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THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION
By
Walter Bagehot
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION.
II. THE CABINET.
III. THE MONARCHY.
IV. THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
V. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
VI. ON CHANGES OF MINISTRY.
VII. ITS SUPPOSED CHECKS AND BALANCES.
VIII. THE PREREQUISITES OF CABINET GOVERNMENT, AND THE PECULIAR
FORM WHICH THEY HAVE ASSUMED IN ENGLAND.
IX. ITS HISTORY, AND THE EFFECTS OF THAT HISTORY.--CONCLUSION.
NO. I.
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION.
There is a great difficulty in the way of a writer who attempts to
sketch a living Constitution--a Constitution that is in actual work and
power. The difficulty is that the object is in constant change. An
historical writer does not feel this difficulty: he deals only with the
past; he can say definitely, the Constitution worked in such and such a
manner in the year at which he begins, and in a manner in such and such
respects different in the year at which he ends; he begins with a
definite point of time and ends with one also. But a contemporary
writer who tries to paint what is before him is puzzled and a
perplexed: what he sees is changing daily. He must paint it as it stood
at some one time, or else he will be putting side by side in his
representations things which never were contemporaneous in reality. The
difficulty is the greater because a writer who deals with a living
Government naturally compares it with the most important other living
Governments, and these are changing too; what he illustrates are
altered in one way, and his sources of illustration are altered
probably in a different way. This difficulty has been constantly in my
way in preparing a second edition of this book. It describes the
English Constitution as it stood in the years 1865 and 1866. Roughly
speaking, it describes its working as it was in the time of Lord
Palmerston; and since that time there have been many changes, some of
spirit and some of detail. In so short a period there have rarely been
more changes. If I had given a sketch of the Palmerston time as a
sketch of the present time, it would have been in many points untrue;
and if I had tried to change the sketch of seven years since into a
sketch of the present time, I should probably have blurred the picture
and have given something equally unlike both.
The best plan in such a case is, I think, to keep the original sketch
in all essentials as it was at first written, and to describe shortly
such changes either in the Constitution itself, or in the Constitutions
compared with it, as seem material. There are in this book various
expressions which allude to persons who were living and to events which
were happening when it first appeared; and I have carefully preserved
these. They will serve to warn the reader what time he is reading
about, and to prevent his mistaking the date at which the likeness was
attempted to be taken. I proceed to speak of the changes which have
taken place either in the Constitution itself or in the competing
institutions which illustrate it.
It is too soon as yet to attempt to estimate the effect of the Reform
Act of 1867. The people enfranchised under it do not yet know their
own power; a single election, so far from teaching us how they will use
that power, has not been even enough to explain to them that they have
such power. The Reform Act of 1832 did not for many years disclose its
real consequences; a writer in 1836, whether he approved or disapproved
of them, whether he thought too little of or whether he exaggerated
them, would have been sure to be mistaken in them. A new Constitution
does not produce its full effect as long as all its subjects were
reared under an old Constitution, as long as its statesmen were trained
by that old Constitution. It is not really tested till it comes to be
worked by statesmen and among a people neither of whom are guided by a
different experience.
In one respect we are indeed particularly likely to be mistaken as to
the effect of the last Reform Bill. Undeniably there has lately been a
great change in our politics. It is commonly said that "there is not a
brick of the Palmerston House standing". The change since 1865 is a
change not in one point but in a thousand points; it is a change not of
particular details but of pervading spirit. We are now quarrelling as
to the minor details of an Education Act; in Lord Palmerston's time no
such Act could have passed. In Lord Palmerston's time Sir George Grey
said that the disestablishment of the Irish Church would be an "act of
Revolution"; it has now been disestablished by great majorities, with
Sir George Grey himself assenting. A new world has arisen which is not
as the old world; and we naturally ascribe the change to the Reform
Act. But this is a complete mistake. If there had been no Reform Act at
all there would, nevertheless, have been a great change in English
politics. There has been a change of the sort which, above all,
generates other changes--a change of generation. Generally one
generation in politics succeeds another almost silently; at every
moment men of all ages between thirty and seventy have considerable
influence; each year removes many old men, makes all others older,
brings in many new. The transition is so gradual that we hardly
perceive it. The board of directors of the political company has a few
slight changes every year, and therefore the shareholders are conscious
of no abrupt change. But sometimes there IS an abrupt change. It
occasionally happens that several ruling directors who are about the
same age live on for many years, manage the company all through those
years, and then go off the scene almost together. In that case the
affairs of the company are apt to alter much, for good or for evil;
sometimes it becomes more successful, sometimes it is ruined, but it
hardly ever stays as it was. Something like this happened before 1865.
