There could be no question of a Government, hitherto undisturbed by internal disagreement and consistently supported in the House of Commons by a large, united, and intact majority, being deflected one hair’s breadth from its course by the results of by-elections.  We have our work to do, and while we have the power to carry it forward, we have no right, even if we had the inclination, to leave it uncompleted.  Certainly we shall not be so foolish, or play so false to those who have supported us, as to fight on any ground but that of our own choosing, or at any time but that most advantageous to the general interest of the Progressive cause.

The circumstances of the period are peculiar.  The powers of the House of Lords to impede, and by impeding to discredit, the House of Commons are strangely bestowed, strangely limited, and still more strangely exercised.  There are little things which they can maul; there are big things they cannot touch; there are Bills which they pass, although they believe them to be wrong; there are Bills which they reject, although they know them to be right.  The House of Lords can prevent the trams running over Westminster Bridge; but it cannot prevent a declaration of war.  It can reject a Bill prohibiting foreign workmen being brought in to break a British strike; it cannot amend a Bill to give old-age pensions to 600,000 people.  It can thwart a Government in the minute details of its legislation; it cannot touch the whole vast business of finance.  It can prevent the abolition of the plural voter; but it could not prevent the abolition of the police.  It can refuse a Constitution to Ireland, but not, luckily, to Africa.

Lord Lansdowne, in his leadership of the House of Lords during the present Parliament, has put forward claims on its behalf far more important and crude than ever were made by the late Lord Salisbury.  No Tory leader in modern times has ever taken so high a view of its rights, and at the same time no one has shown a more modest conception of its duties.  In destroying the Education Bill of 1906 the House of Lords asserted its right to resist the opinion of a majority of members of the House of Commons, fresh from election, upon a subject which had been one of the most prominent issues of the election.  In rejecting the Licensing Bill of 1908 they have paraded their utter unconcern for the moral welfare of the mass of their fellow-countrymen.

There is one feature in the guidance of the House of Lords by Lord Lansdowne which should specially be noticed, and that is the air of solemn humbug with which this ex-Whig is always at pains to invest its proceedings.  The Nonconformist child is forced into the Church school in single-school areas in the name of parents’ rights and religious equality.  The Licensing Bill is rejected in the highest interests of temperance.  Professing to be a bulwark of the commercial classes against Radical and Socialistic legislation, the House of Lords passes an Old-Age