excitement attended their final decision.  The uncompromising opponents among the Unionist Peers, rather than yield at the last moment, threw over Lord Lansdowne’s leadership.  They were bent on forcing a creation of Peers, although Lord Morley warned them of the consequences.  “If we are beaten on this Bill to-night,” he declared, “then his Majesty will consent to such a creation of Peers as will safeguard the measure against all possible combinations in this House, and the creation will be prompt.”  In numbers the “Die-hards,” as they were called, were known to exceed a hundred, and it was extremely doubtful right up to the actual moment when the division was taken if the Government would receive the support of a sufficient number of cross-bench Peers, Unionist Peers, and Bishops to carry the Bill.  After a heated debate, chiefly taken up by violent recriminations between the two sections of the Opposition, the Lords decided by a narrow majority of seventeen not to insist on their amendments, and the Bill was passed and received the Royal assent.

Now that the smoke has cleared off the field of battle, let us state in a few sentences what the Parliament Bill which has caused all this uproar really is.  It is by no means unnecessary to do this, as those who take a close interest in political events are, perhaps, unaware of the incredible ignorance which exists as to the cause and essence of the whole controversy, especially among that class of society who read head-lines but not articles, who never attend political meetings, but whose strong prejudices make them active and influential.  The Parliament Bill, or rather the Act, does not even place a Liberal Government on an equal footing with a Unionist Government.  It insures that Liberal measures, if persisted in, may become law in the course of two years in spite of the opposition of the Second Chamber.  It lays down once and for all that finance or money Bills can not be vetoed or amended by the House of Lords—­which, after all, is only an indorsement of what was accepted till 1909 as the constitutional practise—­and it limits the duration of Parliament to five years.  The preamble of the Bill, which is regarded with a good deal of suspicion by advanced Radicals, indicates that the reform of the Second Chamber is to be undertaken subsequently.

This is the bare record of the sequence of events in the Parliamentary struggle between the two Houses, each supported by one of the two great political parties.  In the course of the controversy the real significance of the conflict was liable to be hidden under the mass of detail connected with constitutional law, constitutional and political history, and Parliamentary procedure, which had to be quoted in speeches on every platform and referred to repeatedly in debate.  The serious deadlock between the Lords and Commons was not a mere inconvenience in the conduct of legislation, nor was it purely a technical constitutional problem.