All through the period between 1832 and 1865, the pre-'32 statesmen--if
I may so call them--Lord Derby, Lord Russell, Lord Palmerston, retained
great power. Lord Palmerston to the last retained great prohibitive
power. Though in some ways always young, he had not a particle of
sympathy with the younger generation; he brought forward no young men;
he obstructed all that young men wished. In consequence, at his death a
new generation all at once started into life; the pre-'32 all at once
died out. Most of the new politicians were men who might well have been
Lord Palmerston's grandchildren. He came into Parliament in 1806, they
entered it after 1856. Such an enormous change in the age of the
workers necessarily caused a great change in the kind of work attempted
and the way in which it was done. What we call the "spirit" of politics
is more surely changed by a change of generation in the men than by any
other change whatever. Even if there had been no Reform Act, this
single cause would have effected grave alterations.
The mere settlement of the Reform question made a great change too. If
it could have been settled by any other change, or even without any
change, the instant effect of the settlement would still have been
immense. New questions would have appeared at once. A political country
is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees,
and immediately new trees come up to replace them; the seeds were
waiting in the ground, and they began to grow as soon as the withdrawal
of the old ones brought in light and air. These new questions of
themselves would have made a new atmosphere, new parties, new debates.
Of course I am not arguing that so important an innovation as the
Reform Act of 1867 will not have very great effects. It must, in all
likelihood, have many great ones. I am only saying that as yet we do
not know what those effects are; that the great evident change since
1865 is certainly not strictly due to it; probably is not even in a
principal measure due to it; that we have still to conjecture what it
will cause and what it will not cause.
The principal question arises most naturally from a main doctrine of
these essays. I have said that Cabinet government is possible in
England because England was a deferential country. I meant that the
nominal constituency was not the real constituency; that the mass of
the "ten-pound" house-holders did not really form their own opinions,
and did not exact of their representatives an obedience to those
opinions; that they were in fact guided in their judgment by the better
educated classes; that they preferred representatives from those
classes, and gave those representatives much licence. If a hundred
small shopkeepers had by miracle been added to any of the '32
Parliaments, they would have felt outcasts there. Nothing could be more
unlike those Parliaments than the average mass of the constituency from
which they were chosen.
I do not of course mean that the ten-pound householders were great
admirers of intellect or good judges of refinement. We all know that,
for the most part, they were not so at all; very few Englishmen are.
They were not influenced by ideas, but by facts; not by things
impalpable, but by things palpable. Not to put too fine a point upon
it, they were influenced by rank and wealth. No doubt the better sort
of them believed that those who were superior to them in these
indisputable respects were superior also in the more intangible
qualities of sense and knowledge. But the mass of the old electors did
not analyse very much: they liked to have one of their "betters" to
represent them; if he was rich they respected him much; and if he was a
lord, they liked him the better. The issue put before these electors
was, Which of two rich people will you choose? And each of those rich
people was put forward by great parties whose notions were the notions
of the rich--whose plans were their plans. The electors only selected
one or two wealthy men to carry out the schemes of one or two wealthy
associations.
So fully was this so, that the class to whom the great body of the
ten-pound householders belonged--the lower middle class--was above all
classes the one most hardly treated in the imposition of the taxes. A
small shopkeeper, or a clerk who just, and only just, was rich enough
to pay income tax, was perhaps the only severely taxed man in the
country. He paid the rates, the tea, sugar, tobacco, malt, and spirit
taxes, as well as the income tax, but his means were exceedingly small.
Curiously enough the class which in theory was omnipotent, was the only
class financially ill-treated. Throughout the history of our former
Parliaments the constituency could no more have originated the policy
which those Parliaments selected than they could have made the solar
system.
As I have endeavoured to show in this volume, the deference of the old
electors to their betters was the only way in which our old system
could be maintained. No doubt countries can be imagined in which the
mass of the electors would be thoroughly competent to form good
opinions; approximations to that state happily exist. But such was not
the state of the minor English shopkeepers. They were just competent to
make a selection between two sets of superior ideas; or rather--for the
conceptions of such people are more personal than abstract--between two
opposing parties, each professing a creed of such ideas. But they could
do no more. Their own notions, if they had been cross-examined upon
them, would have been found always most confused and often most
foolish. They were competent to decide an issue selected by the higher
classes, but they were incompetent to do more.
