The morning call., 1893-09-10
All England Laughs at
the Lords.
TROOPS OF HAYSEED PEERS.
The Bitterness Will Come When the
Nation Turns Against These
Hereditary Legislators.

opera at the Savoy. The interest ia this
event, VIII ich gives a welcome new lease of
life to phase of human enjoyment which
has seemed dead and buried, has been
dampened, however, by the superior opera
bOuffe attractions at the Westminster. The
show at the House of Lords has proved
much funnier than the most confident
advance agents had promised. Everybody
has laughed so steadily, in fact, that there
is danger of the underlying gravity and
importance of the thing being some what
lost sight of.
Whatever bitterness and sternness may
be imported into the struggle later on, il
must be admitted that John Bull enters
upon this great advertised life-and-death
contest with the bogeymsn hereditary
privilege with broad grin on his ru bicund
visage. II really has been extraordinarily
funny. Something like fifth of the whole
number of performers had never been
inside The Chamber of Peers till last Tues
day. To fully one-half of the remainder
it was almost as unfamiliar.
These titled strangers, whipped I'D to
London from their grouse and partridge,
and denied even the sacred solace Of the
st. Leger. swarmed into the corridors of
the House of Lords in droves, like rustics
on a personally conducted tour through
the sights of the metropolis. Policemen
had to be stationed at every turn In the
passage to show them the way to the scene
Of their deliberations, and as for Identify
ing them-that was quite bey ond the pow
ers OF the servants OF the House. Appar-
emily, any elderly farmer wearing a coat
with SIDE pockets could pass freely in and
take his seat without question, and this
bucolic effect cOlored the whole assem-
blage. In Difference to the occasion, all
wore black coats. but their sunburnt,
heavy faces, huge red hands and awkward
postures kept perpetGally suggesting that
they ought instead to be in tweeds and
CATERS.
Here in London. we think Of peers
mostly as carefully dressed, even dapper
habitues of Piccadilly and the Row, but
this great formal muster of the peerage,
this handful of wel-tailored men of the
world. was fairly showed under by the
serr:ed masses of countrifed sQuires, and
tbds effect of hayseed was by no means
c9ained to appearance. No tub-tum bling
demaeogne could have wished for a more
artless, unsophisticated audience. They
laughed wildly at bald old elementary
wheelers wearied of a decade ago. They
stared at such speakers as strove to dis
cuss the home-rule bill on grounds Of logic,
law and constitutional precedent but
when the cheaper sort, like Cranbrook,
rose and simply went for Gladstone as a
knave, liar. traitor and lunaIic, and spat
on the Irish. trampled them under foot as
scoundrels, murderers, alien scum and
hol
of Hear! hearl" like the roar of their
own prize bulls at home
They listened with obvious amazement
TO warnings such as Spencer gently limited
and Rosebery bluntly thrust at them, that
their order itself was on trial and stood in
jeopardy; it seemed to them absurd.
They know, of course, that there are
some low fellows in big towns who talk
like that, but so there are unrulv preachers
at home. They cannot see that there is
more in it than that, and so they stolidly,
cheerfully trooped out last night behind
Salisbury, 400 of them in the lobby against
home rule. That was nearly 100 more than
the House OF Lords voting list has ever
recorded before. 1t took them fully half
an hour to pass in single file before the
throne. On the way out they made mild
rural Jokes as they edged along, taking it
all as tremendous lark.
AS has been said the public themselves.
for a moment, seeing only the ridiculous
side of the thing in the spectacle Of these
hundreds of muddle-headed, beefy rust tics
dragged up to town from their preoccupa-
tion over their game preserves and the
price of fodder and the best remedies for
swine fever, sit yawning through four
evenings of speech-making and lightly
throw out a measure which the House of
Commons has been sweating blood over
for eighty-four days and which the country
has been discussing for six years; this is
frankly too prepostor0us for serious COM
ment.
OF course the angry aspects of the case
will come swiftly enough. In a fortnight
you will see England all astir with the cry
of Down with the House of Lords" and
by the time the recess ends there will be
no other issue in sight, but 1t is worth
while to note that the first step of this his
toricaI struggle finds the Commons, at least
London's part of them, rather amused than
otherwise.
Prompt proof of the fact that the ground
of fighting has been changed and that war
on the birthright privilege is now the con-
trolling feature of Liberalism, will be az
forded on Monday, which is to be field
day over the Duke of Connaughts ap-
pointment to Aldershot. The Radicals
have all been remaining In town for this.
whereas the others have largely gone
away. and unless the Secretary of War
gives an explicit understanding that Con-
naught will not be brought forward later
for commander-in-chief in succession to
the Duke of Cambridge IL is very likely
that the Government will be beaten. The
Ministry is very nervous about this. and is
seriously circulating a report that Secre-
taTy Campbell BanDerman will resign in
such an event. he is personally popular.
and was indeed regarded as the coming
man until he took this thankless fatal
Office, which. as the British navy is now
run, must break any man.
LONDON, Sept. 9-As result Of the de-
feat of the home-rule bill in the House of
Lords. this morning the Radical newspa-
pers generally call for the abolition of that
legislative body.
O'Rourke's Wonderful Shooting.