THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS A LANDMARK OF POLITICAL PROGRESS UNDER QUEEN
VICTORIA
Comparative novelty of constitutional government as understood to-day,
and of real parliamentary representation during the first years of the
Queen's reign. Dissatisfaction with, and defects in, Lord Grey's
Reform Act. The new Chamber for the Commons nearly contemporary with
the reformed House. Retrospect of different places in which the
Commons have sat. Growth of social conveniences at Westminster. Recent
changes that after half a century would most strike the visitor to
Westminster. The ladies in Parliament. Discomforts of their earlier
parliamentary position as compared with its luxuries and ascendancy
to-day. Changes in the House itself. The day of the youthful M.P.
Modifications in the procedure of the House of Commons. Obstruction.
Its origin and prevention. Influence of the House to-day.
Constitutional Government and a popular legislature, did on Her Majesty's
accession, both exist in England. Neither of them was more than four or
five years old. Each therefore had arrived only at the experimental stage.
The Reform Bill of '32 had scarcely begun to be operative when its
imperfections made themselves felt. For the first time indeed in English
history popular constituencies had been organized by that Measure. But
while all householders rated at L10 and upwards had a voice in the
national Government, various old historic franchises had been abolished.
At Preston, for example, the suffrage had previously been in practice
universal; so that there, and at Windsor like Preston, the Reform Act had
a disfranchising effect.[51] All sections of the middle class were
enfranchised by the Measure of 1832.
With some show of reason it was complained that, while numbers were now
supreme, opinions and interests were, as in the case of pocket boroughs,
better able to make themselves felt under the nominally exclusive regime
which had been swept away. The new constitution was not the only
parliamentary novelty that signalized the opening of the Victorian epoch.
In addition to a new parliament returned by fresh constituencies there had
recently risen at Westminster a new Palace containing of course a House of
Commons comparatively fresh from the workmen's hands. The old structure
had been burnt down in 1834. The pile of buildings designed by Barry as
its architect which is now so familiar a feature in the London landscape
did not assume its present proportions in all their completeness till the
reign had entered upon its second decade. During the six years between
1834-40 the Houses sat in a temporary building which had been run up with
miraculous rapidity. As nearly as possible ten years after Her Majesty
received the early visit of her Chancellor at Kensington Palace, more
exactly on April 13, 1847, the Peers took possession of their new
Chamber.
Three years later, May 30, 1850, the Commons met for the first time
beneath the roof that shelters them to-day. Since the People's
Representatives and the Barons were constituted into separate Assemblies,
the building which the famous Clock Tower surmounts is in fact the fourth
meeting place that has been assigned to the Commons of England. It was not
till 1547, the first year of Edward VI. that the chapel of St Stephen in
Westminster Palace was prepared for the Commons. Before that date they had
assembled in the Chapter House.
The Speaker's Chair was then the former seat of the Abbot. Beneath this
roof were passed the Statute of Provisors 1350, the Statute of Praemunire,
the Act of Supremacy, and the Act of Submission. Until St Stephen's became
the synonym for the Popular House, party government can hardly be said to
have been, even rudimentarily, established. Government by groups, the rule
in the French Chamber theoretically held to be so mischievous in England,
but in whose direction we seem to be making further progress each year,
was practically the rule in the pre-St Stephen's period. Nor would it be
easy to exaggerate the influence favourable to a hard and fast dichotomy
into parties exercised by the structural arrangements of the secularized
shrine.
What are the points of contrast in the economy of the Commons' House of
Parliament and its precincts to-day which would most strike the shadowy
observer revisiting the place by the glimpses of the moon after half a
century's absence.
The accommodations of comfort, study or pleasure that now make the House
of Commons not perhaps the best but a really good club, are only the
fulfilment of undertakings which our imaginary spectator would remember as
having been begun when he was last there. Neither would he be much
surprised by the increase in the occupants of the Strangers' Gallery; nor
in the greater conveniences enjoyed by the reporters. Long before the
necessity for Barry's new building had arisen these improvements in the
internal fittings of any House of Commons were anticipated. When in 1847
the Hereditary legislators were about to settle in their new home, they
were much exercised by the conditions under which, and the exact places
where, their wives and daughters should view the progress of their
debates. The first suggestion of appropriating to the peeresses the
gallery that runs above the Ministerial Bench elicited from the late Lord
Redesdale the blunt remark: 'It will make the place like a casino.' To-day
the bright toilettes lit up by the sun pouring through the multi-coloured
glass, and blending with the bright tints of the decorated walls form
nearly the most picturesque feature in the afternoon of a London season.
