I proceed to inquire on what principle the House of Lords deals with Liberal measures.  The right hon.  Member for Dover[8] by an imaginative effort assures us that they occupy the position of the umpire.  Are they even a sieve, a strainer, to stop legislation if it should reveal an undue or undesirable degree of Radicalism or Socialism?  Are they the complementary critic—­the critic who sees all the things which the ordinary man does not see?  No one can maintain it.  The attitude which the House of Lords adopts towards Liberal measures is purely tactical.  When they returned to their “gilded Chamber” after the general election they found on the Woolsack and on the Treasury Bench a Lord Chancellor and a Government with which they were not familiar.  When their eyes fell upon those objects, there was a light in them which meant one thing—­murder; murder tempered, no doubt, by those prudential considerations which always restrain persons from acts which are contrary to the general feeling of the society in which they live.  But their attitude towards the present Government has from the beginning been to select the best and most convenient opportunity of humiliating and discrediting them, and finally of banishing them from power.

Examine, in contrast with that of the Education Bill, their treatment of the Trades Disputes Bill.  Lord Halsbury described that Bill as outrageous and tyrannous, and said it contained a section more disgraceful than any that appeared in any English Statute.  On what ground then did they pass that Bill, if it was not the ground of political opportunism and partisanship?  What safeguard can such a Second Chamber be to the commercial interests of this country?  Is it not clear that they are prepared to sacrifice, if necessary, what they consider to be the true interests of the country in order to secure an advantage for the political Party whose obedient henchmen they are?  The Trades Disputes Bill was a very inconvenient measure for the Conservative Party to leave open, because so long as it was left open a great mass of democratic opinion was directed against them.  And so it was passed.  On the other hand, the Education Bill was very inconvenient for the Liberal Party to leave open, because they are supported by Catholics and Nonconformists, and to bring in an Education Bill to satisfy those two extremes is not to solve a problem, but to solve a double acrostic.  So that Bill was not passed.  Upon a measure which it would be inconvenient to the Liberal Party to leave open the House of Lords rejected all compromise.  Upon a measure which it would be inconvenient for the Conservative Party to leave open, they submitted at once—­their action being irrespective of merits in either case.  That, I suppose, is what the Leader of the Opposition called “an averaging machinery.”