The grave question now is, How far will this peculiar old system
continue and how far will it be altered? I am afraid I must put aside
at once the idea that it will be altered entirely and altered for the
better. I cannot expect that the new class of voters will be at all
more able to form sound opinions on complex questions than the old
voters. There was indeed an idea--a very prevalent idea when the first
edition of this book was published--that there then was an
unrepresented class of skilled artisans who could form superior
opinions on national matters, and ought to have the means of expressing
them. We used to frame elaborate schemes to give them such means. But
the Reform Act of 1867 did not stop at skilled labour; it enfranchised
unskilled labour too. And no one will contend that the ordinary working
man who has no special skill, and who is only rated because he has a
house, can judge much of intellectual matters. The messenger in an
office is not more intelligent than the clerks, not better educated,
but worse; and yet the messenger is probably a very superior specimen
of the newly enfranchised classes. The average can only earn very
scanty wages by coarse labour. They have no time to improve themselves,
for they are labouring the whole day through; and their early education
was so small that in most cases it is dubious whether even if they had
much time, they could use it to good purpose. We have not enfranchised
a class less needing to be guided by their betters than the old class;
on the contrary, the new class need it more than the old. The real
question is, Will they submit to it, will they defer in the same way to
wealth and rank, and to the higher qualities of which these are the
rough symbols and the common accompaniments?
There is a peculiar difficulty in answering this question. Generally,
the debates upon the passing of an Act contain much valuable
instruction as to what may be expected of it. But the debates on the
Reform Act of 1867 hardly tell anything. They are taken up with
technicalities as to the ratepayers and the compound householder.
Nobody in the country knew what was being done. I happened at the time
to visit a purely agricultural and Conservative county, and I asked the
local Tories, "Do you understand this Reform Bill? Do you know that
your Conservative Government has brought in a Bill far more Radical
than any former Bill, and that it is very likely to be passed?" The
answer I got was, "What stuff you talk! How can it be a Radical Reform
Bill? Why, BRIGHT opposes it!" There was no answering that in a way
which a "common jury" could understand. The Bill was supported by the
Times and opposed by Mr. Bright; and therefore the mass of the
Conservatives and of common moderate people, without distinction of
party, had no conception of the effect. They said it was "London
nonsense" if you tried to explain it to them. The nation indeed
generally looks to the discussions in Parliament to enlighten it as to
the effect of Bills. But in this case neither party, as a party, could
speak out. Many, perhaps most of the intelligent Conservatives, were
fearful of the consequences of the proposal; but as it was made by the
heads of their own party, they did not like to oppose it, and the
discipline of party carried them with it. On the other side, many,
probably most of the intelligent Liberals, were in consternation at the
Bill; they had been in the habit for years of proposing Reform Bills;
they knew the points of difference between each Bill, and perceived
that this was by far the most sweeping which had ever been proposed by
any Ministry. But they were almost all unwilling to say so. They would
have offended a large section in their constituencies if they had
resisted a Tory Bill because it was too democratic; the extreme
partisans of democracy would have said, "The enemies of the people have
confidence enough in the people to entrust them with this power, but
you, a 'Liberal,' and a professed friend of the people, have not that
confidence; if that is so, we will never vote for you again". Many
Radical members who had been asking for years for household suffrage
were much more surprised than pleased at the near chance of obtaining
it; they had asked for it as bargainers ask for the highest possible
price, but they never expected to get it. Altogether the Liberals, or
at least the extreme Liberals, were much like a man who has been
pushing hard against an opposing door, till, on a sudden, the door
opens, the resistance ceases, and he is thrown violently forward.
Persons in such an unpleasant predicament can scarcely criticise
effectually, and certainly the Liberals did not so criticise. We have
had no such previous discussions as should guide our expectations from
the Reform Bill, nor such as under ordinary circumstances we should
have had.
Nor does the experience of the last election much help us. The
circumstances were too exceptional. In the first place, Mr. Gladstone's
personal popularity was such as has not been seen since the time of Mr.
