Nor was it a revolutionary Bill, to turn the world upside down and inside out; on the contrary, it was a Bill which, if vitiated in any respect, was vitiated by the element of compromise.  Immense concessions were made in it, and rightly, I think, to conscientious and agitated minorities.  It was a Bill which so moderate and consistent a statesman as the Duke of Devonshire, of whose ill-health the House learns with grave concern, urged the House of Lords to pass into law.

Sir, the Leader of the Opposition told us the other day that it was the habit of his Majesty’s Government to introduce Bills which they did not mean to pass.  No one—­not even the right hon. gentleman himself—­can say that the Government have not earnestly desired to pass the Education Bill.  Every concession that could be conceived was made, but to what purpose?  After the House of Commons had humbled itself before the House of Lords, after we had gone to the extreme limit of concession which self-respect, which a proper sense of the dignity of this House, and a due observance of the pledges of the Liberal Party permitted, the House of Lords curtly, bluntly, uncharitably, and harshly flung the Bill out in our faces mutilated and destroyed.  I do not wish to import an element of heat into this discussion, but I respectfully submit to the Conservative Party that that act on the part of the House of Lords places them in a new position—­a new position in the sense that never before had their old position been taken up so nakedly, so brazenly, and so uncompromisingly.

It is true that we have an excuse put before us with much suavity of language in these debates—­we are told that the House of Lords seeks to interpret the will of the people, and it is explained that by “the will of the people,” what is meant is the persistent, sub-conscious will, as opposed to any articulate expression of it.  The right hon. gentleman who leads the Opposition told us that what he meant by the persistent will was the will of the people expressed continuously over a period of thirty years.  That is what he called “democracy properly understood.”

Having regard to that part of the question which concerns the issue between the two Houses, we repudiate emphatically the claim of the other House to what the French call faire l’ange—­to “play the angel,” to know better than the people themselves what the people want, to have a greater authority to speak in the name of the people than their representatives sent to Parliament by the elaborate process I have described.  To dispute the authority of a newly elected Parliament is something very like an incitement to violence on the part of the other House.  The noble Lord[6] laughs; but we are anxious to convince him and his friends that we are in earnest.  We go through all the processes which the Constitution prescribes, we produce an enormous majority, and we express the opinion of that majority, but still the noble Lord and other noble Lords, less intelligent,