It has been more like a bull-fight than anything else, or perhaps the
bull-baiting, almost to the death, which went on in England in days of
old. For the Peerage is not quite dead, but sore stricken, robbed of
its high functions, propped up and left standing to flatter the fools
and the snobs, a kind of painted screen, or a cardboard fortification,
armed with cannon which can not be discharged for fear they bring it
down about the defenders' ears. And in the end it was all effected so
simply, so easily could the bull be induced to charge. A rag was waved,
first here, then there, and the dogs barked. That was all.
It is not difficult to be wise after the event. Everybody knows now
that with the motley groups of growing strength arrayed against them it
behooved the Peers to walk warily, to look askance at the cloaks
trailed before them, to realize the danger of accepting challenges,
however righteous the cause might be. But no amount of prudence could
have postponed the catastrophe for any length of time, for indeed the
House of Lords had become an anachronism. Everything had changed since
the days when it had its origin, when its members were Peers of the
King, not only in name but almost in power, princes of principalities,
earls of earldoms, barons of baronies. Then they were in a way
enthroned, representing all the people of the territories they
dominated, the people they led in war and ruled in peace. They came
together as magnates of the land, sitting in an Upper House as Lords of
the shire, even as the Knights of the shire sat in the Commons. And
this continued long after the feudal system had passed away, carried on
not only by the force of tradition, but by a sentiment of respect and
real affection; for these feelings were common enough until designing
men laid themselves out to destroy them.
Many things combined to make the last phase pass quickly. It was
impossible that the Peerage could long survive the Reform Bill, for it
took from the great families their pocket boroughs, and so much of
their influence. And there followed hard upon it the educational effect
of new facilities for exchange of ideas, the railway trains, the penny
post, and the halfpenny paper, together with the centralization of
general opinion and all government which has resulted therefrom. But
above all reasons were the loss of the qualifying ancestral lands, a
link with the soil; and the ennobling of landless men. Once divorced
from its influence over some countryside a peerage resting on heredity
was doomed; for no one can defend a system whereby men of no
exceptional ability, representative of nothing, are legislators by
inheritance. Should we summon to a conclave of the nations a king who
had no kingdom? But the pity of it! Not only the break with eight
centuries of history--nay, more, for when had not every king his
council of notables?--not only the loss of picturesqueness and
sentiment and lofty mien, but the certainty, the appalling certainty,
that, when an aristocracy of birth falls, it is not an aristocracy of
character or intellect, but an aristocracy--save the mark--of money,
which is bound to take its place.
Five short years and four rejected measures. Glance back over it all.
The wild blood on both sides, and the cunning on one. The foolish
comfortable words spoken in every drawing-room throughout the United
Kingdom. "Yes, they are terrible: what a lot of harm they would do if
they could. Thank God we have a House of Lords." Think now that this
was commonplace conversation only three short years ago. And all the
time the ears of the masses were being poisoned. Week after week and
month after month some laughed but others toiled. The laughers, like
the French nobles before the Revolution, said contemptuously, "They
will not dare." Why should they not? There were men among them for whom
the Ark of the Covenant had no sanctity. And then, when the
combinations were complete, when those who stood out had been
kicked--there can be no other word--into compliance, the blows fell
quickly. A Budget was ingeniously prepared for rejection, and, the
Lords falling into the trap, the storm broke, with its hurricane of
abuse and misrepresentation. We had one election which was
inconclusive. Then befell the death of King Edward. There was a second
election, carefully engineered and prepared for, rushed upon a nation
which had been denied the opportunity of hearing the other side. The
Government had out-maneuvered the Opposition and muzzled them to the
last moment in a Conference sworn to secrecy. It was remarkably clever
and incredibly unscrupulous. They won again. They had not increased
their numbers, but they had maintained their position, and this time
their victory, however achieved, could not be gainsaid. For a moment
there was a lull, only some vague talk of "guaranties," asserted,
scoffed at and denied, for the ordinary business of the country was in
arrears, and the Coronation, with all its pomp of circumstance and
power, all its medieval splendor and appeal to history and sentiment,
turned people's thoughts elsewhere.