Amazement, approbatory or the reverse, at this spectacle is the beginning
of surprises which the spectral visitor would find in store. Descending
into the hall which separates the two Houses, he would meet a commoner
acting as a squire of dames, escorting detachments of ladies to points
whence they could best see the House of Commons celebrities of the hour.
Looking through the swing door of the Representative Chamber, the
parliamentary Rip Van Winkle would for the first time in his experience
note the flutter of muslins and silks through the grating that bars the
compartment just above the reporters' benches, and that is known to-day by
the name of the Ladies' Cage. In 1834 this was a novelty as yet undreamed
of. The germs of it may perhaps first be detected during the opening year
of the present century.
In 1800 the admission of the Irish Members after the Act of Union involved
structural alterations in the Chamber. Among other things a chandelier was
fixed in the centre of the ceiling. At the same time a round hole was cut
for the escape of the hot air. The top of the orifice was protected by a
balustrade. From above this chandelier ladies were permitted
surreptitiously to peep over. In that extremely uncomfortable and rather
perilous position they saw what they could of the speakers and heard
murmurs of the debate. The first subsequent novelty was the introduction
of a few chairs. The temporary structure for the Commons after the 1834
fire was in the old House of Lords formerly known as the Court of
Requests, occupying as it did much, if not all, of the site of Edward the
Confessor's palace. The Lords themselves at that time met in the present
St Stephen's where the Commons meet to-day. Nor was it till after the
first Reform Bill that the domiciles of the two Assemblies were exchanged.
In the building which served the Commons between 1836-40, no provision was
made for ladies. By the report of the select committee of 1836 this fresh
accommodation was suggested. On the 3d of May in that, or in the following
year, the House ordered[52] that a place should be provided where, with
less discomfort, and more dignity than from the lamp balustrade, ladies
could listen to the speeches, and catch an occasional glimpse of those who
delivered them. In the temporary structure the exact spot thus allocated
to them seems to have been behind the Speaker's chair, if not actually
beneath the floor. Experts at least have discovered no alternative
situation as possible. The Ladies' Gallery of to-day as it exists just
above the Reporters' box is divided into three parts. The western third is
reserved for Mrs Speaker. It is called by that lady's name. Here she
receives as her guests personal friends or semi-official personages of her
own sex. The two eastern thirds of the compartment now spoken of are at
the disposal of Members for their wives and friends. There is a ballot for
the Ladies' Gallery a week in advance. Certain representatives of the
people have been favoured, as the result of consummate dexterity or rare
luck, with singularly uniform success in this ordeal. During the earlier
period to which reference has been made, there are believed to have been
instances in which ladies clandestinely found a place not only in the
balustrade above but in the ventilating chamber beneath the floor. Thus,
when they did not flutter as angels above, they burrowed like moles below.
Nor, as we have seen, was it till Barry's plan had become an architectural
fact that the wives and daughters of the people's elect were delivered
from these two predicaments.
To-day a lady visiting the House of Commons during debate has her 5
o'clock tea as comfortably as in her own drawing room. If the weather be
sultry, or the debate tedious, she can refresh herself during the interval
between tea and dinner with strawberries and ice as luxuriously as at
Gunter's in Berkeley Square. During the more monastic period of the modern
House of Commons, there occurred a short interval in which a very few
ladies on the floor of the House itself on the same side as the Treasury
Bench were stationed on chairs so placed that their occupants could hear
without being seen. One day a sudden witticism of an orator upset the
gravity of the listening stateswomen, and scandalized the Speaker. That
laugh proved fatal. Henceforth Members were forbidden expressly by the
House to secrete ladies in any part of the Chamber, either above or under
the floor. To-day in the interior of the Chamber itself ladies are not
more visible than formerly. The proposal to remove the grille that
converts their gallery into a cage is still made periodically; but with as
yet no great appearance of success.
