity of the empire. The Crown also, which has in the last generation done so much to increase its popularity in Scotland, might have remembered that it also had duties to perform in the sister isle. The growing discontent of the Irish people might have found some considerable remedy, had the Royal family or the Crown fulfilled their proper public functions in that part of the empire where their presence might still have been well and loyally welcomed.

No doubt the action of the Crown in public matters is surrounded with many difficulties; yet self-effacement is as dangerous as overmeddlesomeness, and the frivolities of the Court of Charles the Second could not be more unpopular than the complete abnegation of all public functions.

The point we have to consider is the necessary adaptation which is required to bring the constitution of the Upper Chamber into harmony with the exigencies of the age. It requires the growth of a young and Liberal party among the Peers themselves to realise the reforms requisite in their own interest. A fresh departure must be taken and a new line worked out to suit the hereditary dogma to modern necessities. A large concession must be made to popular feeling. The character of the Upper House must be profoundly altered, and a new spirit infused into its debates, together with certain modifications of its procedure.

Without entering upon the merits or demerits of a constitution which is based on the existence of two separate Chambers, we must notice two points: first, that the existence of a Second Chamber which

is not directly responsible to the electorate affords a means for popular opinion to mature itself regarding public measures of great importance before they are added to the Statute Book. If no such Second Chamber existed, we might find that the Lower Chamber itself became too much simply an assembly of popular delegates, who would possess so little independence as a deliberative body that they would feel no compunction in stultifying a policy at one period, at the bidding of the electorate, which shortly before they had supported for similar reasons, viz., at the bidding of an oscillatory majority. From this condition the English House of Commons has as yet been singularly free, and, however slowly reform has proceeded, there has been no indication of retrograde movement in the course our Legislature has followed, such as we have often seen in other countries. The independence of the House of Commons is in fact supported and strengthened by the existence of a Second Chamber, even though that Chamber may at times reverse its decrees.

The second point we should wish to notice is the relative position which these two Chambers should occupy with regard to one another. Where two Chambers are equally powerful, or nearly matched in political influence, we are liable to find that condition of things which Sir D. Wedderburn alludes to in his article on 'Second Chambers' in the July number of the Nineteenth Century. A political deadlock is of frequent occurrence. The rival claims of two assemblies each depending on the support of a differently constituted electorate produce endless complication. This does not occur where the power of the one Chamber is manifestly superior to the other. In America the Senate is all-powerful; the mode of representation by States is therein recognised, as contrasted with numerical representation such as prevails in the House of Representatives. The Lower House is only the constituted exponent of popular feeling in the country at large. The Senate represents the Union. In America the Union is the fundamental axiom of national life, to which every other interest must be subsidiary. In England, a small country with homogeneous geographical interests, the problem is reversed-union is not the crux of the social problem; therefore the predominant power is the popular voice as expressed by the constituencies. On the other hand, England has a past history of which she is justly proud, and possesses institutions which she would not willingly destroy; hence the Second Chamber, although it must necessarily occupy a subsidiary position in the Constitution, nevertheless fulfils, or rather should fulfil, the function of establishing political continuity with the past and progressive development with regard to the future, thereby guaranteeing the country against retrograde or oscillatory political movements.

If we accept this theory with regard to the functions of an Upper Chamber, and there are many moderate politicians who view the problem in this light, we should consider carefully by what means we