Pitt, and such as may never be seen again. Certainly it will very
rarely be seen. A bad speaker is said to have been asked how he got on
as a candidate. "Oh," he answered, "when I do not know what to say, I
say 'Gladstone,' and then they are sure to cheer, and I have time to
think." In fact, that popularity acted as a guide both to
constituencies and to members. The candidates only said they would vote
with Mr. Gladstone, and the constituencies only chose those who said
so. Even the minority could only be described as anti-Gladstone, just
as the majority could only be described as pro-Gladstone. The remains,
too, of the old electoral organisation were exceedingly powerful; the
old voters voted as they had been told, and the new voters mostly voted
with them. In extremely few cases was there any new and contrary
organisation. At the last election, the trial of the new system hardly
began, and, as far as it did begin, it was favoured by a peculiar
guidance.
In the meantime our statesmen have the greatest opportunities they have
had for many years, and likewise the greatest duty. They have to guide
the new voters in the exercise of the franchise; to guide them quietly,
and without saying what they are doing, but still to guide them. The
leading statesmen in a free country have great momentary power. They
settle the conversation of mankind. It is they who, by a great speech
or two, determine what shall be said and what shall be written for long
after. They, in conjunction with their counsellors, settle the
programme of their party--the "platform," as the Americans call it, on
which they and those associated with them are to take their stand for
the political campaign. It is by that programme, by a comparison of the
programmes of different statesmen, that the world forms its judgment.
The common ordinary mind is quite unfit to fix for itself what
political question it shall attend to; it is as much as it can do to
judge decently of the questions which drift down to it, and are brought
before it; it almost never settles its topics; it can only decide upon
the issues of those topics. And in settling what these questions shall
be, statesmen have now especially a great responsibility if they raise
questions which will excite the lower orders of mankind; if they raise
questions on which those orders are likely to be wrong; if they raise
questions on which the interest of those orders is not identical with,
or is antagonistic to, the whole interest of the State, they will have
done the greatest harm they can do. The future of this country depends
on the happy working of a delicate experiment, and they will have done
all they could to vitiate that experiment. Just when it is desirable
that ignorant men, new to politics, should have good issues, and only
good issues, put before them, these statesmen will have suggested bad
issues. They will have suggested topics which will bind the poor as a
class together; topics which will excite them against the rich; topics
the discussion of which in the only form in which that discussion
reaches their ear will be to make them think that some new law can make
them comfortable--that it is the present law which makes them
uncomfortable--that Government has at its disposal an inexhaustible
fund out of which it can give to those who now want without also
creating elsewhere other and greater wants. If the first work of the
poor voters is to try to create a "poor man's paradise," as poor men
are apt to fancy that Paradise, and as they are apt to think they can
create it, the great political trial now beginning will simply fail.
The wide gift of the elective franchise will be a great calamity to the
whole nation, and to those who gain it as great a calamity as to any.
I do not of course mean that statesmen can choose with absolute freedom
what topics they will deal with and what they will not. I am of course
aware that they choose under stringent conditions. In excited states of
the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of
the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be
dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have
great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire
shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet
time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power
is great too.
And the mode in which the questions dealt with are discussed is almost
as important as the selection of these questions. It is for our
principal statesmen to lead the public, and not to let the public lead
them. No doubt when statesmen live by public favour, as ours do, this
is a hard saying, and it requires to be carefully limited. I do not
mean that our statesmen should assume a pedantic and doctrinaire tone
with the English people; if there is anything which English people
thoroughly detest, it is that tone exactly. And they are right in
detesting it; if a man cannot give guidance and communicate instruction
formally without telling his audience "I am better than you; I have
studied this as you have not," then he is not fit for a guide or an
instructor. A statesman who should show that gaucherie would exhibit a
defect of imagination, and expose an incapacity for dealing with men
which would be a great hindrance to him in his calling. But much
argument is not required to guide the public, still less a formal
exposition of that argument. What is mostly needed is the manly
utterance of clear conclusions; if a statesman gives these in a
felicitous way (and if with a few light and humorous illustrations, so
much the better), he has done his part. He will have given the text,
the scribes in the newspapers will write the sermon. A statesman ought
to show his own nature, and talk in a palpable way what is to him
important truth. And so he will both guide and benefit the nation. But
if, especially at a time when great ignorance has an unusual power in
public affairs, he chooses to accept and reiterate the decisions of
that ignorance, he is only the hireling of the nation, and does little
save hurt it.