Outside but still beneath the parliamentary roof, or within the
parliamentary precinct, the sex that is no longer 'suppressed,' pervades
the place at all hours. The Members' dining room, where male strangers can
be invited, is not yet open to guests of our new _ecclesiazusae_. All other
parts of the premises are already pervaded by them. In the basement a room
has been discovered in which the fair guests of Members can be
entertained when the debate is over by a supper which may well repair the
omission of a dinner. The river frontage of the Westminster Palace during
some years has been surrendered at discretion to the politicians of the
petticoat. Lord Redesdale foresaw the coming resemblance of the interior
of the Peers' Chamber to a music and dancing saloon. Even his alarmist
imagination never pictured at the height of the London season an assembly
of ladies upon the Terrace just outside the Chamber, enjoying as the
guests of the elected of the democracy ices, strawberries and cream, all
the other modish adjuncts of 5 o'clock tea. This they have done since
1888. More recently there have been added waitresses attractively dressed
in a black and white uniform. Some years ago Mr John Bright, a special
habitue of the tea room, arranged a subscription for a wedding present to
the young person who presided over the cups and saucers, when on her
marriage she retired into private life. Even that statesman would not
perhaps have undertaken his graceful and chivalrous task in the case of a
whole regiment of tea room nymphs.
The lady M.P. has still to come into existence. Her sex controls votes and
vicariously receives them. In New Zealand and other Colonies the same sex
records votes directly as well as influences votes indirectly. If, as
other precedents might suggest, the mother country is advancing towards
the Colonial usage, is there any abiding reason why to their parliamentary
influence already established beyond doubt, the mothers and daughters of
England should not add the responsibility to public opinion which a
parliamentary seat would bring and which they now escape?
The personal changes in the composition of the House of Commons are only
less striking than the innovations in its social life. Years have passed
since Mr Disraeli's oft reiterated remark that the future of English
politics was to the English youth. In a sense different perhaps from that
which the phrase was first intended to bear, this consummation seems in
gradual process of fulfilment. In 1837 a chief amusement of visitors to
the House of Commons was to count the number of bald heads in the
Assembly. Those phenomena, as the legitimate results of age, are very
nearly unknown to-day. During the first three decades of the Queen's reign
the average age of a Member was between 50 and 60. Now it is probably not
much more than 40. Often it happens that senators are so fresh from school
as to be unable to forget their schoolboy phraseology, and to address the
Speaker in the exact terms they used but the other day to the master of
their Form. Thus, 'If you please, Sir, Mr Speaker, Sir!' is the opening
often heard of late years from a boyish senator who rises to address the
House in response to the eye of its President. In other respects, the
typical M.P. has changed not less conspicuously. Men of the social and
political quality who followed the lead of Sir Robert Peel first, and of
Mr Disraeli afterwards, who could be taken for nothing else than the
country gentlemen that they were, have been replaced by men whose
antecedents and whose interests are not less manifestly commercial.
Long after the abolition of the Corn Laws the description of the
Conservative party given in the Life of Lord George Bentinck continued to
be true. A glance sufficed to show that these 'men of metal and of acres'
were the products of their native soil. Specimens of this class lingered
at times pretty plentifully after Household Franchise was added to the
Statute Book. The tall erect figure of Mr Newdegate, broadened, but not
bent, by age, still retaining much of the elasticity of youth; the less
rugged and angular, but physically not less well developed, presence of
Sir Rainald, afterwards Lord, Knightley; these were specimens of Members
not uncommon within the memory of the present generation. To the same
order, in spite of a very different appearance, belonged the parliamentary
Cato of those days, Mr J. W. Henley, the veteran Member for Oxfordshire.
If the wisdom of the House, its occasional intolerance, and its hereditary
good sense, were ever incarnate in an individual, they resided surely
beneath the compact sturdy figure with the countenance, seamed and gnarled
as of an ancient oak, of that remarkable man. Before Quarter Sessions had
given place to County Councils, Mr Henley and others of his class ceased
to be known in their places.
These were the men, contemporaries of Disraeli and Northcote, brought up
in the same parliamentary, often in the same social, school as them.
These, too, were they who for his mastery of parliamentary law, his
excellence of parliamentary manner, and his maintenance of historic
standards in parliamentary debate, could almost tolerate the Liberalism of
Mr Gladstone. With a pang they anticipated the day when his withdrawal
would rob the Assembly of the last surviving monument of the eloquence and
bearing which used to be the familiar attributes in the first assembly of
gentlemen in the world. Already debating of the old stately order had
begun to go out of fashion. Thirty years after the Queen's accession, in
the Reform discussions of 1867, Mr Lowe had made one of the latest and
happiest hits ever secured by a familiar phrase from Virgil. In 1881,
after the death of Lord Beaconsfield, Mr Gladstone pointed a reference of
the same kind with not less felicity when he applied to his rival on
returning from Berlin the words by which the Latin poet indicated the
commanding presence of Marcellus among the winners of the _spolia opima_.