And then, on the day the pageantry closed, Mr. Asquith launched his
Thunderbolt. Few men living will ever learn the true story of the
guaranties, suffice it that somehow he had secured them. Whatever the
resistance of the Second Chamber might be, it could be overcome. At his
dictation the Constitution was to fall. There was no escape; the Bill
must surely pass. It rested with the Lords themselves whether they
should bow their heads to the inevitable, humbly or proudly,
contemptuously or savagely--characterize it as you will--or whether
there should be red trouble first.
Surely never in our time has there been a situation of higher
psychological interest, for never before have we seen a body of some
six hundred exceptional men called on to take each his individual line
upon a subject which touched him to the core. I say "individual line"
and "exceptional men." Does either adjective require defending?
The Peers are not a regiment, they are still independent entities, with
all the faults and virtues which this implies; free gentlemen subject
to no discipline, responsible to God and their own consciences alone.
At times they may combine on questions which appeal to their sense of
right, their sentiment, perhaps some may say their self-interest; but
this was no case for combination. Here was a sword pointed at each
man's breast. What, under the circumstances, was to be his individual
line of conduct?
And who will deny the word "exceptional"? To a seventh of them it must
perforce be applicable, for they have been specially selected to serve
in an Upper House. And to the rest, those who sit by inheritance, does
it not apply even more? It is not what they have done in life. This was
no question of capacity or achievement. By the accident of birth alone
they had been put in a position different from other men. How shall
each in his wisdom or his folly interpret that well-worn motto which
still has virtue both to quicken and control, "Noblesse oblige"?
Very curious indeed was the result. It is useless to consider the
preliminaries, the pronouncements, the meetings, the campaign which
raged for a fortnight in the Press both by letter and leading article.
It is even useless to try and discover who, if anybody, was in favor of
the Bill which was the original bone of contention. Its merits and
defects were hardly debated. On that fateful 10th of August the House
of Lords split into three groups on quite a different point. The King's
Government had seized on the King's Prerogative and uttered threats.
Should they or should they not be constrained to make good their
threats, and use it?
The first group said: "Yes. They have betrayed the Constitution and
disgraced their position. Let their crime be brought home to them and
to the world. All is lost for us except honor. Shall we lose that also?
To the last gasp we will insist on our amendments."
The second group said: "No. They have indeed betrayed the Constitution
and disgraced their position, but why add to this disaster the
destruction of what remains to safeguard the Empire? We protest and
withdraw, washing our hands of the whole business for the moment. But
our time will come."
The third group said: "No. We do not desire the King's Prerogative to
be used. We will prevent any need for its exercise. The Bill shall go
through without it."
And, the second group abstaining, by seventeen votes the last prevailed
against the first. But whether ever before a victory was won by so
divided a host, or ever a measure carried by men who so profoundly
disapproved of it, let those judge who read the scathing Protest,
inscribed in due form in the journals of the House of Lords by one who
went into that lobby, Lord Rosebery, the only living Peer who has been
Prime Minister of England.
It is unnecessary to print here more than the tenth and last paragraph
of this tremendous indictment. It runs--"Because the whole transaction
tends to bring discredit on our country and its institutions."
How under these extraordinary circumstances did the Peerage take sides,
old blood and new blood, the governing families and the so-called
"backwoodsmen," they who were carving their own names, and they who
relied upon the inheritance of names carved by others?
The first group, the "No-Surrender Peers," mustered 114 in the
division. Two Bishops were among them, Bangor and Worcester, and a
distinguished list of peers, first of their line, including Earl
Roberts and Viscount Milner. When the story of our times is written it
will be seen that there are few walks of life in which some one of
these has not borne an honorable part.
Then at a bound we are transported to the Middle Ages. At the
Coronation, when the Abbey Church of Westminster rang to the shouts,
"God Save King George!" five Lords of Parliament knelt on the steps of
the throne, kissed the King's cheek, and did homage, each as the chief
of his rank and representing every noble of it. They are all here:--
The Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal and premier Peer of England, head of
the great house of Howard, a name that for five centuries has held its
own with highest honor.
