of years nearly effaced, if the House of Lords had not resisted the
proposal of Lord Palmerston's first Government to create peers for
life. The expedient was almost perfect. The difficulty of reforming an
old institution like the House of Lords is necessarily great; its
possibility rests on continuous caste and ancient deference. And if you
begin to agitate about it, to bawl at meetings about it, that deference
is gone, its particular charm lost, its reserved sanctity gone. But, by
an odd fatality, there was in the recesses of the Constitution an old
prerogative which would have rendered agitation needless--which would
have effected, without agitation, all that agitation could have
effected. Lord Palmerston was--now that he is dead, and his memory can
be calmly viewed--as firm a friend to an aristocracy, as thorough an
aristocrat, as any in England; yet he proposed to use that power. If
the House of Lords had still been under the rule of the Duke of
Wellington, perhaps they would have acquiesced. The Duke would not
indeed have reflected on all the considerations which a philosophic
statesman would have set out before him; but he would have been brought
right by one of his peculiarities. He disliked, above all things, to
oppose the Crown. At a great crisis, at the crisis of the Corn Laws,
what he considered was not what other people were thinking of, the
economical issue under discussion, the welfare of the country hanging
in the balance, but the Queen's ease. He thought the Crown so superior
a part in the Constitution, that, even on vital occasions, he looked
solely--or said he looked solely--to the momentary comfort of the
present sovereign. He never was comfortable in opposing a conspicuous
act of the Crown. It is very likely that, if the Duke had still been
the president of the House of Lords, they would have permitted the
Crown to prevail in its well-chosen scheme. But the Duke was dead, and
his authority--or some of it--had fallen to a very different person.
Lord Lyndhurst had many great qualities: he had a splendid
intellect--as great a faculty of finding truth as any one in his
generation; but he had no love of truth. With this great faculty of
finding truth, he was a believer in error--in what his own party now
admit to be error--all his life through. He could have found the truth
as a statesman just as he found it when a judge; but he never did find
it. He never looked for it. He was a great partisan, and he applied a
capacity of argument, and a faculty of intellectual argument rarely
equalled, to support the tenets of his party. The proposal to create
life peers was proposed by the antagonistic party--was at the moment
likely to injure his own party. To him this was a great opportunity.
The speech he delivered on that occasion lives in the memory of those
who heard it. His eyes did not at that time let him read, so he
repeated by memory, and quite accurately, all the black-letter
authorities, bearing on the question. So great an intellectual effort
has rarely been seen in an English assembly. But the result was
deplorable. Not by means of his black-letter authorities, but by means
of his recognised authority and his vivid impression, he induced the
House of Lords to reject the proposition of the Government. Lord
Lyndhurst said the Crown could not now create life peers, and so there
are no life peers. The House of Lords rejected the inestimable, the
unprecedented opportunity of being tacitly reformed. Such a chance does
not come twice. The life peers who would have been then introduced
would have been among the first men in the country. Lord Macaulay was
to have been among the first; Lord Wensleydale--the most learned and
not the least logical of our lawyers--to be the very first. Thirty or
forty such men, added judiciously and sparingly as years went on, would
have given to the House of Lords the very element which, as a
criticising chamber, it needs so much. It would have given it critics.
The most accomplished men in each department might then, without
irrelevant considerations of family and of fortune, have been added to
the Chamber of Review. The very element which was wanted to the House
of Lords was, as it were, by a constitutional providence, offered to
the House of Lords, and they refused it. By what species of effort that
error can be repaired I cannot tell; but, unless it is repaired, the
intellectual capacity can never be what it would have been, will never
be what it ought to be, will never be sufficient for its work.
Another reform ought to have accompanied the creation of life peers.
