of Lords the latter was speaking' as a man,' and certainly not at all as a Minister. The drift of the speech of the Home Secretary is unmistakeable. He advocates a singlechamber Parliament. He scoffs at Lord Rosebery's long list of nations whose experience has led them to prefer the double chamber. He pours ridicule upon Lord Rosebery's own projects of introducing an elective element into the House of Lords. To think of reforming the Upper Chamber, of bringing its constitution and composition into greater harmony with the sentiments of the day, of making it more fit to perform the duty for which a second chamber exists, he denounces as mere Toryism.'

'You can already see that a new constitution is on the stocks. By an adroit manipulation of the processes of election and selection, by a judicious mixture of new blood with blue blood, they' (those wicked Tories') hope to produce something a little more presentable to the electorate of Great Britain.' Mr. Asquith has a habit-not a little amusing to those whose attachment to Liberal principles dates from a period anterior to the last half-dozen yearsof defining ore rotundo the principles of the Liberal party. On this occasion he was discussing Toryism,' and in so doing he has withdrawn from his own party the possibility of associating itself with one more practical reform, a reform which has been the lifelong study and the dearest object of the Prime Minister, the leader of his own party. Unless Lord Rosebery can bring himself not merely to 'speak as a Minister,' but sometimes also to act as a man,' neither his cleverness nor his eloquence will make him more than the figure-head of an Administration which he is not strong enough to lead. Mr. Asquith would not have thus turned and rent the long-cherished policy of his chief had he been the subordinate of a Lord Palmerston or of a Lord John Russell.

Let us turn to a still more recent deliverance of the Prime Minister-his speech at Devonport-to discover, if we can, a little more light upon the policy of her Majesty's Government. All Prime Ministers ought,' he tells us, to be able to speak in the House of Commons.' As Lord Rosebery can hardly mean that he ought not to be Prime Minister he must mean that Peers, or at least some Peers, are to be eligible to sit in the House of Commons. This, then, is part of his plan, and so far it will claim the approval of Lord Wolmer, Mr. George Curzon, and other expectant Peers. But it is entirely premature, he tells his party, to

propose, or to ask for, or even to imagine a plan for putting our Parliamentary constitution upon a better footing. The country is to work for a revolution without having the remotest conception of what it wants.

Statesmanship such as this should be allowed to speak for

itself.

'Remember, in the first place, then, we have nothing to do with the constitution of the House of Lords. We cannot touch it without the consent of the House of Lords. We cannot even pass a Bill of any kind through Parliament without the consent of the House of Lords, and therefore it never entered into our heads to touch the constitution of the House of Lords. We find the House of Lords as it stands, we find the House of Commons as that stands, and we desire, as the most practical way of effecting the object we have in view, so to readjust the relations of the present House of Commons to the present House of Lords that the deliberate will of the House of Commons shall not be overborne by the action of the House of Lords. In our opinion, the time has come when the right of the House of Lords to oppose an absolute veto on the wishes or the legislation of the House of Commons should for ever cease.'

The means are

'a mandate from the country to deal with that question by passing a resolution through the House of Commons which shall declare and give effect to what I have said on our policy in that matter. When we have obtained our mandate-I will not say now the exact course we shall pursue, because we must have our hands free; but we shall be prepared to state that course, subject to the limitations I have expressed, at the proper time to the proper tribunal, and that is the House of Commons.'

Thus, then, it is the relations between the two Houses that are to be changed. And how? By a resolution of the House of Commons! Lord Rosebery is astounded that 'some gentlemen have discovered in the Government an 'intention to reform the House of Lords. Well, I cannot We venture to

'conceive on what that theory is based.' tell Lord Rosebery that that theory was based on the belief that the present Prime Minister was a serious statesman, and that weight deserved to be attached to his own words. The study of a life is now forgotten. A general election is in sight. Mr. Asquith thinks that the reform of the House of Lords is a Tory cry,' and the Prime Minister must follow at his heels.

We have quoted enough, and more than enough, of speeches whose great end is to shirk all real political discussion of the merits of constitutional revision.' The existing relations' between the Houses of Parliament to

which the Ministry object are the powers of the House of Lords to reject and amend Bills coming from the House of Commons. No resolution of the House of Commons can affect these powers. The consent of the House of Lords to proposals to limit the authority of the House of Lords is, of course, as much required as its consent to legislation.

The great question for the country to consider, but which the Liberal' party is told not to meddle with, lest it should breed dissension in its ranks, is whether or not there should reside in the House of Commons an absolutely unchecked power of legislation. To ask for a majority in order that Lord Rosebery and Mr. Asquith and their colleagues may revise the constitution,' or carry out their tremendous ' revolution' on such lines as seem good to them, resembles rather the invitation issued by democratic tyrants of a Bonapartist type for the support of a plébiscite than the proceedings of constitutional statesmen.