With these exceptions, there is no recent record of signally successful
quotation in the House of Commons from classical authors. Not indeed for
want of classical scholars. Professor Jebb, Sir G. O. Trevelyan, Sir M. W.
Ridley, are at least the equals in this respect of their seniors.[53] The
simple reason is that Latin and Greek quotation which were once held to
be, as Mr Disraeli said of invective, an ornament of debate, have passed
into the heritage of outworn words and faces. To-day if honourable
gentlemen illustrate their meaning by a metaphor or clench an argument by
an epigram, they go for their _tropes_ and ideas, not to the library, but
to the laboratory. Thus one of them not long since was heard to compare
the mind of an opponent to a series of condensing chambers. The masters of
the grand style in parliamentary oratory, as it may be called, cannot be
said to have passed away while David Plunket, Lord Rathmore, lives. But
the business of the House of Commons is done in Committee. A Committee of
the House of Commons is like a committee of any other gentlemen
professedly met together to transact the greatest amount of work in the
shortest space of time. Telling arrangement of ideas, clearness of
thought, conciseness of phrase, dexterous support of special views by
figures and facts; these are the qualities bred in the parliamentary
atmosphere to-day. In such categories are the ideals consciously aimed at
to be found. No competent person seriously supposes the average of
intellectual power in Parliament to have declined. Mr Gladstone and other
experts have testified that it has increased, and that the 1893 Parliament
contained more men of first rate capacity than any within modern memory.
The interest taken by the nations in the doings of the House of Commons
has not permanently abated, nor is likely to do so, seeing that its
attraction resides less in the letter of its debates than in the
circumstance of its being a continuous commentary on the social as well as
political history of the day, a concentration, epitome, and amalgam of the
human nature of the period. The vicissitudes of human affairs, the sudden
growth, the not less sudden rupture, of human friendships; the involuntary
perjuries of political allies surely as laughable in the sight of Jove as
the perjuries of lovers; the sworn confidants and colleagues in one
Administration transformed into the mortal antagonists of the next; these
are the episodes of everyday life reflected upon the stage of the Theatre
Royal St Stephen's. Can they then, fail to be more full of dramatic charm
than the entertainments provided in any other playhouse of the realm? The
parallel between the theatrical and parliamentary stage might be made
still closer. As on the former, so on the latter there are certain stock
parts always sure to be enacted, whatever the title of the play, or the
nature of the discussion.
The Mr Henley already named, pre-eminently representative as he was of the
hard good sense and rugged honesty of the Tory squire, was not a novelty
in the Chamber. He had his forerunner in the 'down-right' Shippon, as Pope
calls him, of a Georgian House of Commons. He it was who, as a Jacobite
opposed to Sir Robert Walpole yet said of himself and his adversary, 'He
is for King George; I am for King James. We differ on most things; but
Robin and I are the two most honest men in Parliament.' The theatrical and
parliamentary analogy might be illustrated much further. One or two more
instances will suffice. The stage character whose chief function is to
keep the audience smiling and to enliven dulness by a laugh has his exact
analogue in the parliamentary humorist, whose very rising is the signal
for a burst of anticipatory merriment. In the nineteenth century the name
of that humorist has been, during its first half, Sir Charles Wetherell.
He relieved the severity of the 1831-2 Reform Bill discussions by
convulsing his hearers with laughter at the farcical absurdity of his
sallies, or by the ludicrous incongruity of the metaphors with which he
pointed his invective.
Half a century later the name of the performer is changed. The function
discharged is identical. In the place of a Wetherell there sits now a
Bernal Osborne, now a Patrick Boyle Smollett, now a William Gregory, and
again a Wilfried Lawson, or a Labouchere. In any case the wag is
indispensable to the proceedings of the House. In every new Parliament he
makes his appearance, if not quite so early, yet with the same regularity
as the Queen's Speech, or the Debate on the Address.
Other roles are equally familiar, and with the same undeviating regularity
are forthcoming. High or Low Church, dry or Evangelical, the different
champions of the Church, each in their own era and from their own point of
view, come forward to defend the national Establishment. These are the
gentlemen whom in once addressing a deputation of them Mr Disraeli
characteristically styled 'the children of the Church.' Of this section,
during the earlier decades of the reign, Sir Robert Inglis was a chief.