Proxies ought to have been abolished. Some time or other the slack
attendance of the House of Lords will destroy the House of Lords. There
are occasions in which appearances are realities, and this is one of
them. The House of Lords on most days looks so unlike what it ought to
be, that most people will not believe it is what it ought to be. The
attendance of considerate peers will, for obvious reasons, be larger
when it can no longer be overpowered by the NON-attendance, by the
commissioned votes of inconsiderate peers. The abolition of proxies
would have made the House of Lords a real House; the addition of life
peers would have made it a good House.
The greater of these changes would have most materially aided the House
of Lords in the performance of its subsidiary functions. It always
perhaps happens in a great nation, that certain bodies of sensible men
posted prominently in its Constitution, acquire functions, and usefully
exercise functions, which at the outset, no one expected from them, and
which do not identify themselves with their original design. This has
happened to the House of Lords especially. The most obvious instance is
the judicial function. This is a function which no theorist would
assign to a second chamber in a new Constitution, and which is matter
of accident in ours. Gradually, indeed, the unfitness of the second
chamber for judicial functions has made itself felt. Under our present
arrangements this function is not entrusted to the House of Lords, but
to a Committee of the House of Lords. On one occasion only, the trial
of O'Connell, the whole House, or some few in the whole House, wished
to vote, and they were told they could not, or they would destroy the
judicial prerogative. No one, indeed, would venture REALLY to place the
judicial function in the chance majorities of a fluctuating assembly:
it is so by a sleepy theory; it is not so in living fact. As a legal
question, too, it is a matter of grave doubt whether there ought to be
two supreme courts in this country--the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, and (what is in fact though not in name) the Judicial
Committee of the House of Lords. Up to a very recent time, one
committee might decide that a man was sane as to money, and the other
committee might decide that he was insane as to land. This absurdity
has been cured; but the error from which it arose has not been
cured--the error of having two supreme courts, to both of which as time
goes on, the same question is sure often enough to be submitted, and
each of which is sure every now and then to decide it differently. I do
not reckon the judicial function of the House of Lords as one of its
true subsidiary functions, first because it does not in fact exercise
it, next because I wish to see it in appearance deprived of it. The
supreme court of the English people ought to be a great conspicuous
tribunal, ought to rule all other courts, ought to have no competitor,
ought to bring our law into unity, ought not to be hidden beneath the
robes of a legislative assembly.
The real subsidiary functions of the House of Lords are, unlike its
judicial functions, very analogous to its substantial nature. The first
is the faculty of criticising the executive. An assembly in which the
mass of the members have nothing to lose, where most have nothing to
gain, where every one has a social position firmly fixed, where no one
has a constituency, where hardly any one cares for the minister of the
day, is the very assembly in which to look for, from which to expect,
independent criticism. And in matter of fact we find it. The criticism
of the Acts of late administrations by Lord Grey has been admirable.
But such criticism, to have its full value, should be many-sided. Every
man of great ability puts his own mark on his own criticism; it will be
full of thought and feeling, but then it is of idiosyncratic thought
and feeling. We want many critics of ability and knowledge in the Upper
House--not equal to Lord Grey, for they would be hard to find--but like
Lord Grey. They should resemble him in impartiality; they should
resemble him in clearness; they should most of all resemble him in
taking a supplemental view of a subject. There is an actor's view of a
subject, which (I speak of mature and discussed action--of Cabinet
action) is nearly sure to include everything old and new--everything
ascertained and determinate. But there is also a bystander's view which
is likely to omit some one or more of these old and certain elements,
but also to contain some new or distant matter, which the absorbed and
occupied actor could not see. There ought to be many life peers in our
secondary chamber capable of giving us this higher criticism. I am
afraid we shall not soon see them, but as a first step we should learn
to wish for them.
