The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-02
The House OfLOrIS.

The House of Lords.
The Saturday ReUie,o, in an article on Life
Pecrages," discusses the origin and constitution
of the House of Lords as follows:-
What is the House of Lords? 1t is simply the
old Assembly of the people of England, the
ancient Meeting of the Wise. There is no better
instance of the way in which in England above
all countries, institutions change their forms,
and spring to new life again in new shapes Tut
with the old spirit. For all practical purposes
the House of Commons is the true modern repre-
sentative of the ancient Witenagemot; but the
House of Lords is the Witenagemot itself by
actual personal succession. There is absolutely
no break; the thing always went on, feeby no
doubt in the days OF foreign rule, but even under
Normans and Angevins some sort of national
council never failed us. King William assem-
bled his Witan no less than King Edward, and
both Henrys did the same. No line can be
drawn between the Gemot of the eleventh CEN
tury and the Parliament of the thirteenth And
of course it is the House of Lords which bridges
over the dark days between the two.
But the House of Lords is, and has been for
six hundred years, an arstocratic body. The
old Assembly in theory at least, was essentially
democratic. In this apparent contradiction lies
the key to the whole matter. Our great Councils
became aristocratic in practice because they
were so highly democratic in theory. What is
peer! He is III truth simply an Englishman
who has not lost or who has regained, the an
cient right of every free Englishman to attend
the Council of the nation in person. 1t has been
often shown how such right as this, except in
Il State of the very smallest size, a single town.
or very small district gradually destroys it
self. The mass of those who have the right to,
cannot and do not attend; their right dies out
by non-user, and the constitution gradually be-
comes an oligarchy, simply because it is in
theory so pure democracy. But in such q case
as this the greatest irregularity in the numbers
and qualifications of those who do attend
follows as matter of course Every attempt to
define the constitution of our national councils,
either before or Tor good while after the Nor
man Conquest, has always broken down. Inge-
nious men have puzzled themselves to find out
what the qualification was, the real ground OF
their difficulty beng that there was no quaifca-
cation at all. The natural results followed a
few marked and powerful classes of men, the
earls for instance, and the bishops always came
as a matter of course. They were not likely to
let their right drop, and the King could not well
have got on without them. But beyond these
few distinctly marked orders all is confusion; if
there is any sort of principle it is that the right
of attendance depends upon the Kings sum
mons. No principle was more natural to grow
up. Where the mass of those who had a theo-
retical right to attend never came, nothing was
more obvious than to summon those whose pre-
sence was wished for, nothing was more natural
than that the right should gradually be held
to be attached to the summons that it should
be held that no one had right to come who
was not summoned that the king could summon
whom he would, but that some particular classes
of men had right to be summoned. Such
theory as this seems to explain the utter rregu-
larity of the constitution of the House of Lords
even for some time after the House of Commons
had grown up by its side. About the narls and
| the bishops there seems to be no doubt at any
| time; besides them the king summons abbots
| but he does not always summon the same abbots
! he summons temporal men, but he does not
| always summon the same temporal men. The
| son may be summoned though the father was
! not, or the son may not be summoned though
| the father was. Nay, the man who is summoned
to one Parliament is not always summoned to
another. All this of course shows great irregu-
| larity-an irreguarity which could only have
| existed in Il transitional period One theory in
| short has been given up, and no other theory
was as yet fully established. The purely here
| ditary doctrine grew up in this matter step by
step Just as it grew up step by step with regard
| to kingship. But it would be hard to show that
| there was any moment when the Crown lost the
| right of creating peerage which need not be
| hercditary-that is, the right of summoning a
| man TO Parliament without of necessity binding
| itself to summon his heirs for ever.
| Looked at in purely historical way, it is hard
| TO understand any doubt as to the right of the
| Crown to create life peerages. 1t Is plain that
| the Crown once had the right; 1t is by no means
| plain that the Crown ever gave up that right
! The only doctrine on which the right can be at
| tackled is the extreme democratic one. 1t might
| be said that the whole system OF personal sum-
| mons was a usurpatiOn, and that every freeman
| had n right to come summoned OF not sum
| mOned, The only ground on which 1t can be
| held that the Crown is bound to summon the
| son because it has once summoned the father, is
the ground that the Crown is bound to summon
! everybody, or rather that everybody has right
| to come without being summoned at all. OF
| course the answer will be that such doc
| trines are inconsistent with the he
redItary character OF the House.
| But the reioinder is obvious; the hereditary
| cboroctcr of the House is something which has
crown crown up by degrees and which is not estab-
iished even now. 1t is something more modern
than iife-peerages, and it never has wholly ex-
iife,neer; an Irish representative peer is, as far
as @ he House of Lords is concerned, a life-peer.
An Irish bishop or Scotch representative peer,
| Tp"nt !: something less than a life-peer. Any
n"reIy mU honorary privileges enjoyed by Scotch or
do not 45e % sedS6 e Ri a0asf Sg s6 9 LSFS
aie % oii Ci0 s are, lust as much as the bishops
cosos NJ men who have seats in the House of
| lords. but whose seats do not necessarily pass
to their sons. -