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Mr Disraeli in 1867 is to serve as a model for this prodigious declaration, the herald of a new revolution. As one of the bases of his coming Reform Bill, Mr Disraeli asked the House to recognise that it is "contrary to the constitution of this realm to give to any one class or interest a predominating power over the rest of the community"; and Lord Rosebery at Glasgow crows like a bantam over this immense discovery, feeling that he has them, then, at last, these Tories! Here they stand convicted out of their own mouths, the villains! He thanks them for these words, which he proposes speedily to make his own. He may if he pleases. But he had really better think of something else before he speaks again. Why, the very reason given by Lord Rosebery himself and many other Radicals for meddling with the House of Lords is that the two last Reform Bills have placed all political power in the hands of the working class. This is their constant boast. It is this one class which now possesses a predominating power over the rest of the community." The very evil which Mr Disraeli's resolution was intended to prevent, Lord Rosebery's resolution would only aggravate. In the absence of the House of Lords, the working class would be not only predominant but absolute. Lord Rosebery is not, generally speaking, dull; and he is, occasionally, witty. But at Glasgow his wit was spoiled by his temper. Under the sting of Lord Salisbury's sarcasms, his attempts at repartee became nothing but a shrill tu quoque, the last resource of injured boyhood. Whether Lord Rosebery's tongue was in his cheek on the occasion quoted by the noble Marquis we will not undertake to say; but where was it

on the 14th of November, when he made this astounding reference to the resolutions of 1867? Did he really fail to see the extraordinary blunder he was making, or did he think that the public would never find it out, and that the argument, at all events, was good enough for the people of Glasgow? It comes virtually to this: that the Lords must be crushed because the people are predominant, and that the people must fight because the Lords are predominant! Did mortal man ever hear any great public question treated with such careless levity as this?

If a resolution of any kind ever is passed by the House of Commons, the Lords will certainly not be deterred by it from asserting their co-ordinate jurisdiction on all constitutional questions. We have already noticed Lord Rosebery's reliance on the fact that it cannot be rubbed out, which reminds one more of old Mr Weller's style of reasoning than of any other. But when all due weight has been allowed to this important point, will it afford the Government any leverage in their appeal to the country? We do not believe that it will help them one atom. The popular verdict will be determined by the nature of the particular question on which the collision has occurred, and not on any abstract principle. If this alone were at stake we should have no doubt whatever of the result. Lord Salisbury's speech in reply to the Prime Minister, to which we have already referred so often, delivered at Edinburgh on the 30th of October, began with the very pertinent remark that the House of Lords is now the only channel through which the voice of Great Britain can be heard, because in the House of Commons it is either

gagged by the Government or swamped by the Irish: and he asks, as in other words Mr Chamberlain asked also, whether it is likely that the people of Great Britain will destroy an institution which has existed for centuries, and is even now the sole representative and protector of their own interests, merely to place their necks under the hoof of the Home Rulers, and intrust the government of England and Scotland to the inhabitants of the south and west of Ireland. Of course they will do nothing of the kind. Lord Rosebery challenged this description of the Government majority, asking why it should not be called a Welsh majority, or a Scotch majority, as well as an We will tell him why. Because it is an open secret that many Welsh and Scotch Radicals as well as English disliked the Home Rule Bill and the Evicted Tenants Bill as much as the Unionists, and would never have supported it but to save the Government from resignation. The Government was coerced by the Irish, and the members in question by the Government. They were obliged to vote against their consciences to satisfy the Irish, in order to save the Ministry. If this is not being under the yoke of the Brigade we know not what is.

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sibly prevent the Ministry from proceeding very rapidly with the House of Lords question. Lord Rosebery would prefer a second chamber if he could get it, but shrinks from any attempt to define its powers. As for the veto, he can neither do with it nor without it. He knows that without it his so-called check would be a farce, and his senate a nonentity; and that with it the existence of a second chamber would be even more exasperating to the Radicals than it is now, as clothed with new sanctions and having a fresh lease of life.

