The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-30

way and the thoroughbred another. The
waste of power in the working beast is be-
coming too great for endurance" So dan
gerous did the outcry become against this
useless Second Chamber, which threatened
20 load the working beast to death, that even
Tie Saturday Reofew, which is the exponent
of the aristocracy, yet shrewd enough to see
the temper of the times, endeavored to recon-
cile the people with the ills they have:-
''The House OF Lords is tue product Of centuries
create it, or reproduce 1t. That it should have so
much power aud yet so little power, that 1t should
he so respectable and vet so moderate that It should
not be sham aud yet should know so well that it
must yield when those who have the real govern
ment Of the country bid it YIELD is something very
lstory of politics That the present state OF things
should be permanent seems, we confess, very un-
likely"
1t suggested as an original plan to solve
the difficulty that the House of Lords should
be kept up for the honor of the country, but
that the Lords should stay out of it. zone
of the easiest, quietest, and most natural
modes of the House of Lords dying out would
be that no peer should think it worth while
to attend. peer is just as great, just as
rich, and just as happy a man whether he
goes to the House of Lords or not" That
Government must be thoroughly decayed at
heart which is drawn to childish tricks and
shams such as these to keep up the semblance
of life. The questions on which Peers and
Commons have been brought in contact lately
were but of transient Importance. The sig
nifcant point, to cool spectator, was the
vindictive eagerness with which any move
ment toward independent power by the Peers
was met by the demand from Commons, peo-
pie, and press that the House of Lords be
put upon final trial, whether it shall stand
or not.
The dangers of such emergencies have
been passed over in the last year by the un-
conditional surrender of the Peers, as in the
matter of the Church bill, or by the whole
sale creation of enough new peers to defeat
the old ones who stood by their order-a
Sinking maneuvre which is paltry and ludi-
crous in the extreme. The plain fact is that
the people of England have outgrown their
Government. With its childish trappings
and unmeaning symbols, it becomes their
adult strength, intelligence, and sound COM
mon sense much as the swaddling clothes of
the infant would the limbs of the full. grown
man. They show. now and then with a
fierce impatieuce that they are
conscious of this. The same people who
bowed down to and worshlpped as the
first gentleman in Europe the padded liber-
tine, George ", treat with a contemptuous
indifference the dull, inefficient Queen and
her duller, sensual sons. Even the projected
marriage of the Princess Louise with sub
jew, WIZ 10 III tOuiioy u COuuOuoI, WuhCu,
whether it was SO meant or not, might have
served as sop to Cerberus has only pro-
voked an indignant outbreak of the prevail
ing feeling. The radical meeting in London
the other day not only protested against the
infiiction of a heavy dowry for this useless
member of the sham system of power upon
an overtaxed and starving people, but urged
the demolition of the whole false fabric
and the establishment of republic!
In short, the middle-class Englishman, who
hates sham as thoroughly as any man on
earth, finds this divine white elephant left to
him by slavish forefathers an insupportable
weight, and is heartily tired of bowing and
posturipg before it one minute and reducing
it to order the next by few wholesome
thwacks. Yet he clings to precedent as to
his God; and the idea of republic is
obnoxious to him principally because it is
American.
But the impending changes in England are
among the most important subjects which
the worlds history offers to-day; they are no
less certain than those in France. Revolu-
tions which grow out of the growth of ma
tional thought and development rest on q
surer basis than those which depend on star.
vation and blood.