Someone has said that every twentieth Englishman is a genius and the
balance dolts, or something of that tenor. The Special committee of the
House of Lords, in its report recommending a radical change in that
body, seems actuated by a desire to retain as many of the twentieth
type as possible and eliminate the rest.
At present, this august body contains 618 members, consisting of the
royal princes, the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, two dozen
minor bishops, the English peers and those Scotch and Irish peers who
have been elected by their fellows to represent the nobility of these
respective countries.
The committee each of the colonies send elective peers; that the
24 bishops elect one-third of their number to the Lords at each
Parliament. The Archbishops are to remain permanent features and about
130 hereditary peers are to be retained, including such as have held
the position of Cabinet minister, or of Governor-General of Canada, or
Viceroy of India or have enjoyed high positions in the army or navy;
and all who have served for twenty years in the House of Commons. Five
judges are to be added as “law lords” and of the remaining number 200
are to be elected as representative peers.
By this selective, as well as elective, method, the fittest in brains,
skill and ability would survive. It is equally probable, however, that,
so far as broad, progressive policies are concerned, a House of Lords
so made up would be even a greater handicap to the popular will than
as it stands today. The average Lord now accepts his seat therein with
that nonchalance which characterizes his attitude toward those other
favors of fortune which are his by birth. He feels no added pride and
seldom any real obligation to interest himself in measures that come
before the House. While he is an obstructionist, it is after a rather
passive fashion. To change this so as to make a seat in the galaxy of
Lords a prize to be contested for, while limiting the eligibles to
the race in the arbitrary manner proposed, would inevitably mean a
powerful governing body, supersaturated with class-consciousness and
hyper-sensitive to the faintest breath against its own aristocratic
dominance. The reactionaries would entrench themselves by electing the
most brilliant men of their own views. The lonely members from Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would have slight influence in
shaping the destiny of the Empire as a whole and none as to England’s
domestic affairs. To public opinion, then, as now, the House of Lords
would be almost impervious. How, indeed, can any set of men taught to
regard themselves, from infancy, as superior beings, be affected by the
ideas of the plebeians? They have always assumed their class to be the
natural governor and guardian of the hoi polloi. If the H. P. doesn’t
thrive, it’s not the fault of the nobility.
It is no wonder that the House of Lords itself should be shamed over
the survival of a caste system which permits even an idiot, born to the
purple, to share the honors and responsibilities of membership in the
highest assembly of their government, but even those apologists who
maintain that the Britisher of rank feels obligations to humanity as
does no other public man must take fright at the proposed concentration
of power the new plan would insure. Certes, after many years of
thwarted hopes for bettering of general conditions, the patient English
people could only rise, in holy wrath, and abolish the House of Lords
altogether. And, as a real and permanent reform measure, why don’t they
do it now?