Hon. gentlemen opposite would be well advised to treat this Resolution seriously.  This Parliament is still young, but there are some things at which they have laughed which have already become accomplished facts, I could not have during the past eighteen months listened to their taunts about the permanence of Chinese labour without reflecting now with satisfaction that Chinese labour is going.  Yes, and other people may follow.  We are only at the beginning of this struggle.  We are not necessarily committed to every detail of the proposal; we are opening the first lines for a great siege, we have to sap up to the advanced parallels, to establish our batteries, and at no distant date open our bombardment.  It may be many months before we shall be able to discern where there is a practicable breach; but the assault will come in due time.

The right hon. gentleman opposite[7] said he welcomed this contest with great confidence.  I wonder if the Conservative Party realise, to use an expressive vulgarism, what they are “letting themselves in for” when this question comes to be fought out on every platform in every constituency in the country?  They will not have to defend an ideal Second Chamber; they will not be able to confine themselves to airy generalities about a bicameral system and its advantages; they will have to defend this Second Chamber as it is—­one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee.  They will have to defend it with all its anomalies, all its absurdities, and all its personal bias—­with all its achievements that have darkened the pages of the history of England.  And let me say that weighty constitutional authorities have not considered that the policy on which we have embarked in moving this Resolution is unreasonable.  Mr. Bagehot says of the House of Lords: 

“It may lose its veto as the Crown has lost its veto.  If most of its members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of one class, and that not quite the best; if its doors are shut against genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not L5,000 a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so much kingly power is gone—­no one knows how.”

What is the position of the Conservative Party when they attempt to defend the House of Lords?  They are always telling us to imitate the Colonies; they are always telling us that we ought to adopt the fiscal systems and other methods employed in the self-governing Colonies; but what is their unprejudiced view of the relations which are held between the two Chambers under the bicameral system in the Colonies and as established by their own Australian Commonwealth Act in the last Parliament?  By that Act they have given power to the Lower Chamber to over-ride the Upper Chamber in certain circumstances.  The Commonwealth Act says that when the Chambers differ they shall meet together, and that the majority shall decide, measures being taken, however, that the numbers of the Upper Chamber shall not be such as to swamp the opinion of the Lower Chamber.  Imitating them, and following in their footsteps, we have adopted such a plan in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony Constitutions.