party system is thus in grave danger of breaking down under the intolerable handicap imposed upon Liberal legislators; that, if it does break down, it will be replaced, as in Germany, by a fierce conflict of social classes; that the safeguards proposed in the Government's scheme and the powers of criticism, revision and delay that will still be left to the House of Lords are amply sufficient to prevent anything revolutionary from being rushed through Parliament; and that the whole purpose of the projected changes is to place the two chief parties on an equality of legislative effectiveness and to make a Liberal vote count for as much as, but for no more than, a Conservative vote. Here again a dispassionate observer would probably decide that both parties have a measure of justice and reason on their side; but he would almost certainly add that the dangers to be feared from the Liberal scheme are greater than the dangers of leaving things as they are.

From this précis of the principal arguments on both sides the general course of the debates in the House of Commons may easily be inferred. The Conservatives have steadily sought to exclude from the operation of the bill measures extending the maximum duration of Parliament, or affecting the Act of Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, the appointment of judges, the Protestant succession, the Act of Union with Ireland, the qualification for the Parliamentary franchise, the Established Church, and so on; and they have also sought to amend the bill by providing a system of joint sessions and the referendum for the adjudication of otherwise insoluble differences between the two Houses. All these amendments the Liberals have overwhelmingly voted down, and the bill that is now being debated by the House of Lords is the same bill almost to a comma that was introduced by Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons fifteen months ago. The Peers, however, undeterred by the discomfiture of their friends in the Lower House, are determined to fight on. On June 26 Lords Lansdowne and Cromer gave notice of two vital amendments. The first provides that any bill (a) which affects the existence of the Crown or the Protestant succession thereto; or (b) which establishes a national Parliament or a national Council in Ireland, Scotland, Wales

or England, with legislative powers therein; or (c) which has been referred to the Joint Committee, and which in their opinion raises an issue of great gravity upon which the judgment of the country has not been sufficiently ascertained, shall not be presented to his Majesty nor receive the Royal assent unless and until it has been submitted to and approved by the electors in manner to be hereafter provided by Act of Parliament. The Joint Committee referred to in this amendment is provided for by the amendment standing in Lord Cromer's name. It is to

consist of seven members of the House of Lords and seven of the House of Commons, the former chosen by the Lord Chancellor and the latter by the Speaker, "in such manner as they think best adapted to provide an impartial tribunal." The Speaker is to preside and to have a casting vote, and the Committee may be convened either by a Minister of the Crown or by a resolution of either House. Its functions are to decide whether a money bill is really a money bill or whether it includes legislation that ought to be treated and discussed as such. The purpose of the first amendment, it will be seen, is to exclude grave constitutional changes from the scope of the Government's Bill. The purpose of the second amendment is to relieve the Speaker from the invidious duty of determining whether a money bill is really what it professes to be or whether it contains nonfinancial matter.

Both these amendments are certain of adoption by the House of Lords and of rejection by the Government in the House of Commons. A deadlock will thus be created from which there are but two roads of escape. Either the Lords will withdraw their amendments, pass the bill as it stands, and proclaim their intention of repealing it at the first opportunity—that is to say, when the Conservatives are in office again; or they will stand firm and dare the Government to proceed to extremities. And the Government is quite prepared to proceed to extremities. They are ready to advise the King, who for his part will have no option but to follow their advice, to create five hundred Peers in order to pass the bill into law. To prevent an inundation that would fatally wreck the social prestige of their order the Peers, I imagine, will in the end consent to anything. Between

the Government Bill plus five hundred new Peers and the Government Bill minus this vast incursion, their preferences, if they still possess any political sanity or the spirit of enlightened self-interest, must surely be on the side of the lesser evil. There are not wanting powerful voices to urge them to risk everything rather than accept the Government Bill, and the Lords, throughout this crisis, have shown such an inspired lack of political prescience that no recklessness can be predicted as beyond their capacities. My inclination none the less is to anticipate that they will climb down more or less grudgingly and resolve to wait until the inevitable reaction enables them to restore to the British Constitution some semblance of its ancient shape.

