House of Lords as a Safety Net

The Peers are not a regiment, they are still independent entities, with all the faults and virtues which this implies.

Continuing English House of Lords Falls,
with a selection from special article in Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 by Captain George Swinton published in 1914. This selection is presented in 2.6 easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in English House of Lords Falls.

Time: 1911

Five short years and four rejected measures. Glance back over it all. The wild blood on both sides, and the cunning on one. The foolish comfortable words spoken in every drawing-room throughout the United Kingdom. “Yes, they are terrible: what a lot of harm they would do if they could. Thank God we have a House of Lords.” Think now that this was commonplace conversation only three short years ago. And all the time the ears of the masses were being poisoned. Week after week and month after month some laughed but others toiled. The laughers, like the French nobles before the Revolution, said contemptuously, “They will not dare.” Why should they not? There were men among them for whom the Ark of the Covenant had no sanctity. And then, when the combinations were complete, when those who stood out had been kicked — there can be no other word — into compliance, the blows fell quickly. A Budget was ingeniously prepared for rejection, and, the Lords falling into the trap, the storm broke, with its hurricane of abuse and misrepresentation. We had one election which was inconclusive. Then befell the death of King Edward. There was a second election, carefully engineered and prepared for, rushed upon a nation which had been denied the opportunity of hearing the other side. The Government had outmaneuvered the Opposition and muzzled them to the last moment in a Conference sworn to secrecy. It was remarkably clever and incredibly unscrupulous. They won again. They had not increased their numbers, but they had maintained their position, and this time their victory, however achieved, could not be gainsaid. For a moment there was a lull, only some vague talk of “guaranties,” asserted, scoffed at and denied, for the ordinary business of the country was in arrears, and the Coronation, with all its pomp of circumstance and power, all its medieval splendor and appeal to history and sentiment, turned people’s thoughts elsewhere.

And then, on the day the pageantry closed, Mr. Asquith launched his Thunderbolt. Few men living will ever learn the true story of the guaranties, suffice it that somehow, he had secured them. Whatever the resistance of the Second Chamber might be, it could be overcome. At his dictation the Constitution was to fall. There was no escape; the Bill must surely pass. It rested with the Lords themselves whether they should bow their heads to the inevitable, humbly or proudly, contemptuously or savagely — characterize it as you will — or whether there should be red trouble first.

Surely never in our time has there been a situation of higher psychological interest, for never before have we seen a body of some six hundred exceptional men called on to take each his individual line upon a subject which touched him to the core. I say, “individual line” and “exceptional men.” Does either adjective require defending?

The Peers are not a regiment, they are still independent entities, with all the faults and virtues which this implies, free gentlemen subject to no discipline, responsible to God and their own consciences alone. At times they may combine on questions which appeal to their sense of right, their sentiment, perhaps some may say their self-interest; but this was no case for combination. Here was a sword pointed at each man’s breast. What, under the circumstances, was to be his individual line of conduct?

And who will deny the word “exceptional”? To a seventh of them it must perforce be applicable, for they have been specially selected to serve in an Upper House. And to the rest, those who sit by inheritance, does it not apply even more? It is not what they have done in life. This was no question of capacity or achievement. By the accident of birth alone they had been put in a position different from other men. How shall each in his wisdom or his folly interpret that well-worn motto which still has virtue both to quicken and control, “Noblesse oblige”?

Very curious indeed was the result. It is useless to consider the preliminaries, the pronouncements, the meetings, the campaign which raged for a fortnight in the Press both by letter and leading article. It is even useless to try and discover who, if anybody, was in favor of the Bill which was the original bone of contention. Its merits and defects were hardly debated. On that fateful 10th of August the House of Lords split into three groups on quite a different point. The King’s Government had seized on the King’s Prerogative and uttered threats. Should they or should they not be constrained to make good their threats, and use it?

The first group said: “Yes. They have betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position. Let their crime be brought home to them and to the world. All is lost for us except honor. Shall we lose that also? To the last gasp we will insist on our amendments.”

The second group said: “No. They have indeed betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position, but why add to this disaster the destruction of what remains to safeguard the Empire? We protest and withdraw, washing our hands of the whole business for the moment. But our time will come.”

The third group said: “No. We do not desire the King’s Prerogative to be used. We will prevent any need for its exercise. The Bill shall go through without it.”

And, the second group abstaining, by seventeen votes the last prevailed against the first. But whether ever before a victory was won by so divided a host, or ever a measure carried by men who so profoundly disapproved of it, let those judge who read the scathing Protest, inscribed in due form in the journals of the House of Lords by one who went into that lobby, Lord Rosebery, the only living Peer who has been Prime Minister of England.

Arthur Ponsonby begins here. Sydney Brooks begins here. Captain George Swinton begins here.

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