It seems to us that if this first step is really to be the inauguration of that great struggle which Lord Rosebery, Lord Salisbury, and Mr Balfour seem equally to anticipate, it matters very little what the Resolution is. Great as will be the responsibility of the statesman who takes the first plunge, the manner of doing it the preliminary skirmish-is of comparatively small importance. A bill would certainly have to be introduced at an early period of the contest, and then we should be face to face with the dilemma indicated by Lord Rosebery. Lord Rosebery tells us that the Lords would never pass a bill for their own degradation, and that the country at large would never consent to a revolution. Then how is the struggle to be carried on? If by "revolution" Lord Rosebery means anything in the nature of a coup d'état by which the House of Lords was forcibly suppressed, we quite agree with him. We are a long way from anything of that kind in England. And the consequences which followed on the first and last attempt of the kind are not such as to encourage a repetition of it. The House of sciousness of this truth may pos- Commons in 1649 voted the aboli

It was said at the time that they would not have supported Home Rule even on this account, had they not been sure of its rejection by the House of Lords. If that was so, can we desire a better illustration of the service which the House of Lords is capable of rendering to the House of Commons? The reluctant Radicals either bowed to the dictation of the Irish, or they accepted salvation from the Lords. Some con

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tion of the House of Lords, and immediately afterwards the abolition of the monarchy. But this was only accomplished by the power of the sword, which at no long interval was turned against themselves and the ; once allpowerful assembly fell without a struggle at the nod of an absolute dictator.

We are to assume, then, that the struggle is to be carried on by agitation, and that the whole country is to be a prey to it till such time as either the Radicals are exhausted, or a volume of opinion is set rolling against the House of Lords sufficient either to make it give way, or induce the Sovereign to swamp it by the creation of new Peers. Nothing but the immediate prospect of a civil war would be held to justify such a measure; and our own conviction is, that long before it came to that the good sense of the people would interpose, and a general election restore the constitutional party to power. But, at all events, the House of Commons would never be allowed to take the question into its own hands exclusively. The constitution of this country can only be changed by constitutional means; and for one branch of the Legislature to arrogate to itself the right of dictating to the other two is a mere usurpation, which would certainly recoil on the aggressor as it did before.

It is not wonderful that in a country like England, accustomed so long to see the stream of political and social progress flow along like a broad and tranquil river, of which the current, though strong, steady, and continuous, is so smooth as to be scarcely perceptible-it is not wonderful that England should be slow to believe that we are approaching the rapids. Neither is it wonderful that men, looking

back to what immediately followed the Reform Bill of 1832, and seeing that the prophecies of ruin which were then so rife have not yet been fulfilled, should hug themselves in the belief that the alarm now sounded by friends of the Constitution will prove to have been equally premature, and that they are at liberty to turn round and go to sleep again. To all such persons as these—and we are afraid their name is Legion-we can only give one piece of advice, and that is to read Mr Balfour's speech at Sunderland on the 14th of last month. There they will find set before them, with all the clearness and conciseness they could wish, the true character of the present epoch, and wherein 1894 differs from 1834. Within the last ten years, he says, a marked change has occurred in the policy and practice of what is still called the Liberal party, though in our own opinion the change dates really not from 1885 but from 1865. But that by the by. Since 1885, then, we have seen the development of three separate attacks on the unity of the Empire, the Establishment of the Church, and the authority of the House of Lords. We have now, says Mr Balfour, to face the fact that one of the two great parties in the State is committed to deferring every other question, be it political or be it social, to these three great constitutional revolutions. By such leaps and bounds has Radicalism advanced within only the last nine years. Nor is this all. The unity of the Empire, the Established Church, and the hereditary House of Parliament have been threatened before. But threatened by whom? By O'Connell, by Miall, by private members of Parliament only. But these institutions are now assailed by the

Ministers of the Crown, and bills for the destruction of them are a first charge upon the Government. That is the difference between our own epoch and the period succeeding the first Reform Bill. But let this be noted also, that even at this last-mentioned period these great institutions were believed to be in imminent danger, not merely by such men as Croker, and Raikes, and Wetherell, but by the Duke of Wellington, by Sir Robert Peel, and even by Lord Melbourne himself and who shall say that these statesmen were mistaken? But what was it that averted the danger, and enables the country now to say that no evil effects have followed from 1832? Why, the very same fusion between the Conservatives and the Constitutional Liberals which is now in process between the Conservatives and the Liberal Unionists. If the country would avert the great danger which approached us sixty years ago, and is now again lowering on the horizon, they must support this fusion at the next general election in no faint-hearted manner.

