The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-07 00:00:00

brought to bear indirectly upon the Commons, it was the
more necessary that this direct influence on their part
should be strengthened thcl secured. The history of all

Forms of constitutional government from the earliest times

showed the necessity for a second institution, separate and
distinct, which should not control legislation, or resist the
progress of improvement, but demand time for considera-
tion, compel the moving power to think twice, end appeal

from excitement to sobriety. (Cheers.) Now he would
be asked how all this bore on the question of privilege ?
(Hear.) He would explain. If the Lords only claimed

that which he was sure the members of the House of Com-

mons could not deny them—identity of feelings and interest
with the nation at large—if they claimed only to be the
servants of the nation, employed in the same business as
the Commons, charged with the same interests, obedient to
the same authority, responsible to the same tribunal of opi-
nion, what interest could the countryhave in dispensing with
their services on great occasions, as auditors of finance ?
The nation had decreed that its business should be trans-

acted by two chambers; the one popularly elected and
moved by every gale of public opinion. It was a mistake
to say that because the Lords were a permanent and inde-
pendent bodythey were, therefore, altogether irresponsible.
On the contrary, he believed there was no body responsi-

ble. They were the only important public body who held
power on the tenure of good conduct. A very few mis-
takes would jeopardise their position, and they discovered
that fact in 1832, when their defence of the rotton boroughs

brought them into so much disfavour. They had since re-
covered their position, and he believed that of the two
branches of the legislature they were really the most
popular at the present moment. At the same time
they were profoundly conscious of this truth, that
they could only effectually oppose the House of Commons