The crux of the whole controversy is the righteous determination of the Liberals to win for themselves the same opportunities for writing their measures on the Statute Book as the Conservatives possess. With that aim nobody can quarrel; the British people with their sense of justice and fair play may, I think, be said to have endorsed it without qualifications. But how is it to be attained? There are, roughly speaking, two ways. One, the way the Liberals have chosen, is so to restrict the powers of the House of Lords that it will be equally impotent whatever party is in office. The other is to reform the composition of the House of Lords so that Liberals and Conservatives may have an equal chance of obtaining a majority in it. Of these two alternatives the Liberals have followed the former. That is to say, their solution of the House of Lords question is the destruction or the paring away of its legislative prerogatives. It is true that in the preamble to their bill they speak of an intention "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis." But no attempt has been made, and in all probability none ever will be made, to give effect to that intention. There are many Liberals, though not, I should judge, a majority of the party, who desire to take up the question of reconstructing the House of Lords and to take it up drastically; but the Radicals, all the Labor men and all the Irish Nationalists will have nothing whatever to do with it, or-

if that is putting it too strongly-will only agree to make the House of Lords personally efficient after they have rendered it politically impotent. What they dread-and I think from their standpoint rightly dread-is that any reform of the House of Lords, any introduction into it of an elective element, will only make it stronger, more assertive, and a greater obstacle in the path of Liberalism. When its powers have been stringently limited by statute, they may then be willing to undertake its reconstruction. But until that has been done, they decline to run the risk of strengthening the very barrier they are most anxious to remove. When the House of Lords has been made powerless to reject Liberal measures, they may address themselves to the question of whether it could not be made more efficient for the task of revising, criticising, delaying and amending the bills submitted to it; but not until then. So far as the present Government is concerned, the question of reforming the House of Lords may be considered indefinitely postponed.

This, of course, has given the Conservatives their chance. To the Liberal policy of destroying or circumscribing the powers and privileges of the House of Lords the Conservatives have opposed the policy of reforming its composition. It is impossible to think of them as naturally desirous of reconstructing an assembly so venerable and so useful to their own party purposes. But they have been driven to advocate its reform, first, because they recognize that the nation has revolted against a Second Chamber exclusively based on the hereditary principle, and that every Conservative candidate who does not disown that principle is put at a serious electioneering disadvantage; secondly, because it is the business of every party to propose on every question a policy different from that of their opponents, and the Liberals having concentrated on the political emasculation of the House of Lords, the only alternative left for the Conservatives is to put forward the reform of its personnel; thirdly, because a knot of able and earnest Peers, headed by Lord Rosebery, who have for twenty years and more urged the desirability of altering the composition of the Upper House, have now seized the opportunity to press forward their views with redoubled energy and effectiveness; and, fourthly, because

the consciousness that the Liberals and their Labor and Nationalist allies do not desire to see the House of Lords reformed helps to convince the Conservatives of the political wisdom of reforming it. The country, as a whole, recognizes that the House of Lords is (1) too large; (2) overcrowded with members who have neither taste nor aptitude for public life and who sit and vote in it simply because of the indiscriminate application of the hereditary principle; (3) too much representative of a single class and of a special set of interests; (4) too favorable to one of the great parties in the State, so much so that it is always open to the Conservatives to retrieve in the House of Lords the reverses sustained at the polls and in the House of Commons; and (5) too aloof from the direct and visible operation of public opinion. The moderate minds of the nationand it is they who in the long run govern its politics—are alive to the reality of these five comprehensive defects and desire their removal. They have a considerable respect for the Peerage as a whole; they do not subscribe to the familiar contention of the Liberals that the Lords are an obstacle to reform, except in the sense that every Second Chamber must naturally be more cautious and conservative than the popularly elected House; they are well aware that the Lords have often proved themselves truer exponents of national sentiment than the House of Commons; they emphatically favor the preservation of a Second Chamber with full and effective powers not only of amendment and delay but of rejection; and they are troubled less by the occasional destruction dealt out by the Lords to Liberal measures than by their uncritical acceptance of all Conservative bills. None the less they recognize that the personnel of the Assembly, its unwieldiness, its overwhelming inclination, both in numbers and in opinion, toward the Conservative side, and the fact that, however representative of public opinion, it is not answerable to it and has no tangible connection with the processes by which, in a democracy, public opinion is made known and operative-are shortcomings that it is time to remedy.

After many fumblings and hesitations the Conservative leaders in the House of Lords have made an honest attempt to remedy them. Lord Lansdowne, early in May, introduced a bill