The second subsidiary action of the House of Lords is even more
important. Taking the House of Commons, not after possible but most
unlikely improvements, but in matter of fact and as it stands, it is
overwhelmed with work. The task of managing it falls upon the Cabinet,
and that task is very hard. Every member of the Cabinet in the Commons
has to "attend the House"; to contribute by his votes, if not by his
voice, to the management of the House. Even in so small a matter as the
Education Department, Mr. Lowe, a consummate observer, spoke of the
desirability of finding a chief "not exposed to the prodigious labour
of attending the House of Commons". It is all but necessary that
certain members of the Cabinet should be exempt from its toil, and
untouched by its excitement. But it is also necessary that they should
have the power of explaining their views to the nation; of being heard
as other people are heard. There are various plans for so doing, which
I may discuss a little in speaking of the House of Commons. But so much
is evident: the House of Lords, for its own members, attains this
object; it gives them a voice, it gives them what no competing plan
does give them--POSITION. The leisured members of the Cabinet speak in
the Lords with authority and power. They are not administrators with a
right to speech--clerks (as is sometimes suggested) brought down to
lecture a House, but not to vote in it; but they are the equals of
those they speak to; they speak as they like, and reply as they choose;
they address the House, not with the "bated breath" of subordinates,
but with the force and dignity of sure rank. Life peers would enable us
to use this faculty of our Constitution more freely and more variously.
It would give us a larger command of able leisure; it would improve the
Lords as a political pulpit, for it would enlarge the list of its
select preachers.
The danger of the House of Commons is, perhaps, that it will be
reformed too rashly; the danger of the House of Lords certainly is,
that it may never be reformed. Nobody asks that it should be so; it is
quite safe against rough destruction, but it is not safe against inward
decay. It may lose its veto as the Crown has lost its veto. If most of
its members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of
one class, and that not quite the best; if its doors are shut against
genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not 5000
pounds a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be
gone, as so much kingly power is gone--no one knows how. Its danger is
not in assassination, but atrophy; not abolition, but decline.
NO. V.
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
[Footnote: I reprint this chapter substantially as it was first
written. It is too soon, as I have explained in the introduction, to
say what changes the late Reform Act will make in the House of Commons.]
The dignified aspect of the House of Commons is altogether secondary to
its efficient use. It IS dignified: in a Government in which the most
prominent parts are good because they are very stately, any prominent
part, to be good at all, must be somewhat stately. The human
imagination exacts keeping in government as much as in art; it will not
be at all influenced by institutions which do not match with those by
which it is principally influenced. The House of Commons needs to be
impressive, and impressive it is: but its use resides not in its
appearance, but in its reality. Its office is not to win power by awing
mankind, but to use power in governing mankind.
The main function of the House of Commons is one which we know quite
well, though our common constitutional speech does not recognise it.
The House of Commons is an electoral chamber; it is the assembly which
chooses our president. Washington and his fellow-politicians contrived
an electoral college, to be composed (as was hoped) of the wisest
people in the nation, which, after due deliberation, was to choose for
president the wisest man in the nation. But that college is a sham; it
has no independence and no life. No one knows, or cares to know, who
its members are. They never discuss, and never deliberate. They were
chosen to vote that Mr. Lincoln be President, or that Mr. Breckenridge
be President; they do so vote, and they go home. But our House of
Commons is a real choosing body; it elects the people it likes. And it
dismisses whom it likes too. No matter that a few months since it was
chosen to support Lord Aberdeen or Lord Palmerston; upon a sudden
occasion it ousts the statesman to whom it at first adhered, and
selects an opposite statesman whom it at first rejected. Doubtless in
such cases there is a tacit reference to probable public opinion; but
certainly also there is much free will in the judgment of the Commons.
The House only goes where it thinks in the end the nation will follow;
but it takes its chance of the nation following or not following; it
assumes the initiative, and acts upon its discretion or its caprice.
When the American nation has chosen its President, its virtue goes out
of it, and out of the Transmissive College through which it chooses.
But because the House of Commons has the power of dismissal in addition
to the power of election, its relations to the Premier are incessant.
They guide him and he leads them. He is to them what they are to the
nation. He only goes where he believes they will go after him. But he
has to take the lead; he must choose his direction, and begin the
journey. Nor must he flinch. A good horse likes to feel the rider's
bit; and a great deliberative assembly likes to feel that it is under
worthy guidance. A Minister who succumbs to the House,--who
ostentatiously seeks its pleasure,--who does not try to regulate
it,--who will not boldly point out plain errors to it, seldom thrives.