I shall be told that this is very obvious, and that everybody knows
that 2 and 2 make 4, and that there is no use in inculcating it. But I
answer that the lesson is not observed in fact; people do not so do
their political sums. Of all our political dangers, the greatest I
conceive is that they will neglect the lesson. In plain English, what I
fear is that both our political parties will bid for the support of the
working man; that both of them will promise to do as he likes if he
will only tell them what it is; that, as he now holds the casting vote
in our affairs, both parties will beg and pray him to give that vote to
them. I can conceive of nothing more corrupting or worse for a set of
poor ignorant people than that two combinations of well-taught and rich
men should constantly offer to defer to their decision, and compete for
the office of executing it. Vox populi will be Vox diaboli if it is
worked in that manner.
And, on the other hand, my imagination conjures up a contrary danger. I
can conceive that questions BEING raised which, if continually
agitated, would combine the working men as a class together, the higher
orders might have to consider whether they would concede the measure
that would settle such questions, or whether they would risk the effect
of the working men's combination.
No doubt the question cannot be easily discussed in the abstract; much
must depend on the nature of the measures in each particular case; on
the evil they would cause if conceded; on the attractiveness of their
idea to the working classes if refused. But in all cases it must be
remembered that a political combination of the lower classes, as such
and for their own objects, is an evil of the first magnitude; that a
permanent combination of them would make them (now that so many of them
have the suffrage) supreme in the country; and that their supremacy, in
the state they now are, means the supremacy of ignorance over
instruction and of numbers over knowledge. So long as they are not
taught to act together, there is a chance of this being averted, and it
can only be averted by the greatest wisdom and the greatest foresight
in the higher classes. They must avoid, not only every evil, but every
appearance of evil; while they have still the power they must remove,
not only every actual grievance, but, where it is possible, every
seeming grievance too; they must willingly concede every claim which
they can safely concede, in order that they may not have to concede
unwillingly some claim which would impair the safety of the country.
This advice, too, will be said to be obvious; but I have the greatest
fear that, when the time comes, it will be cast aside as timid and
cowardly. So strong are the combative propensities of man that he would
rather fight a losing battle than not fight at all. It is most
difficult to persuade people that by fighting they may strengthen the
enemy, yet that would be so here; since a losing battle--especially a
long and well-fought one--would have thoroughly taught the lower orders
to combine, and would have left the higher orders face to face with an
irritated, organised, and superior voting power. The courage which
strengthens an enemy and which so loses, not only the present battle,
but many after battles, is a heavy curse to men and nations.
In one minor respect, indeed, I think we may see with distinctness the
effect of the Reform Bill of 1867. I think it has completed one change
which the Act of 1832 began; it has completed the change which that Act
made in the relation of the House of Lords to the House of Commons. As
I have endeavoured in this book to explain, the literary theory of the
English Constitution is on this point quite wrong as usual. According
to that theory, the two Houses are two branches of the legislature,
perfectly equal and perfectly distinct. But before the Act of 1832 they
were not so distinct; there was a very large and a very strong common
element. By their commanding influence in many boroughs and counties
the Lords nominated a considerable part of the Commons; the majority of
the other part were the richer gentry--men in most respects like the
Lords, and sympathising with the Lords. Under the Constitution as it
then was the two Houses were not in their essence distinct; they were
in their essence similar; they were, in the main, not Houses of
contrasted origin, but Houses of like origin. The predominant part of
both was taken from the same class--from the English gentry, titled and
untitled. By the Act of 1832 this was much altered. The aristocracy and
the gentry lost their predominance in the House of Commons; that
predominance passed to the middle class. The two Houses then became
distinct, but then they ceased to be co-equal. The Duke of Wellington,
in a most remarkable paper, has explained what pains he took to induce
the Lords to submit to their new position, and to submit, time after
time, their will to the will of the Commons.
The Reform Act of 1867 has, I think, unmistakably completed the effect
which the Act of 1832 began, but left unfinished. The middle class
element has gained greatly by the second change, and the aristocratic
element has lost greatly. If you examine carefully the lists of
members, especially of the most prominent members, of either side of
the House, you will not find that they are in general aristocratic
names. Considering the power and position of the titled aristocracy,
you will perhaps be astonished at the small degree in which it
contributes to the active part of our governing assembly. The spirit of
our present House of Commons is plutocratic, not aristocratic; its most
prominent statesmen are not men of ancient descent or of great
hereditary estate; they are men mostly of substantial means, but they
are mostly, too, connected more or less closely with the new trading
wealth. The spirit of the two Assemblies has become far more contrasted
than it ever was.
