It is said that there is a permanent Conservative majority in the House of Lords.  But then every Second Chamber is, and ought to be, conservative in temper.  It exists to exercise a restraining influence, to ensure that great changes shall not be made in fundamental institutions except by the deliberate will of the nation, and not as the outcome of a mere passing mood.  And if the accusation is, that the House of Lords is too Conservative in a party sense, which is a different thing, I admit, from being Conservative in the highest and best sense, that points not to doing away with the Second Chamber, but to making such a change in its composition as, while leaving it still powerful, still, above all, independent, will render it more representative of the permanent mind of the nation.

But let me be permitted to observe that the instance relied on to prove that the House of Lords is in the pocket of the Conservative party is a very unfortunate instance.  What is its offence?  It is said that the Lords rejected the Scottish Land Bill.  But they did not reject the Scottish Land Bill.  They were quite prepared to accept a portion of the Bill, and it is for the Government to answer to the people interested in that portion for their not having received the benefits which the Bill was presumably intended to bestow on them.  What the Government did was to hold a pistol at the head of the House of Lords, and to say that they must either accept the whole straggling and ill-constructed measure as it stood, or be held up to public odium for rejecting it.  But when the Bill was looked at as a whole, it was found to contain principles—­novel principles as far as the great part of Scotland was concerned, bad principles, as the experience of Ireland showed—­which the House of Lords, and not only the Conservatives in the House of Lords, were not prepared to endorse.  Was it Conservative criticism which killed the Bill?  It was riddled with arguments by a Liberal Peer and former Liberal Prime Minister—­arguments to which the Government speakers were quite unable, and had the good sense not even to attempt, to reply.  And that is the instance which is quoted to prove that the House of Lords is a Tory Caucus!

Now, before leaving this question of the House of Lords, let me just say one word about its general attitude.  I have not long been a member of that assembly.  I do not presume to take much part in its discussions.  But I follow them, and I think I follow them with a fairly unprejudiced mind.  On many questions I am perhaps not in accord with the views of the majority of the House.  But what strikes me about the House of Lords is that it is a singularly independent assembly.  It is not at the beck and call of any man.  It is a body which does not care at all about party claptrap, but which does care a great deal about a good argument, from whatever quarter it may proceed.  Moreover, I am confident that the great body of its members are