The great leaders of Parliament have varied much, but they have all had
a certain firmness. A great assembly is as soon spoiled by
over-indulgence as a little child. The whole life of English politics
is the action and reaction between the Ministry and the Parliament. The
appointees strive to guide, and the appointers surge under the
guidance. The elective is now the most important function of the House
of Commons. It is most desirable to insist, and be tedious, on this,
because our tradition ignores it. At the end of half the sessions of
Parliament, you will read in the newspapers, and you will hear even
from those who have looked close at the matter and should know better,
"Parliament has done nothing this session. Some things were promised in
the Queen's speech, but they were only little things; and most of them
have not passed." Lord Lyndhurst used for years to recount the small
outcomings of legislative achievement; and yet those were the days of
the first Whig Governments, who had more to do in legislation, and did
more, than any Government. The true answer to such harangues as Lord
Lyndhurst's by a Minister should have been in the first person. He
should have said firmly, "Parliament has maintained ME, and that was
its greatest duty; Parliament has carried on what, in the language of
traditional respect, we call the Queen's Government; it has maintained
what wisely or unwisely it deemed the best executive of the English
nation". The second function of the House of Commons is what I may call
an expressive function. It is its office to express the mind of the
English people on all matters which come before it. Whether it does so
well or ill I shall discuss presently. The third function of Parliament
is what I may call--preserving a sort of technicality even in familiar
matters for the sake of distinctness--the teaching function. A great
and open council of considerable men cannot be placed in the middle of
a society without altering that society. It ought to alter it for the
better. It ought to teach the nation what it does not know. How far the
House of Commons can so teach, and how far it does so teach, are
matters for subsequent discussion.
Fourthly, the House of Commons has what may be called an informing
function--a function which though in its present form quite modern is
singularly analogous to a mediaeval function. In old times one office
of the House of Commons was to inform the sovereign what was wrong. It
laid before the Crown the grievances and complaints of particular
interests. Since the publication of the Parliamentary debates a
corresponding office of Parliament is to lay these same grievances,
these same complaints, before the nation, which is the present
sovereign. The nation needs it quite as much as the king ever needed
it. A free people is indeed mostly fair, liberty practises men in a
give-and-take, which is the rough essence of justice. The English
people, possibly even above other free nations, is fair. But a free
nation rarely can be--and the English nation is not--quick of
apprehension. It only comprehends what is familiar to it--what comes
into its own experience, what squares with its own thoughts. "I never
heard of such a thing in my life," the middle-class Englishman says,
and he thinks he so refutes an argument. The common disputant cannot
say in reply that his experience is but limited, and that the assertion
may be true, though he had never met with anything at all like it. But
a great debate in Parliament does bring home something of this feeling.
Any notion, any creed, any feeling, any grievance which can get a
decent number of English members to stand up for it, is felt by almost
all Englishmen to be perhaps a false and pernicious opinion, but at any
rate possible--an opinion within the intellectual sphere, an opinion to
be reckoned with. And it is an immense achievement. Practical
diplomatists say that a free Government is harder to deal with than a
despotic Government; you may be able to get the despot to hear the
other side; his Ministers, men of trained intelligence, will be sure to
know what makes against them; and they MAY tell him. But a free nation
never hears any side save its own. The newspapers only repeat the side
their purchasers like: the favourable arguments are set out,
elaborated, illustrated; the adverse arguments maimed, misstated,
confused. The worst judge, they say, is a deaf judge; the most dull
Government is a free Government on matters its ruling classes will not
hear. I am disposed to reckon it as the second function of Parliament
in point of importance, that to some extent it makes us hear what
otherwise we should not.
Lastly, there is the function of legislation, of which of course it
would be preposterous to deny the great importance, and which I only
deny to be AS important as the executive management of the whole State,
or the political education given by Parliament to the whole nation.