The Marquis of Winchester, head of the Paulets, representative of the
man who for three long years held Basing House for the King against all
the forces which Cromwell could muster, but descended also from that
earlier Marquis of Tudor creation, who, when he was asked how in those
troublous times he succeeded in retaining the post of Lord High
Treasurer, replied, "By being a willow and not an oak." To-day the boot
is on the other leg.
The Earl of Shrewsbury, head of the Talbots, a race far famed alike in
camp and field from the days of the Plantagenets.
The Viscount Falkland, representative of that noble Cavalier who fell
at Newbury.
The Baron Mowbray and Segrave and Stourton, titles which carry us back
almost to the days of the Great Charter.
Nor does the feudal train end there. We see also a St. Maur, Duke of
Somerset, whose family has aged since in the time of Henry VIII. men
scoffed at it as new; a Clinton, Duke of Newcastle; a Percy, Duke and
heir of Northumberland, that name of high romance; a De Burgh, Marquis
of Clanricarde; a Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, twenty-sixth Earl, and
head of a house which for eight centuries has stood on the steps of
thrones; a Courtenay, Earl of Devon; an Erskine, Earl of Mar, an
earldom whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, and many
another.
And if we come to later days we have the Duke of Bedford, head of the
great Whig house of Russell; the Dukes of Marlborough and Westminster,
heirs of capacity and good fortune; Lords Bute and Salisbury,
descendants of Prime Ministers; and not only Lord Selborne, but Lords
Bathurst and Coventry, Hardwicke and Rosslyn, representatives of past
Lord Chancellors.
These, and others such as they, inheritors of traditions bred in their
very bones, spurning the suggestion that they should purchase the
uncontamination of the Peerage by the forfeiture of their principles,
fought the question to the end. If they asked for a motto, surely
theirs would have been, "Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra."
And so we pass to the group who abstained, the great mass of the
Peerage, too proud to wrangle where they could not win, too wise to
knock their heads uselessly against a wall, too loyal not to do their
utmost to spare their King. More than three hundred followed Lord
Lansdowne's lead, taking for their motto, perhaps, the "Cavendo tutus"
of his son-in-law. And still there was fiery blood among them, and
strong men swelling with righteous indignation. There were Gay Gordons,
as well as a cautious Cavendish, an Irish Beresford to quicken a Dutch
Bentinck, and a Graham of Montrose as well as a Campbell of Argyll.
Three Earls, Pembroke, Powis, and Carnarvon, represented the cultured
family of Herbert, and, as a counterpoise to the Duke of
Northumberland, we see six Peers of the doughty Douglas blood. Lord
Curzon found by his side three other Curzons, and the Duke of Atholl
three Murrays from the slopes of the Grampians. There were many-acred
potentates, such as the Dukes of Beaufort and Hamilton and Rutland,
Lord Bath, Lord Leicester, and Lord Lonsdale, and names redolent of
history, a Butler, Marquis of Ormonde, a Cecil, Marquis of Exeter, the
representative of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh, and a Stanley, Earl
of Derby, a name which to this day stirs Lancashire blood. If it were a
question of tactics, then Earl Nelson agreed with the Duke of
Wellington, and they were backed by seven others whose peerages had
been won in battle on land or sea in the course of the last century;
while if the Law should be considered, there were nine descendants of
Lord Chancellors. Coming to more recent times, there was the son of
John Lawrence of the Punjab, and of Alfred Tennyson the poet, Lord St.
Aldwyn and Lord Balfour of Burleigh and Lord Lister, and Lords
Rothschild, Aldenham, and Revelstoke. What need to mention more?--for
there were men representative of every interest in every quarter; but
if we wish to close this list with two names which might seem to link
together the Constitutional history of these islands, let us note that
there was agreement as to action between Viscount Peel, the sole
surviving ex-Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord Wrottesley, the
head of the only family which can claim as of its name and blood one of
the original Knights of the Garter.
What more is there to say? As, nearly two years ago, we stood round the
telegraph-boards watching the election results coming in, many of us
saw that the Peerage was falling. The end has come quicker than we
expected. The Empire may repent, a new Constitution may spring into
being, and there may be raised again a Second Chamber destined to be
far stronger than that which has passed, but it will never be the proud
House of Peers far-famed in English history.