for one purpose, namely, to give time for the more matured

and decided manifestation of the national will. (Hear,
hear.) He could not conceive a more genuine responsi-
bility than that which their lordships exercised. They had
always acted upon it, and every impartial student of his-
tory must admit that there was no institution which, as a
whole, had shown so profound and correct a knowledge of
the feeling and movement of the nation, and had so steadily
in all times of political turmoil made the national sentiment
the basis of its own conduct. (Hear, hear.) Then upon
what grounds were they to exclude the Lords from their
share of national legislation ? Financial legislation in these
days assumed very different proportions to what it did two
centuries ago. It was now by far the largest and most im-
portant branch of the duties of the legislature, and to ex-
clude the Lords from finance was really to exclude them
from more than half of the legislative business of the coun-
try. (Hear, hear.) Were the Commons infallible in finance ?
Was there no hasty, no ill-considered, and no selfish legis-
lation on finance ? He believed himself that financial ques-
tions, especially those which must ultimately fall to the
lot of the Commons to decide, required the balancing and
regulating action of the Peers. He admitted, as everybody
must admit, that all financial legislation should originate
with the Commons, but it was no less xecessai y that there
should exist the reviewing power of a separate and inde-
pendent chamber. So strongly did he feel this, that even
if law and precedent combined, which assn-edly they did
not, to exclude the Lords from all share in financial legisla-
tion, he should say that as the effect of the Reform Act was
to give the predominance of power to the Commons, and as
the further effect of any other reform bill must be in the same
direction, it would be wise to arrive at come ahjustment of
the relations and functions of the two Houses of Parliament
so as to secure their harmonious co-operation. When that
time did-arrive, instead of limiting the action of the peers, it
would be better to relax instead of to tighten the restric-
tions which were now enforced. Such being his Niew of the
functions of the peers, he asked upon what grounds they
could challenge this last exercise of the undoubted legal
powers of the House of Lords? Tke bill for the repeal of
the paper duty was submitted to the peers as part of a
scheme of financial policy based on the commercial treaty;
and if it were really and truly the opinion of the peers that
the promises held out by the Government were based on
treacherous calculations; that the privileges offered were
too dearly purchased ; that our manufacturers were still wait-
ing in the ante-chambers of the French court for the ad-
vantage originally held out to them ; that their roaring
trade was a bubble ; that while the trumpet of war was all
but sounding we durst not disregard the signal, and parsi-
moniously neglect our national defences ; that by the addi-
tion of a penny to the income-tax the House of Commons
would revolutionize our whole system of finance; that the
promised surplus had become an inevitable deficiency; that
so far from remitting taxes it was the duty of the Ministers
to augment them ; if such were the convictions of the peers
what could they have done other than that which they had
done ? (Cheers.) They had simply done that which as
sworn and responsible legislators they were bound to do.
To their honour be it said they had never for a single in-
stant hesitated, but by a majority unprecedented, and one
which derived still more importance from its character, than
its numbers, they interposed that veto which checked the
Commons in its headlong, precipitate, and mad career ;
and they challenged for their act the verdict of the coun-
try. (Cheers.) Hon. members on that (the Ministerial)
side of the house said the peers had taken upon themselves
Eo impoeu a new tax, an/1 fa the
country. That was a fallacy easy of explanation; for it
was notorious that the Lords had accepted the expendi-
ture of the country according to the estimate of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer as sanctioned and approved
by the House of Commons. They had not pretended to in-
terfere with the exclusive right of the House of Commons
to say what that expenditure should be, or to increase
the expenditure by a single shilling, but believing that the
credit of the country could not be maintained if the paper
duty were repealed they had not thought it their duty to
share the responsibility of leaving the country in an em-
barrassing position. The peers had not pretended to make
a budget, but they had distrusted the calculations of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and had suspected the opera-
tion of his scheme until it had been submitted to the test
of time. All they had done had been to take a wide, neces-
sary, and just security that under the apparent remission
of one tax the necessity should not be established of im-
posing another of a more objectionable character. (Op-
position cheers.) The House of Commons was itself daily
assuming more power by establishing new precedents. At
the present moment all bills virtually originated in the
Commons, but it was only the natural and inevitable result
of the historic working of our system. This last act of the
Lords had not been dictated by any desire on their part to
brave and affront the Commons, but it was simply
the natural working of the constitution to meet and remedy
a definite emergency. The budget was in reality a financial
revolution into which the House of Commons had been
pai tly charmed and partly coerced. Many of those who voted
in the majority had their misgivings, but they did not see
their remedy. Their only remedy was the House of Lords,
which instinctively, from the nature of the circumstances,
supplied a remedy. The act of the peers was perfectly
natural and constit utionahand was a happy illustration of the
practical self-working of the English constitution. (Cheers.)
It was the unconscious encroachment of the Commons that
had quickened into life the dormant powers and latent quali-
ties of the Lords; and this admirable and healthful vitality
of the constitution, developing spontaneously new processes
to counteract new tendencies to disease, was the best
guarantee for its safety and durability. (Cheers.) But
this was not the constitution which the advocates of
" action" wished to defend ; their constitution was the
despotism of the House of Commons, the tyranny of a single
chamber, the absolute dominion of an unchained, uncon-
trolled, irresponsible democracy. (Cheers and disapproba-
tion.) That was; a constitution which would indeed be an
anomaly, iuinous to England, fatal to every interest from
the highest to the lowest, from the peer down to the trader
and artisan ; for when the upper house of legislature lostits
independence, the lower would soon cease to represent the
true interests of the country. For this reason, because he
believed that the act of 1832 gave as much power to the
Commons as relatively they ought to have, and because he
agreed in what the noble lord the Prime Minister had
said, that the dangers to public liberty in the future were
more to be apprehended from the encroachments of the
Commons than from the usurpations of the Lords, he was
glad to find a majority of the house, under the noble lord's
guidance, prepared to justify the course which the Lords
had pursued. It was not a dangerous precedent if the
House of Lords had,checked the House of Commons, when
the House of Commons had not consulted the interests of
the nation ; and he only hoped that precedent would be
faithfully recorded and followed if any such occasion here-
after arose. It was for such occasions that the House of
Lords existed, to be sane when tho Commons were wild—
(great cheering from the Opposition benches)—to postpone
an irrevocable mischief till the country had time to come to
its senses. They were the guardians of the constitution,
and on this occasion they had kept faithful watch, and
sounded an alarm which had raised the nation and arrested
the Commons in their irregular course. (Renewed cheer-
ing.) And if that arrest had been illegal, why did not the
Government and the House of Commons appeal to their
judges out of doors ? Was it because they knew that those
judges would affirm the judgment of the Lords, and that it
would be found that the House of Lords really represented
the nation, and the Commons represented a Ministerial ma-
jority—that majority itself being of an equivocal and pre-
carious nature; for as the noble lord himself had shown, it
was a vanishing quantity; the third trial would have con-
verted it into a minority, and he was not sure that in that
division the noble lord would not have been found in the
opposite lobby to his own Chancellor of the Exchequer.
(Cheers and laughter.) The fact was, that they had on
this occasion no materials for a contest with the Lords. The
attempt had lamentably broken down. The law was not
with them; the precedents were not for them; constitu-
tional principle and policy were both against them—and as
for the country, if they appealed to that, the nation would
affirm what history would certainly record, that this ses-
sion of 1860 hid been doubly memorable for the rashness,
the recklessness, the ruinous disregard of consequences that
had marked the proceedings of the Commons—(cheers and
disapprobation)—and for the calmer courage, the dignity,
and patriotism that had shed a lustre on the saving wisdom of
the House of Lords. (Great clamour and cheering.)
Mr. BRIGHT, who was much cheered on rising, sail that
he was struck with a certain inconsistency in the right hon.
gentleman who had just resumed his seat. He was sur-
prised that the right hon. gentleman had not concluded by
moving that certain words of the first resolution should be
left out, and, indeed, that the declaration which the house