The full effect of the Reform Act of 1832 was indeed postponed by the
cause which I mentioned just now. The statesmen who worked the system
which was put up had themselves been educated under the system which
was pulled down. Strangely enough, their predominant guidance lasted as
long as the system which they created. Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell,
Lord Derby, died or else lost their influence within a year or two of
1867. The complete consequences of the Act of 1832 upon the House of
Lords could not be seen while the Commons were subject to such
aristocratic guidance. Much of the change which might have been
expected from the Act of 1832 was held in suspense, and did not begin
till that measure had been followed by another of similar and greater
power.
The work which the Duke of Wellington in part performed has now,
therefore, to be completed also. He met the half difficulty; we have to
surmount the whole one. We have to frame such tacit rules, to establish
such ruling but unenacted customs, as will make the House of Lords
yield to the Commons when and as often as our new Constitution requires
that it should yield. I shall be asked, How often is that, and what is
the test by which you know it? I answer that the House of Lords must
yield whenever the opinion of the Commons is also the opinion of the
nation, and when it is clear that the nation has made up its mind.
Whether or not the nation has made up its mind is a question to be
decided by all the circumstances of the case, and in the common way in
which all practical questions are decided. There are some people who
lay down a sort of mechanical test; they say the House of Lords should
be at liberty to reject a measure passed by the Commons once or more,
and then if the Commons send it up again and again, infer that the
nation is determined. But no important practical question in real life
can be uniformly settled by a fixed and formal rule in this way. This
rule would prove that the Lords might have rejected the Reform Act of
1832. Whenever the nation was both excited and determined, such a rule
would be an acute and dangerous political poison. It would teach the
House of Lords that it might shut its eyes to all the facts of real
life and decide simply by an abstract formula. If in 1832 the Lords had
so acted, there would have been a revolution. Undoubtedly there is a
general truth in the rule. Whether a bill has come up once only, or
whether it has come up several times, is one important fact in judging
whether the nation is determined to have that measure enacted; it is an
indication, but it is only one of the indications. There are others
equally decisive. The unanimous voice of the people may be so strong,
and may be conveyed through so many organs, that it may be assumed to
be lasting.
Englishmen are so very miscellaneous, that that which has REALLY
convinced a great and varied majority of them for the present may
fairly be assumed to be likely to continue permanently to convince
them. One sort might easily fall into a temporary and erroneous
fanaticism, but all sorts simultaneously are very unlikely to do so.
I should venture so far as to lay down for an approximate rule, that
the House of Lords ought, on a first-class subject, to be slow--very
slow--in rejecting a Bill passed even once by a large majority of the
House of Commons. I would not of course lay this down as an unvarying
rule; as I have said, I have for practical purposes no belief in
unvarying rules. Majorities may be either genuine or fictitious, and if
they are not genuine, if they do not embody the opinion of the
representative as well as the opinion of the constituency, no one would
wish to have any attention paid to them. But if the opinion of the
nation be strong and be universal, if it be really believed by members
of Parliament, as well as by those who send them to Parliament, in my
judgment the Lords should yield at once, and should not resist it.
My main reason is one which has not been much urged. As a theoretical
writer I can venture to say, what no elected member of Parliament,
Conservative or Liberal, can venture to say, that I am exceedingly
afraid of the ignorant multitude of the new constituencies. I wish to
have as great and as compact a power as possible to resist it. But a
dissension between the Lords and Commons divides that resisting power;
as I have explained, the House of Commons still mainly represents the
plutocracy, the Lords represent the aristocracy. The main interest of
both these classes is now identical, which is to prevent or to mitigate
the rule of uneducated numbers. But to prevent it effectually, they
must not quarrel among themselves; they must not bid one against the
other for the aid of their common opponent. And this is precisely the
effect of a division between Lords and Commons. The two great bodies of
the educated rich go to the constituencies to decide between them, and
the majority of the constituencies now consist of the uneducated poor.
This cannot be for the advantage of any one.
In doing so besides the aristocracy forfeit their natural
position--that by which they would gain most power, and in which they
would do most good. They ought to be the heads of the plutocracy. In
all countries new wealth is ready to worship old wealth, if old wealth
will only let it, and I need not say that in England new wealth is
eager in its worship. Satirist after satirist has told us how quick,
how willing, how anxious are the newly-made rich to associate with the
ancient rich. Rank probably in no country whatever has so much "market"
value as it has in England just now. Of course there have been many
countries in which certain old families, whether rich or poor, were
worshipped by whole populations with a more intense and poetic homage;
but I doubt if there has ever been any in which all old families and
all titled families received more ready observance from those who were
their equals, perhaps their superiors, in wealth, their equals in
culture, and their inferiors only in descent and rank. The possessors
of the "material" distinctions of life, as a political economist would
class them, rush to worship those who possess the immaterial
distinctions. Nothing can be more politically useful than such homage,
if it be skilfully used; no folly can be idler than to repel and reject
it.
