of the people. He talked of our system of constitutional checks and balances as a safeguard against arbitrary power, and put forward the existence of the House of Lords' veto as a great safeguard to ensure that the popular will prevails. The right hon. Gentleman spoke on this subject in 1909. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, on precisely this question of checks and balances. Let us hear what he said then: Nobody, however powerful in our country, and nobody, however venerated, no office, however august, but in a free nation there are checks and controls surrounding them. The House of Lords constitutes a single and solitary exception in the whole of this tremendous chain of inter-dependent responsibility and obligation. It accepts no advice, except what it chooses to take from the Tory caucus. It is responsible to no one; it represents no one. The Lords exercise their own sweet will at their own sweet pleasure and discretion. The right hon. Gentleman then proceeded to reject their pretensions that they were judges of the people's will. That is equally true today. I cannot see why we should accept the House of Lords, however constituted, as necessarily the right interpretation of the people's will. The right hon. Gentleman also said: Counter checks on a democratic assembly there may be. I believe there ought to be. But these counter checks should be in the nature of delay and not in the nature of arrest. They should operate equally and evenly against both political parties,