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Page 9
UNIONISTS AND THE EMPIRE
Edinburgh, November 15, 1907
I am greatly reassured by the very kind reception which you have just
given me. To tell the truth, I had been feeling a little alarmed at
the fate which might await me in Edinburgh. From a faithful perusal of
the Radical Press I had been led to believe that Scotland was seething
with righteous indignation against that branch of the Legislature of
which I am, it is true, only a humble and very recent member, but yet
a member, and therefore involved in the general condemnation of the
ruthless hereditary tyrants and oppressors of the people, the
privileged landowning class, which is alleged to be so out of sympathy
with the mass of their fellow-countrymen, although, oddly enough, it
supplies many of the most popular candidates, not only of one party,
at any General Election. Personally, I feel it rather hard to be
painted in such black colours. There is no taint of hereditary
privilege about me. I am not--I wish I were--the owner of broad acres,
and I am in no way conscious of belonging to a specially favoured
class. There are a great many of my fellow members in the House of
Lords who are in the same position, and who sit there, not by virtue
of any privilege, but by virtue of their services, or, let me say in
my own case, supposed services, to the State. And while we sit
there--and here I venture, with all humility, to speak for all the
members of that body, whether hereditary or created--we feel that we
ought to deal with the questions submitted to us to the best of our
judgment and conscience, without fear of the consequences to ourselves
and without allowing ourselves to be brow-beaten for not being
different from what we are. We believe that we perform a useful and
necessary function. We believe that a Second Chamber is essential to
the good government of this country. We do not contend--certainly I am
myself very far from contending--that the existing Second Chamber is
the best imaginable. Let there be a well-considered reform of the
House of Lords, or even, if need be, an entirely different Second
Chamber. But until you have got this better instrument, do not throw
away the instrument which you have--the only defence, not of the
privileges of a class, but of the rights of the whole nation, against
hasty, ill-considered measures and against the subordination of
permanent national interests to the temporary exigencies of a party.
It is said that there is a permanent Conservative majority in the
House of Lords. But then every Second Chamber is, and ought to be,
conservative in temper. It exists to exercise a restraining influence,
to ensure that great changes shall not be made in fundamental
institutions except by the deliberate will of the nation, and not as
the outcome of a mere passing mood. And if the accusation is, that the
House of Lords is too Conservative in a party sense, which is a
different thing, I admit, from being Conservative in the highest and
best sense, that points not to doing away with the Second Chamber, but
to making such a change in its composition as, while leaving it still
powerful, still, above all, independent, will render it more
representative of the permanent mind of the nation.
But let me be permitted to observe that the instance relied on to prove
that the House of Lords is in the pocket of the Conservative party is a
very unfortunate instance. What is its offence? It is said that the
Lords rejected the Scottish Land Bill. But they did not reject the
Scottish Land Bill. They were quite prepared to accept a portion of the
Bill, and it is for the Government to answer to the people interested
in that portion for their not having received the benefits which the
Bill was presumably intended to bestow on them. What the Government did
was to hold a pistol at the head of the House of Lords, and to say that
they must either accept the whole straggling and ill-constructed
measure as it stood, or be held up to public odium for rejecting it.
But when the Bill was looked at as a whole, it was found to contain
principles--novel principles as far as the great part of Scotland was
concerned, bad principles, as the experience of Ireland showed--which
the House of Lords, and not only the Conservatives in the House of
Lords, were not prepared to endorse. Was it Conservative criticism
which killed the Bill? It was riddled with arguments by a Liberal Peer
and former Liberal Prime Minister--arguments to which the Government
speakers were quite unable, and had the good sense not even to attempt,
to reply. And that is the instance which is quoted to prove that the
House of Lords is a Tory Caucus!
Now, before leaving this question of the House of Lords, let me just
say one word about its general attitude. I have not long been a member
of that assembly. I do not presume to take much part in its
discussions. But I follow them, and I think I follow them with a
fairly unprejudiced mind. On many questions I am perhaps not in accord
with the views of the majority of the House. But what strikes me about
the House of Lords is that it is a singularly independent assembly. It
is not at the beck and call of any man. It is a body which does not
care at all about party claptrap, but which does care a great deal
about a good argument, from whatever quarter it may proceed.
Moreover, I am confident that the great body of its members are quite
alive to the fact that they cannot afford to cast their votes merely
according to their individual opinions and personal prejudices--that
they are trustees for the nation, and that while it is their duty to
prevent the nation being hustled into revolution, as but for them it
would have been hustled into Home Rule in 1893, they have no right to
resist changes upon which the nation has clearly and after full
deliberation set its mind. And when the Prime Minister says that it is
intolerable arrogance on the part of the House of Lords to pretend to
know better what the nation wishes than the House of Commons, I can
only reply that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In 1893 the
House of Commons said that the nation wished Home Rule. The House of
Lords had the intolerable arrogance to take a different view. Well,
within less than two years the question was submitted to the nation;
and who proved to be right?
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