Whether, however, this backing represented a reasoned view of the Constitutional points involved and of the position, prerogatives, and organization of a Second Chamber in the framework of British Government, whether it implied that our people were really interested in and had deeply pondered the relative merits of the Single and Double Chamber systems, is much more doubtful.  “When he was told,” said the Duke of Northumberland on August 10th, “that the people of England were very anxious to abolish the House of Lords, his reply was that they did not understand the question, and did not care two brass farthings about it.”  That perhaps is putting it somewhat too strongly.  The country within the last two years has unquestionably felt more vividly than ever before the anomaly of an hereditary Upper Chamber embedded in democratic institutions.  It has been stirred by Mr. Lloyd-George’s rhetoric to a mood of vague exasperation with the House of Lords and of ridicule of the order of the Peerage.  It has accepted too readily the Liberal version of the central issue as a case of Peers versus People.  But while it was satisfied that something ought to be done, I do not believe it realizes precisely what has been accomplished in its name or the consequences that must follow from the passing of the Parliament Bill.  There are no signs that it regards the abridgment of the powers of the Upper House as a great democratic victory.  There are, on the contrary, manifold signs that it has been bored and bewildered by the whole struggle, and that the extraordinary lassitude with which it watched the debates was a true reflex of its real attitude.

CAPTAIN GEORGE SWINTON, L.C.C.

It has been more like a bull-fight than anything else, or perhaps the bull-baiting, almost to the death, which went on in England in days of old.  For the Peerage is not quite dead, but sore stricken, robbed of its high functions, propped up and left standing to flatter the fools and the snobs, a kind of painted screen, or a cardboard fortification, armed with cannon which can not be discharged for fear they bring it down about the defenders’ ears.  And in the end it was all effected so simply, so easily could the bull be induced to charge.  A rag was waved, first here, then there, and the dogs barked.  That was all.

It is not difficult to be wise after the event.  Everybody knows now that with the motley groups of growing strength arrayed against them it behooved the Peers to walk warily, to look askance at the cloaks trailed before them, to realize the danger of accepting challenges, however righteous the cause might be.  But no amount of prudence could have postponed the catastrophe for any length of time, for indeed the House of Lords had become an anachronism.  Everything had changed since the days when it had its origin, when its members were Peers of the King, not only in name but almost in power, princes of principalities,