Round him were grouped a little band in which Mr Spooner, and thereafter
the intrepid Mr Newdegate, and poor Mr Whalley, with his jaded, hunted
look, had a place. The burly presence of Sir John Mowbray, the less
robust, but wiry figure of Mr Talbot, both Members for Oxford University,
belong to a later date. When these may have disappeared, successors are
already visible to take their place. The stalwart form and patriarchal
beard of Sir John Kennaway, the less athletic and more sensitive figure of
Mr Stanley Leighton are even to-day powers in that ecclesiastical faction.
The two sons of Lord Salisbury, Lord Cranborne and Lord Hugh Cecil belong
to another generation, but to the same category of ecclesiastical
defenders.
During the Queen's earlier years, Chartism, that is to-day only a name,
was an active force. Most of the points of the Charter itself have quietly
become law. The Septennial Act has not indeed been repealed; but
practically the term of parliamentary life has been shortened. The ballot
has quietly superseded the hustings. Payment of Members is seriously
discussed. Election expenses have been much reduced. By the Redistribution
Bill of 1884, an appreciable step towards equal electoral districts has
been taken. The Georgian House of Commons, indeed the House till the full
effects of the first Reform Bill were felt, was so small, its members so
preponderantly came from the upper class of society as to give the
Assembly the air rather of a family party than of a national forum.
From 1707 to the beginning of this century, the English, Welsh and Scotch
numbered 558. The Act of Union at the beginning of the century added 100
to the House of Commons of 1801. The additions to the House made by the
Reform Bill of 1832 in the case of Wales and Ireland 5 each, of Scotland
8, were exactly compensated by the reduction of English Members. The
Measure, therefore, which created popular constituencies and with them a
popularly representative Chamber left St Stephen's numerically unaltered.
As to quality, it socially modified rather than, as is sometimes said,
revolutionized the Assembly. Nor, as to figures, did the Household
Franchise Bill of 1868 enlarge the Chamber. The 7 fresh representatives to
Scotland, and the 1 to Wales were balanced exactly by the disfranchisement
of 8 English constituencies. The House of Commons remained therefore 658.
An increase began with the Reform Bill of 1885. The emancipation of the
agricultural labourer by the franchise on the same conditions as his urban
brother involved the sole increase since the Irish union to the numbers of
the House of Commons. Even that is only represented by 12. The whole of
this increase was for the benefit of Scotland. Two new Members were indeed
received by England under the latest franchise re-arrangement. Two were
also lost by Ireland. Thus the Irish disfranchisement balances the English
enfranchisement. The sole nett profit in the transaction accrued
therefore, as has been said, to Great Britain beyond the Tweed.
While the House of Commons as to arrangements, occupants and visitors has
changed more than once during the period comprised in this survey, there
has been in the opinion of experts like Mr Gladstone no diminution of
ability in its general debates. The amount of varied and accurate
knowledge displayed during discussions in Committee by the rank and file
of its members has increased appreciably since the Derby-Disraeli Reform
Act. But, it is said, as our constitution has become more democratic, our
popular legislators have grown unmannerly. Those who know the volumes of
parliamentary history summarizing debates in the House during the French
Revolutionary epoch of 1793-5 may be disposed to doubt the justice of this
censure. The violent personality of the recriminations between individual
members of the two Whig sections at this period; the revolting grossness
of the metaphors and the epithets by which the intellectual majesty of
Burke stooped to express his loathing for the new Radicals on both sides
of the Channel; the personal menaces exchanged by competitive debaters of
smaller calibre; leave no room for doubt on the point. Two years after the
first Reform Act, Church rates and other ecclesiastical topics gave rise
in the debates upon them to scenes and noises, cockcrowing amongst them,
that scandalised the parliamentary decorum of the period, as disgraceful
beyond all precedent. These incidents were attended by a degree of
parliamentary disorder which was habitually in excess of the ebullitions
however scandalous, provoked during the session of 1893 by the Second
Irish Government Bill of Mr Gladstone. The great change of recent years in
parliamentary methods is of course the organized obstruction on frivolous
and irrelevant pretexts raised during debate. Even this is not the novelty
that some have seemed to suppose. During that distant era when no
chandelier hung over the heads of Members, the only illuminants known in
the Chamber were candles. A formal motion was made that these should be
brought in. The early practitioners of obstruction seized upon this issue
to delay the discussion. Motions for adjournment became effective
instruments for delay during the Reform discussions of 1832. They were
then employed with success generally, and with humour sometimes by the
popular Sir Charles Wetherell, and in case of unpalatable amendments by Mr
Sheridan. While motions for adjournment have thus always been used as
methods of delay, they naturally have had different aspects at various
times. Thus when employed for fighting a Bill to which conscientious
objection was entertained, these motions differed entirely from those to
the same ostensible end made by the feigned opponents of perfectly
harmless Measures. Mr Pope Hennessy was practically the founder of this
later and indiscriminate opposition to all attempts to legislate.