The worship is the more politically important because it is the worship
of the political superior for the political inferior. At an election
the non-titled are much more powerful than the titled. Certain
individual peers have, from their great possessions, great
electioneering influence, but, as a whole, the House of Peers is not a
principal electioneering force. It has so many poor men inside it, and
so many rich men outside it, that its electioneering value is impaired.
Besides, it is in the nature of the curious influence of rank to work
much more on men singly than on men collectively; it is an influence
which most men--at least most Englishmen--feel very much, but of which
most Englishmen are somewhat ashamed. Accordingly, when any number of
men are collected together, each of whom worships rank in his heart,
the whole body will patiently hear--in many cases will cheer and
approve--some rather strong speeches against rank. Each man is a little
afraid that his "sneaking kindness for a lord," as Mr. Gladstone put
it, be found out; he is not sure how far that weakness is shared by
those around him. And thus Englishmen easily find themselves committed
to anti-aristocratic sentiments which are the direct opposite of their
real feeling, and their collective action may be bitterly hostile to
rank while the secret sentiment of each separately is especially
favourable to rank. In 1832 the close boroughs, which were largely held
by peers, and were still more largely supposed to be held by them, were
swept away with a tumult of delight; and in another similar time of
great excitement, the Lords themselves, if they deserve it, might pass
away. The democratic passions gain by fomenting a diffused excitement,
and by massing men in concourses; the aristocratic sentiments gain by
calm and quiet, and act most on men by themselves, in their families,
and when female influence is not absent. The overt electioneering power
of the Lords does not at all equal its real social power. The English
plutocracy, as is often said of something yet coarser, must be
"humoured, not drove"; they may easily be impelled against the
aristocracy, though they respect it very much; and as they are much
stronger than the aristocracy, they might, if angered, even destroy it;
though in order to destroy it, they must help to arouse a wild
excitement among the ignorant poor, which, if once roused, may not be
easily calmed, and which may be fatal to far more than its beginners
intend.
This is the explanation of the anomaly which puzzles many clever lords.
They think, if they do not say, "Why are we pinned up here? Why are we
not in the Commons where we could have so much more power? Why is this
nominal rank given us, at the price of substantial influence? If we
prefer real weight to unreal prestige, why may we not have it?" The
reply is, that the whole body of the Lords have an incalculably greater
influence over society while there is still a House of Lords, than they
would have if the House of Lords were abolished; and that though one or
two clever young peers might do better in the Commons, the old order of
peers, young and old, clever and not clever, is much better where it
is. The selfish instinct of the mass of peers on this point is a keener
and more exact judge of the real world than the fine intelligence of
one or two of them.
If the House of Peers ever goes, it will go in a storm, and the storm
will not leave all else as it is. It will not destroy the House of
Peers and leave the rich young peers, with their wealth and their
titles, to sit in the Commons. It would probably sweep all titles
before it--at least all legal titles--and somehow or other it would
break up the curious system by which the estates of great families all
go to the eldest son. That system is a very artificial one; you may
make a fine argument for it, but you cannot make a loud argument, an
argument which would reach and rule the multitude. The thing looks like
injustice, and in a time of popular passion it would not stand. Much
short of the compulsory equal division of the Code Napoleon, stringent
clauses might be provided to obstruct and prevent these great
aggregations of property. Few things certainly are less likely than a
violent tempest like this to destroy large and hereditary estates. But
then, too, few things are less likely than an outbreak to destroy the
House of Lords--my point is, that a catastrophe which levels one will
not spare the other.
I conceive, therefore, that the great power of the House of Lords
should be exercised very timidly and very cautiously. For the sake of
keeping the headship of the plutocracy, and through that of the nation,
they should not offend the plutocracy; the points upon which they have
to yield are mostly very minor ones, and they should yield many great
points rather than risk the bottom of their power. They should give
large donations out of income, if by so doing they keep, as they would
keep, their capital intact. The Duke of Wellington guided the House of
Lords in this manner for years, and nothing could prosper better for
them or for the country, and the Lords have only to go back to the good
path in which he directed them.
