THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1908. LORDS AND COMMONS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3076, 22 December 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1908. LORDS AND COMMONS.

"Threatened men live long," says the proverb, and so do threatened institutions. More than once in its history of nigh six hundred years the House of Lords has run foul of the national will and stimulated an angry cry of "Down with it." Once again we hear mutterings of dissatisfaction, but the tension created by the late rejection of the Education Bill and Licensing Bill is mild in the extreme, contrasted with that whicli has at times bpen felt. The country itself is divided on those questions, and the House of Lords has the support of a large section, if not an absolute majority, of the people, in its action. How much backing it really has only a general election can show, but it is considerable. The feeling against the House is as nothing compared with the antagonism created by its opposition to the reform proposals of 1831 and 1832. Then, the Upper

House was in positive danger; the masses, kept unenfranchised by its persistent action, were madly excited, and there would have been serious trouble but for the personal intervention of the King, who persuaded the Lords to yield to the popular pressure with the best grace they could. They withdrew their opposition to the Government proposals, and the situation was saved. The "New Zealand Heralc!" considers that we shall ere long see reforms effected i.i the constitution of the House of Peers, to make it more efficient and to keep it more in touch with the trend of public thought. But there will be no radical revolutionary changes. The general sense of the British public is not in favour of government by one chamber, with no check whatever on its possible indiscretions. The country tried that experiment once, and a decade's experience was conclusive as to its inadvisabilit.y. There was a time when the House of Lords was actually in abeyance. It fell when the King did, in 1649. Within a week of King Charles' execution the Commons voted the House of Lords "useless and dangerous!'; and, on May 19th of that same year, England was officially declared "A Commonwealth and Free State," only to be governed by the representatives of the people in Parliament and their Ministers, without any King or House of Lords, Republicanism was in the ascendant. But the scheme did not work well, and, after giving it seven years' trial, a reaction set in. An attempt to get Cromwell to assume the more constitutional title and position of King: failed; but on May 26th, 1657, after a three months' debate by the Commons, he was presented with "The Humble Petition and Advice" giving him the title of Lord Protector, allowing him to name his successor, and advising him to create a House of Peers. It commended itself to Oliver's judgment, and was promptly acted on. The Parliament that tendered the advice was dissolved, and a new one met on January 20th, 1658, divided, as of old, into two Houses. The new-made peers were sixty in number, but the Commons, which included a good many who deemed their own claims to higher rank far stronger than those of men promoted, refused to recognise the new Lords. So Cromwell dissolved Parliament at the end of a fortnight—February 4th. It wa3 the last one he called, his own death occurring seven months later. His successor, Richard, called but one, which only about half the new peers attended, and which, in the conflict of parties then prevailing, could do nothing. Temporarily, the army got the upper hand, and a return was made to the principle of a single Chamber, February, 1660. But at the expiry of another three months, Republicanism received its qpietus, the personal monarchy was restored, and with it all the monarchical institutions, the House of Lords included. But the currents of political thought all the world over havej taken a different trend during the last few decades. Democracy is gradually gaining the upper hand, even in conservative Britain, and the natural corollary of democracy is "The people must rule"; and we may be quite sure from our own Dominion experience that what the people want they will eventually and speedily have when they get political power.