The late Mr Parnell extended that system to routine business such as the
nomination of Committees, also to unobjectionable votes in supply, and
finally in 1877 to private Members' Bills as well as Government Bills,
with the avowed aim of paralysing the whole machinery of Statute law. The
late Sir Stafford Northcote, who more than any other statesman of our time
resembled, in his conscientious caution and chivalrous devotion to
principle, Mr Perceval, dealt perhaps too gently with this abuse of forms,
nor saw fit to employ the new rule that was suggested to him by the
consummate experience of the late Sir Thomas May. Mr Gladstone's
management of this matter in 1881-2 was more drastic; it would have been
successful but for the tactics of the late Lord Randolph Churchill and the
present Sir John Gorst. After this came in 1888 the leadership of Mr W. H.
Smith, resulting as it did in 15 new Rules. The practical result of the
latest changes in House of Commons procedure may be summarized popularly
and briefly as follows. The French principle of closure already adopted in
all other Popular Assemblies is now part of the law of the English
Parliament. This instrument can be moved for at any time. It depends
wholly on the Speaker or, if the House be in Committee, on the Chairman,
whether the motion for it be put to the House. If put it is generally
opposed. Then follow debate and division. For its adoption there must be
not only a majority but one composed of not less than 100 Members.
With its larger numbers, the representative character of the House of
Commons has been increased also. The steps by which it has acquired
control of the executive as well as the legislative machinery of
government need not be recapitulated here. Its moral, educational and
social influence in the country is probably not proportionate to its
actual power. The theory of delegacy so indignantly repudiated by
Conservative speakers during the first Reform Bill debates is to-day
accepted and actively illustrated by a majority of Members. More and more
the tendency is for the constituencies to call into existence a
Government to undertake a specific task of legislation whose scope is
defined by the individual possessing for the moment the national
confidence. To support in that special work that particular statesman, or,
if he falls into disfavour, to thwart him, the householders send to St
Stephen's men whose discretion is restricted within very narrow limits.
This arrangement immensely increases the authority of the democratic
favourite of the moment. It is less favourable to the prestige or
usefulness of the Chamber as containing the collective wisdom of the
nation. The aptitude for business talk that shall be to the point in
Committee has not, when the House has a mind to it, declined. The great
speeches, no sooner delivered than they constitute national text-books,
are less frequent than the display of excellence in debate. Afraid of
boring the Assembly, dreading the imputation of mere rhetoric, the Member
who has something to say usually prefers delivering it to his constituents
at his periodical reunion with them, or upon some other extra
parliamentary occasion. The terse diction and urbane gravity of manner of
Sir Charles Dilke made him, during his Foreign Under-Secretaryship, a
parliamentary model. Such oratorical efforts as he sometimes made, were
reserved for the meetings with his electors. The clever young politician,
being on his promotion, speaks when he can that he may give his future
chief a taste of his quality. Popular meetings therefore, and the
periodical press have detracted from the House of Commons as a school of
eloquence, or as a national educator. On the other hand the House of Lords
has no constituencies in the background. Its time is less preoccupied. It
is to-day far more representative of the English people than was the House
of Commons a few years before the Queen's accession. It does indeed
chiefly consist now of men whose station and whose antecedents are not
very dissimilar from those of the House of Commons before that Chamber had
been thrice Reformed. Hence some of those debates, especially on foreign
policy, or grave points of constitutional procedure that used to mark
epochs in the Elective Chamber are now almost confined to the Hereditary
House.
Outbursts of periodical petulance against the Peers will doubtless
continue. Such Radicals as may be left in England to-day are at heart far
more tolerant of a second Chamber, composed as that at Westminster is,
than were the 'root and branch' men not merely of Cromwell's day, but of
half a century ago. Something therefore may perhaps be said on behalf of
the opinion that any movement which may be successful against the House of
Lords is likely to affect the House of Commons as well.[54]