There are, I allow, seasons when legislation is more important than
either of these. The nation may be misfitted with its laws, and need to
change them: some particular corn law may hurt all industry, and it may
be worth a thousand administrative blunders to get rid of it. But
generally the laws of a nation suit its life; special adaptations of
them are but subordinate; the administration and conduct of that life
is the matter which presses most. Nevertheless, the statute-book of
every great nation yearly contains many important new laws, and the
English statute-book does so above any. An immense mass, indeed, of the
legislation is not, in the proper language of jurisprudence,
legislation at all. A law is a general command applicable to many
cases. The "special acts" which crowd the statute-book and weary
Parliamentary committees are applicable to one case only. They do not
lay down rules according to which railways shall be made, they enact
that such a railway shall be made from this place to that place, and
they have no bearing upon any other transaction. But after every
deduction and abatement, the annual legislation of Parliament is a
result of singular importance; were it not so, it could not be, as it
often is considered, the sole result of its annual assembling.
Some persons will perhaps think that I ought to enumerate a sixth
function of the House of Commons--a financial function. But I do not
consider that, upon broad principle, and omitting legal technicalities,
the House of Commons has any special function with regard to financial
different from its functions with respect to other legislation. It is
to rule in both, and to rule in both through the Cabinet. Financial
legislation is of necessity a yearly recurring legislation; but
frequency of occurrence does not indicate a diversity of nature or
compel an antagonism of treatment.
In truth, the principal peculiarity of the House of Commons in
financial affairs is nowadays not a special privilege, but an
exceptional disability. On common subjects any member can propose
anything, but not on money--the Minister only can propose to tax the
people. This principle is commonly involved in mediaeval metaphysics as
to the prerogative of the Crown, but it is as useful in the nineteenth
century as in the fourteenth, and rests on as sure a principle. The
House of Commons--now that it is the true sovereign, and appoints the
real executive--has long ceased to be the checking, sparing, economical
body it once was. It now is more apt to spend money than the Minister
of the day. I have heard a very experienced financier say, "If you want
to raise a certain cheer in the House of Commons make a general
panegyric on economy; if you want to invite a sure defeat, propose a
particular saving". The process is simple. Every expenditure of public
money has some apparent public object; those who wish to spend the
money expatiate on that object; they say, "What is 50,000 pounds to
this great country? Is this a time for cheese-paring objection? Our
industry was never so productive; our resources never so immense. What
is 50,000 pounds in comparison with this great national interest?" The
members who are for the expenditure always come down; perhaps a
constituent or a friend who will profit by the outlay, or is keen on
the object, has asked them to attend; at any rate, there is a popular
vote to be given, on which the newspapers--always philanthropic, and
sometimes talked over--will be sure to make enconiums. The members
against the expenditure rarely come down of themselves; why should they
become unpopular without reason? The object seems decent; many of its
advocates are certainly sincere: a hostile vote will make enemies, and
be censured by the journals. If there were not some check, the
"people's house" would soon outrun the people's money. That check is
the responsibility of the Cabinet for the national finance. If any one
could propose a tax, they might let the House spend it as it would, and
wash their hands of the matter; but now, for whatever expenditure is
sanctioned--even when it is sanctioned against the Ministry's wish--the
Ministry must find the money. Accordingly, they have the strongest
motive to oppose extra outlay. They will have to pay the bill for it;
they will have to impose taxation, which is always disagreeable, or
suggest loans, which, under ordinary circumstances, are shameful. The
Ministry is (so to speak) the bread-winner of the political family, and
has to meet the cost of philanthropy and glory, just as the head of a
family has to pay for the charities of his wife and the toilette of his
daughters.
In truth, when a Cabinet is made the sole executive, it follows it must
have the sole financial charge, for all action costs money, all policy
depends on money, and it is in adjusting the relative goodness of
action and policies that the executive is employed.