The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimEs.--It has been hitherto assumed, perhaps
too confidently, that any Reform Bill proposed by
Lord Derby's Government will be accepted with
little edification by the House of Lords. The brief
speech of Lord Grey on Tuesday night is calcu-
lated to dispel the impression. Though he dis-
claims the intention of opposing the second reading,
he significantly deprecates haste, and gives notice
of a resolution upon which amendments may be
founded in committee. No one knows the history
of the Reform Act better than Lord Grey ; nor
can they have overlooked the obvious parallel be-
tween the course he contemplates and that taken
by Lord Lyndhurst in 1832. The bill framed by
his own father had passed the Commons on the
23d of March, and the second reading had been
carried by a majority of nine in the House of
Lords on the 14th of April. On May 7, when the
first section came on for discussion in committee,
Lord Lyndhurst succeeded in persuading the House
to postpone the consideration of the disfranchising
clauses till the new franchises should have been
discussed. What followed must be fresh in the
memory of many still living, and Lord Grey is the
last man to provoke a second collision between the
two branches of the Legislature and their repre-
sentatives. The resolution which he intends to
move will doubtless be moderate and general, but if
it is to have any meaning or effect, it must purport
to pledge the House to a certain policy in the com-
mittee. If pressed to a division and adopted, it
will inevitably involve the reopening of questions
debated for two sessions in the Lower House, and
supposed to have been determined. Such, in fact,
is Lord Grey's avowed object, and, though pru-
dence might induce him to waive many personal
objections to the bill as it stands, we know from
his published treatise on Reform how seriously it
conflicts with his own convictions. Mr. Lowe
himself has not protested more emphatically than
Lord Grey against " a transfer of political power,"
an addition of strength to the democratic ele-
ment in the nation, or a reconstruction of our
institutions upon the American model. Nothing
short of the restoration of those- safeguards
which Mr. Disraeli has abandoned, with the tacit
consent of Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Hardy,
can satisfy Lord Grey's theory of a safe Reform
Bill, whatever practical alternative he may be pre-
pared to accept. It, therefore, behoves independent
members of the Upper House to pause before com-
mitting themselves, under his guidance, to a dis-
turbance of the settlement effected in the Commons.
The constitutional right of the Upper House to
reject or modify a bill of this nature is, of course,
beyond dispute. At the same time it is a right
which, upon every ground, ought to be exercised
with much reserve. The very fact of the Peers being,
in contemplation of law, a co-ordinate estate of the
realm, superior in dignity and equal in legislative
power to the Commons, suggests a good reason why
they should abstain from anything like an obstructive
resistance to Parliamentary Reform. The qualifi-
cations of electors and the distribution of constituen-
cies are matters which directly concern the popular
branch of the Legislature, just as the creation of
life-peerages directly concerns the hereditary branch.
The private interest which members of the Peerage
may have in such affairs is, to say the least, not recog-
nised by the Constitution, while the Lower House
must be presumed to be the best judge of changes de-
signed to promote its own representative efficiency. •
In 1831-2 the opponents of Reform in the Lords had
an excuse which is now wanting. Many of them
were the absolute owners of boroughs threatened
with disfranchisement, and regarded that process as
nothing less than a confiscation of their property.
No one now vent arcs to assert a proprietary claim
on any constituency, and of those to be deprived of
one member each there are not above four or five
which are even reputed to be pocket boroughs. In
other respects the sacrifice, if it be a sacrifice, now
demanded of the Lords is trifling, indeed, compared
with that demanded of their fathers. They were
then felt, and felt themselves, to be resigning for
ever the control of English politics, and few be-
lieved that it would be possible for them to retain
the degree of influence which still belongs to them.
They are now invited to sanction an extension
of power to the working classes at the expense
of the middle classes, rather than of their own order.
It is far more probable that Mr. Disraeli's Reform
Bill will " swamp" the £lO householders than it is
that it will "swamp" the nobility. That such is the
purpose of its author is no secret, and we have never
concealed the belief that a grand opportunity of
winning by legitimate means the political leadership
of the country is offered by it to the aristocracy of
birth and education. The House of Lords, then,
has no selfish ends to serve by throwing out or muti-
lating the bill, while the consequence of their doing
so would be deplorable. So manifest and urgent is
this consideration that no material amendment is
likely to be proposed, except in concert with an in-
fluential party in the Commons. It is rumoured
that attempts may yet be made to strike out the
lodger franchise, to revive the cumulative vote, to
engraft upon section 7 Mr. Poulett Scrope's plan
for disposing of the compound householder, to re-
strict the boundaries of agricultural boroughs—in
short, to introduce organic changes into the struc-
ture of the bill. There is much to be said, as, in-
deed, much has already beenu
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upon their merits before a p
been answered. That question is—whether there
is any reasonable prospect of these amendments
being ultimately adopted by the House of Commons
and the nation. If so, the House of Lords may do
good service by debating them afresh; if not, it can
do nothing but mischief. Now, we venture to say
that it would be a great mistake to presume upon
the readiness of the Commons to abandon 'decisions
on important points, however narrow the majority
by which they may have been carried. The Reform
Bill, in its present shape, is well understood by all
parties to be a compromise, and Lord Grey himself
has recorded his opinion that no permanent Reform
Bill can ever be carried except by a compromise. It
has not, it is true, been drawn up as he recommended
by a Committee of the Privy Council and approved
beforehand in a conference between the Liberal
reallybut the

product of mutual concession as if it had been so
matured. Nor is this all. It cannot be forgotten,
though it need not be proclaimed on the housetops,
that it has been purchased at a cost of political
morality without precedent in our own times.
Nothing but assured success in a great enterprise
will reconcile the Government, the House of Com-
mons, or the public to a retrospect of this session,
and success would be greatly imperilled by any con-
siderable mutilation of the bill. It is easy to revise
a provisional arrangement, but it is dangerous to
meddle with the articles of a treaty of peace.
The Trades' Union Commission.