Equally desirable is it that the people of this country should mark their sense of the new method of procedure described by Mr Balfour, and which he also seems to date from 1885. And though it can clearly be traced back to 1867, no doubt the most flagrant example of it is Mr Gladstone's adoption of Home Rule. The method is described by Mr Balfour in these few words:

"If whenever the Liberal party, or any party, merely because it happened to suit their electoral convenience, were going to place in the forefront of their programme the destruction of one or other of the great institutions of this country, then he said that the English democracy had got a perilous path to tread, and it behoved it to look well where it placed its footsteps."

What is to happen when the Church, the aristocracy, and the Empire have been sacrificed to the exigencies of an unscrupulous political ambition? When a bonfire has been made of the Constitution, where is the next supply of fuel to come from? The Radical capitalists of Glasgow must wriggle uneasily in their seats sometimes when this question occurs to them.

Lord Rosebery, Mr Balfour, and Mr Asquith have been the chief speakers on Disestablishment; and as it is now understood that Welsh Disestablishment stands first on the paper for next session, we may glance for a moment at what they each have to say about the subject in general. Lord Rosebery's treatment of it is eminently characteristic. He tries to squeeze himself out of his famous dictum about the Scotch manses, just as he did out of his very infelicitous recognition of "the predominant partner." But he has only wedged himself into it more tightly than ever. For the purpose of Disestablishment he requires evidence to show that the Scotch Established Church is not a National Church; and he finds it in the alleged fact that the residences of the Scotch clergy are so many Tory agencies. And then he says that he does not use this fact as an argument for Disestablishment! For the third or fourth time we are obliged to repeat that Lord Rosebery has not sat at Mr Gladstone's feet for nothing. If a man has committed murder, and the weapon with which the crime was committed is found in his pocket, it is the merest quibble to say that the fact is no argument for hanging him. Lord Rosebery puts it down as the leading delinquency in the Scotch Establishment, which proves her to merit decapitation, that the manses are Conservative

strongholds. How he distinguishes this from saying that the principles of the clergy are a reason for disestablishing the Church, he will perhaps explain to us on another occasion. So far, he has only gone from bad to worse, because he gave us at Glasgow a careful explanation of his meaning, which he had been able to think over beforehand; and instead of weakening the effect of what he said at Edinburgh, he has only clinched it. Scotch Disestablishment, then, is postponed for the present, though Lord Rosebery, who is great on the virtue of sincerity, promises to introduce a bill without doing anything to carry it, just to show he is in earnest. He is frank enough, however, to tell the Scotch Liberationists that they must not look for much till Scotland returns as large a proportion of members in favour of Disestablishment as Wales. As this comes virtually to the same thing as Sir Robert Walpole's famous answer to the English Dissenters, we should imagine that these young men went away sorrowful. The Forfarshire election will certainly not restore their cheerfulness. The victory of Mr Ramsay was largely due to the Radical attack upon the Church, and Lord Rosebery's demand for a flowing tide of opinion in favour of Scotch Disestablishment is immediately answered by a signal which proclaims it decidedly on the ebb. Instead of any increase in the number of Scotch members pledged to Disestablishment, the Government have begun to lose those which they already have. the process will not end with Forfarshire. Reluctant as Ministers have been all along to dissolve Parliament, they will be still more reluctant now. On the other hand, there is proportionate encourage

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ment to the Opposition to force a dissolution; and it may be that before the end of next session opportunities will not be wanting.

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The disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales is, however, to be proceeded with; and on this subject we have the valuable assistance of Mr Asquith. This eminent lawyer, however, can do no more than improve upon the stale old falsehood that the estates of the Church were given to her by Parliament, and that Parliament can resume them at pleasure. We have never heard that Parliament had a right to resume at pleasure even what it actually did give, such, for instance, as the Blenheim or Strathfieldsaye estates; but that it has any right to take what it didn't give is a new doctrine. The simple truth is this. These estates were given to the Church for the support of the Anglican religion. She holds them in trust for that purpose. on the assumption that she is no longer capable of carrying out the trust that the State has any right to interfere. Mr Gladstone himself has denied that this argument is good against the Church in Wales: if it was not good twenty years ago, it is certainly much worse now; and if it is not good for Wales, it certainly is not for England. The position of the Church, both in England and Wales, may vary from year to year and from century to century. The struggle that she is waging must necessarily be fluctuating. But is she or is she not, upon the whole, administering her trust efficiently? If she is, by what right is she deprived of her property? If not, that property can only be devoted to the next nearest purpose, and cannot certainly be diverted to secular uses.

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