It is not difficult to foresee the result of the differences of opinion amongst Lord Rosebery's followers. Some are in favour of reforming, others are in favour of abolishing, the House of Lords. The Prime Minister says that in the meantime this is quite a secondary consideration, and he asks from a majority carte blanche to revise the constitution.' Those who are forending' the second chamber speak out; those who are for mending' it keep silent or speak in whispers, lest their words should injure the party. It is only as a man,' in the singularly inappropriate phrase of Lord Rosebery, that the Prime Minister alludes to his life-long convictions on a matter of remote importance.' Mr. Asquith takes him at his word. Mr. Labouchere and Sir Charles Dilke are single-chamber men. They boast of it on every occasion. Sir William Harcourt, the Leader of the House of Commons, to whose charge is to fall some day the duty of moving the tremendous' resolution, as yet says absolutely nothing, but perhaps thinks the more. Mr. Bryce, who has thought deeply and written wisely on the American constitutions, and whose words should weigh, seems for a second time ready to make the best of the inevitable. Once Home Rule was inevitable, and Mr. Bryce found comfort in the reflection that it answers admirably in Iceland. The single-chamber system exists, Lord Rosebery reminds us, in Andorra, a village in the Pyrenees, in Montenegro, and in one or two other States. Englishmen, however, who are not fatalists will reject the proposed revision of the constitution as they rejected the

last two revisions of 1886 and 1893, if its character does not commend itself to their common-sense. They remember that the present Cabinet were, with Mr. Gladstone, the authors of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and that for these statesmen consequently no constitution that the wit of man could devise is too grotesquely absurd.

men.

In the Ministry there are men who have shown themselves well qualified to perform the administrative business of their departments. Mr. Asquith, as Home Secretary, surpasses many of his predecessors in the possession of the qualities of judgement and firmness, so essential to the successful conduct of his office. Mr. Campbell Bannerman has won the good opinion of those interested in the proceedings of the War Office. Lord Spencer has shown zeal in the administration of the Navy. Lord Rosebery himself as Foreign Minister stood high in reputation with his countryLord Herschell is an excellent Lord Chancellor. Unfortunately some evil genius has persuaded statesmen who have shown capacity in their several spheres for serving the State usefully and well, that it is incumbent upon them to present the country with a new constitution. They have not been asked to do this. It is true that Mr. Parnell and his followers called for Home Rule. But upon Great Britain the Home Rule policy was forced from above through the instrumentality of party associations. How far the Ministry is competent to perform its self-imposed task of constitution-building was displayed to an astonished and mocking world in the measure of 1893. For the new revision of the constitution there has been even less call from the people than there was before 1886 for Home Rule. This revolution has been started and is to be worked from above. In the next Parliament the men of '93' are again to sit down to the business of constructing a new Parliamentary constitution, and of dealing with,' to use Lord Rosebery's phrase, 'two out of the three estates of the realm.'

If there is one characteristic which has always prevailed throughout the long history of English Parliamentary government it is this: Power has always been divided. Absolute authority has rested neither with a single individual nor with a single assembly, nor with a single order. The only exception in English history is in the case of the Long Parliament. The abolition of the House of Lords was quickly followed by the closing of the House of Commons, and the iron rule of personal absolutism for a time prevailed. Struggles for 'predominance' have been fought, but the

result hitherto has been to deny absolute authority to any single man or set of men.

Another characteristic of the developement of our constitutional system has been the steady adherence by our reforming statesmen to the main lines of the constitution. As time has gone on repairs have been made, adaptations have been introduced, here and there something has been added. But there has been no ruthless pulling down, and no successful attempt to erect a brand-new construction.

In these two respects we are invited to witness in modern English history a new departure. It is all-important to understand precisely what is intended by the Ministry in proposing to make the House of Commons 'predominant' in our Parliamentary system. They intend, they tell us, that its authority shall predominate over, that is over-ride, the power of the House of Lords to reject or amend the legislative proposals of the House of Commons. This new power the House of Commons is to give to itself, by the simple process of passing a resolution. But a legislative authority which of itself can increase its own powers to any extent, and which can define its own jurisdiction, is necessarily sole and absolute master of the State. If to the House of Commons for the time being belongs the power of making and repealing laws, unchecked by any other authority, it is evident that the most fundamental institutions of the kingdom, including the Monarchy itself, will be at the mercy of a chance majority.

To

It is in the very nature of party government that public confidence should oscillate between different sets of politicians, if not between opposing political principles. What in the party sense one House of Commons professes, is frequently, indeed generally, repudiated by the next. give an absolute and unchecked power of legislating, so as to effect the permanent destinies of the nation, to a body probably representing only a temporary phase of public opinion is not wise statesmanship. Amongst the many Parliaments by which Anglo-Saxon nations, colonies, and States are governed, no system such as this is known. The list of single-chamber and double-chamber States given by Lord Rosebery at Glasgow provoked the scorn of his Home Secretary, nevertheless it deserves the consideration of all fair-minded men. There is, in truth, not one State in the world, governed upon the single-chamber system, which the people of any other State would think of taking as a model. Success has lain with the double-chamber system. In