was inconclusive.  Then befell the death of King Edward.  There was a second election, carefully engineered and prepared for, rushed upon a nation which had been denied the opportunity of hearing the other side.  The Government had out-maneuvered the Opposition and muzzled them to the last moment in a Conference sworn to secrecy.  It was remarkably clever and incredibly unscrupulous.  They won again.  They had not increased their numbers, but they had maintained their position, and this time their victory, however achieved, could not be gainsaid.  For a moment there was a lull, only some vague talk of “guaranties,” asserted, scoffed at and denied, for the ordinary business of the country was in arrears, and the Coronation, with all its pomp of circumstance and power, all its medieval splendor and appeal to history and sentiment, turned people’s thoughts elsewhere.

And then, on the day the pageantry closed, Mr. Asquith launched his Thunderbolt.  Few men living will ever learn the true story of the guaranties, suffice it that somehow he had secured them.  Whatever the resistance of the Second Chamber might be, it could be overcome.  At his dictation the Constitution was to fall.  There was no escape; the Bill must surely pass.  It rested with the Lords themselves whether they should bow their heads to the inevitable, humbly or proudly, contemptuously or savagely—­characterize it as you will—­or whether there should be red trouble first.

Surely never in our time has there been a situation of higher psychological interest, for never before have we seen a body of some six hundred exceptional men called on to take each his individual line upon a subject which touched him to the core.  I say “individual line” and “exceptional men.”  Does either adjective require defending?

The Peers are not a regiment, they are still independent entities, with all the faults and virtues which this implies; free gentlemen subject to no discipline, responsible to God and their own consciences alone.  At times they may combine on questions which appeal to their sense of right, their sentiment, perhaps some may say their self-interest; but this was no case for combination.  Here was a sword pointed at each man’s breast.  What, under the circumstances, was to be his individual line of conduct?

And who will deny the word “exceptional”?  To a seventh of them it must perforce be applicable, for they have been specially selected to serve in an Upper House.  And to the rest, those who sit by inheritance, does it not apply even more?  It is not what they have done in life.  This was no question of capacity or achievement.  By the accident of birth alone they had been put in a position different from other men.  How shall each in his wisdom or his folly interpret that well-worn motto which still has virtue both to quicken and control, “Noblesse oblige”?