The Leader of the Opposition asked us yesterday whether the people are not often wrong, and he proceeded characteristically to suggest that he always considered them wrong when they voted against him.  I am not prepared to take such a rough-and-ready test of the opinion and of the mental processes of the British democracy as that.  I should hesitate to say that when the people pronounce against a particular measure or Party they have not pretty good reasons for doing so.  I am not at all convinced that in 1900 the electors were wrong in saying that the war should be finished—­by those who made it.  Even in the last election I could, I daresay, find some few reasons to justify the decision which the people then took; and if we should be so unfortunate in the future as to lose that measure of public confidence now abundantly given to us, then I shall not be too sure that it will not be our own fault.  Certain am I that we could not take any step more likely to forfeit the confidence of the people of England, than to continue in office after we have lost the power to pass effective legislation.

I will retort the question of the Leader of the Opposition by another question.  Has the House of Lords ever been right?  Has it ever been right in any of the great settled controversies which are now beyond the reach of Party argument?  Was it right in delaying Catholic emancipation and the removal of Jewish disabilities?  Was it right in driving this country to the verge of revolution in its effort to defeat the passage of reform?  Was it right in resisting the Ballot Bill?  Was it right in the almost innumerable efforts it made to prevent this House dealing with the purity of its own electoral machinery?  Was it right in endeavouring to prevent the abolition of purchase in the Army?  Was it right in 1880, when it rejected the Compensation for Disturbance Bill?  I defy the Party opposite to produce a single instance of a settled controversy in which the House of Lords was right.

[An honourable Member:  What about Home Rule?]

I expected that interruption.  That is not a settled controversy.  It is a matter which lies in the future.  The cases I have mentioned are cases where we have carried the law into effect and have seen the results, and found that they have been good.

Let me remind the House that, but for a lucky accident, but for the fact that Letters Patent can be issued by the Crown and do not require the statutory assent of Parliament, it would very likely have been impossible for this Government to have made the constitutional settlement in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony, because the Constitutions would probably have been mutilated or cast out by the House of Lords, and the Executive Government would have found itself responsible for carrying out the government of Colonies on lines of which it wholly disapproved, and after their own policy had been rejected.