THE LORDS OF LONG AGO.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 267, 18 December 1909, Page 3

THE LORDS OF LONG AGO.

WHEN MR. LLOVD-GEOHOE VvoULD , HAVE BEEN IIAM.aU, ■ 1 .Mr. Lloyd-George should be thankful that he lives in tne twentieth century. If he had lived in good King Richard Coeur-de-Lion's glorious days the probability is that 1m would have heeii lmnged! For ill thos'e times the Lords were mightier than the men. and brooked no I iiuerrerence with either their privileges ior llieir pockets. And when a champion ' i-l' the commoners, named FitzUsbert, boldly declared that taxation snould be pioportioncd to the power to bear it, he was promptly hailged as a thinker an advance of his age!

j Til a Lords of long ago, indeed, hail I many little eccentricities, which a per-

I usal of "The liuuse of Lords" will reveal. KOW-TOW AND THE COMAiONS.

Tnere would have been no indignation in the House of Commons in tne -Uiuule Ages at the prospect of the Lords throwing out one of their Budgets, lor n( those pre-Wiiiston Churchill u iys tne members of the Lower Cham ik'r were humble to tlie point of Helplessness. When Edward 111., for install,e —to whose account must be laid the creating of the first duke—consulted them with respect to tlie .French war he was waging, they sent him this reply: "Most dreaded Lord,--As to your war and the equipment necessary for it, we ; are so imnovant and simple that' we: know not how, nor have the power, to devise. Wherefore, we pray your Grace to excuse us in this matter; and that it please you, with advice of the great and wise persons of your council, Ito ordain what seems best to you for the honor and profit of yourself and of your kingdom; and whatsoever shall be thus ordained by assent and agreement for you and your lords we readily asaen(ti to and will hold it firmly established." In good Queen Bess's days they were equally incapable. When their Speaker died they had to consult the Lords as| to what they were to do, whereupon the Queen, hearing of it, volunteered a piece of statesmanlike advice. "Go back, ■ she said, "and elect a new one." Tne problem was solved!

What would the Westminster policeconstables think if, one day, Lord Rosebery, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Crewe turned up at tlie House each with a small army at his back? Yet, sueli was the habit of Lords in the fifteenth century. And what would the Dukes of Westminster, Comiaught, and Buceleuch think if, on relaxing their attendance nt the House for any considerable period, they found themselves the recipients of •polite notes informing them that they had been fined £IOO for neglecting their duties? For bishops and earls the fine used to be 100 marks, and for abbots and barons £4O. AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: TEN! Non-attendance on the part of its members, indeed, used to be one of the great problems of the House of Lords. Noble dukes and earls took to sending "proxies" to vote for them, and the extent to which this practice was carried is shown by the fact that in 1534 . a whole day of the Lords' time was taken up with reading the of absent members of the House; while aoout one hundred years later the average attendance in the Lords during one montll was from three to nine earls, one viscount, and from one to four barons. But no wonder it was considered desirable to avoid personal attendance when BlulT King Hal threatened to behead a man who offered opposition to his demand for £BOO,OOO, involving a tax of 20 per cent, on land and goods) Even so, however, a smaller subsidy was granted than was asked; and for this Parliament was punished by not be-ng summoned for nearly seven years. All-night sittings were a thin® unknown, and the Lords -were as avil after half-holidays as any preparatory schoolboy. In 1571 1 the Lords sent down a message to the Commons to proceed at once with public .bills, and lay pri- i vate bills aside, "as the weather waxed very hot and dangerous for sickness"; while on another occasion, it being the time of harvest. Parliament was allowed to depart with leave to "solace themselves and disport at pleasure." NEVER, NO, NEITHER, NOR. | And when they did turn out bills, it must have needed a veritable expert in legal phraseology to decipher their purport, as witness the following resolution that: "There never be no law made ajid engrossed as statute and law, neither by addition nor by dimsnution by no manner of term or terras, the whic.i should change the sentence and the intent asked." To which a frivolously-in-clined reviewer might feel inclined -to add, "Hooray!" Attempts to abolish the House ot Lords are the innovations of no "N-nv Liberalism." In 1 (>OS, it must not be forgotten, on ,jth November, a determined ell'ort to extinguish the Upper House for a time was foiled by the discovery of thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in a vault before they went off, and four days later the King lectured the Houses on the evils of tioo much legislation, and sighed for the days of the Lacedaemonians, among whom "whosoever came to propose a. new law to tlie people behoved publicly to present himself with a rope- about his neck, and in case' tlio law were not allowed he should be hanged herewith." Verily, there is nothing new under the sun. Raids on the House by Suffragettes seem novel and up-to-date enough, yet in August, 1043, "a petition for peaee is presented to the Commons Ifrom many civilly-disposed women of the cities of London, Westminster, etc. About five thousand females attend, and are not dispersed without bloodshed/'— Answers.