The events of 1870 caused much discussion upon life peerages, and we
have gained this great step, that whereas the former leader of the Tory
party in the Lords--Lord Lyndhurst--defeated the last proposal to make
life peers, Lord Derby, when leader of that party, desired to create
them. As I have given in this book what seemed to me good reasons for
making them, I need not repeat those reasons here; I need only say how
the notion stands in my judgment now.
I cannot look on life peerages in the way in which some of their
strongest advocates regard them; I cannot think of them as a mode in
which a permanent opposition or a contrast between the Houses of Lords
and Commons is to be remedied. To be effectual in that way, life
peerages must be very numerous. Now the House of Lords will never
consent to a very numerous life peerage without a storm; they must be
in terror to do it, or they will not do it. And if the storm blows
strongly enough to do so much, in all likelihood it will blow strongly
enough to do much more. If the revolution is powerful enough and eager
enough to make an immense number of life peers, probably it will sweep
away the hereditary principle in the Upper Chamber entirely. Of course
one may fancy it to be otherwise; we may conceive of a political storm
just going to a life-peerage limit, and then stopping suddenly. But in
politics we must not trouble ourselves with exceedingly exceptional
accidents; it is quite difficult enough to count on and provide for the
regular and plain probabilities. To speak mathematically, we may easily
miss the permanent course of the political curve if we engross our
minds with its cusps and conjugate points.
Nor, on the other hand, can I sympathise with the objection to life
peerages which some of the Radical party take and feel. They think it
will strengthen the Lords, and so make them better able to oppose the
Commons; they think, if they do not say: "The House of Lords is our
enemy and that of all Liberals; happily the mass of it is not
intellectual; a few clever men are born there which we cannot help, but
we will not 'vaccinate' it with genius; we will not put in a set of
clever men for their lives who may as likely as not turn against us".
This objection assumes that clever peers are just as likely to oppose
the Commons as stupid peers. But this I deny. Most clever men who are
in such a good place as the House of Lords plainly is, will be very
unwilling to lose it if they can help it; at the clear call of a great
duty they might lose it, but only at such a call. And it does not take
a clever man to see that systematic opposition of the Commons is the
only thing which can endanger the Lords, or which will make an
individual peer cease to be a peer. The greater you make the SENSE of
the Lords, the more they will see that their plain interest is to make
friends of the plutocracy, and to be the chiefs of it, and not to wish
to oppose the Commons where that plutocracy rules.
It is true that a completely new House of Lords, mainly composed of men
of ability, selected because they were able, might very likely attempt
to make ability the predominant power in the State, and to rival, if
not conquer, the House of Commons, where the standard of intelligence
is not much above the common English average. But in the present
English world such a House of Lords would soon lose all influence.
People would say, "it was too clever by half," and in an Englishman's
mouth that means a very severe censure. The English people would think
it grossly anomalous if their elected assembly of rich men were
thwarted by a nominated assembly of talkers and writers. Sensible men
of substantial means are what we wish to be ruled by, and a peerage of
genius would not compare with it in power.
It is true, too, that at present some of the cleverest peers are not so
ready as some others to agree with the Commons. But it is not unnatural
that persons of high rank and of great ability should be unwilling to
bend to persons of lower rank, and of certainly not greater ability. A
few of such peers (for they are very few) might say, "We had rather not
have our peerage if we are to buy it at the price of yielding". But a
life peer who had fought his way up to the peers, would never think so.
Young men who are born to rank may risk it, not middle-aged or old men
who have earned their rank. A moderate number of life peers would
almost always counsel moderation to the Lords, and would almost always
be right in counselling it.
Recent discussions have also brought into curious prominence another
part of the Constitution. I said in this book that it would very much
surprise people if they were only told how many things the Queen could
do without consulting Parliament, and it certainly has so proved, for
when the Queen abolished Purchase in the Army by an act of prerogative
(after the Lords had rejected the bill for doing so), there was a great
and general astonishment.
But this is nothing to what the Queen can by law do without consulting
Parliament. Not to mention other things, she could disband the army (by
law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men, but she is not
obliged to engage any men); she could dismiss all the officers, from
the General Commanding-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the
sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our naval
stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin
a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the
United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in
the United Kingdom a "university"; she could dismiss most of the civil
servants; she could pardon all offenders. In a word, the Queen could by
prerogative upset all the action of civil government within the
Government, could disgrace the nation by a bad war or peace, and could,
by disbanding our forces, whether land or sea, leave us defenceless
against foreign nations. Why do we not fear that she would do this, or
any approach to it?