N°. 51.
E R F O P V O L G I N G I N AMBT OF AMBACHT (1909).
Het volgende is een uittreksel uit het verslag, door The Times van 16 De-cember .1909 gegeven over een rede, door den oud gouverneur-generaal van Engelsch-Indië op 15 December 1909 gehouden te Oldham. Het verslag voeit tot opschrift „Defence of the Peers".
. . . . At tlie outset of bis speech Lord Curzon frankly declared that he came to address a popular audience as „a House of Lords man, a Second Chamber1) man, an out-and-out defender of the line that the Lords have recently taken". Replying to Mr. Churchill, he said : „We members of the House of Lords have nothing to apologize for, nothing to extenuate, nothing to be ashamed of".
Lord Curzon described it as an advantage that the House of Lords are not exposed to the temptations and dangers of popular election, and he claimed that in some respects the Second Chamber is superior, in the scheme of representative government, to the popular Chamber. This portion of the speech was no doubt more courageous than politic. It was a good deal interrupted, and there was even something like disorder when Renan was quoted to the effect that „all civilization has been the work of aristo-craties". There were occasional cheers for Mr. Churchill and Mr.
Lloyd George, but the Liberals present were a small body, and for the most part they exercised a proper self-control.
The second division of Lord Curzon's speech was the more effective, for in this he gave a statement of the arguments against the passage of so momentous a Budget as that of 1909 until it had received the endorsement of the electors, whom, he said, the Lords acknowledged to be the masters, and he pointed out the dangers of single-Chamber government. With regard tot Mr. As-quith's threatened demand for guarantees that the House of Lords should not in future impose a conclusive veto upon Bills passed by the House of Commons, Lord Curzon said the Liberals might find it much more difficult than they thought to obtain those
) D. i. hoogerhuis. — Noot van de commissie.
guarantees. The speech throughout was delivered with animation and without any sign of weakened health and by the vast majority of the audience it was received with enthusiastic cheers . . . .
The Speech.
Lord Curzon said': I have here to state to the great Lancashire meeting the case of the Chamber to which I belong (cheers), and I think I have right to make such a statement to such an audience.
I hope . . . , that I make it quite clear to you that I come to you this evening as a late Lancashire member, as a House of Lords man, a Second Chamber man (cheers), as an out-and-out defender of the line that the House of Lords has taken. (Cheers.) I must make one apology; I am afraid I am not altogether a very favourable specimen of the Chamber of which I belong (laughter); I am not at present a hereditary peer. (Hear, hear.) I am not a landowner, and I do not own a square foot of land.
I am actually a representative peer because I represent the Peerage of Ireland; at the same time I must frankly confess that some-where there lurks in me the taint of original sin, for I cannot deny that I am the son of my father, and he a peer, and that I am his eldest son, and that some day or other in the fulness of time — I hope it may be long delayed — I shall succeed him and emerge as the worst type of the failing of the hereditary Chamber to which I belong now.
Mr. C h u r c h i l l ' s C h a l l e n g e .
Mr. Winston Churchill has recently paid a visit to my old constituency at Southport, and he made a great speech there — a tribute to his intellectual as well as to his physical powers — a speech of which he was so anxious his audience should not miss a word that he read the greater part of it from a manuscript.
I am gratefull to him for having done so, because it ensures that I shall quote him with perfect accuracy. „I invite our opponents to show any ground of reason or logic or expediency or of prac-tical common sense in defence of the House of Lords. I challenge the defenders of the House of Lords to justify and defend in the next six weeks the character and position of that Assembly".
That is a challenge which I propose to take up. I am prepared to take it up on any platform in the country, and if my physical health permitted of it I should be on a platform every night from now until the general election. (Cheers.) Then I tell you we members of the House of Lords have nothing to apologize for (cheers), nothing to extenuate, nothing to be ashamed of.
We are prepared to state our case to any audience of our fellow-countrymen, and I do not think it needed the courteous mode-ration of your chair man to-night to assure me that here at any rate, I shall meet with a fair and just and reasonable hearing.
Now one thing I will try to avoid — the language of
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ration or violence. (Laughter). I admit it is rather difficult at election times. You may have sometimes seen in the papers accounts of places in Germany and Bavaria where they give a person who is suffering from certain ailments a mud-bath. (Laughter).
They plunge him in, and a little later, when this disgusting operation is over, they take him out and his flesh is like that of a little child. It seems to me that the country is being subjected just now to some such treatment. I do not know what it has done to deserve it; possibly it may be a punishment for having returned a Radical majority at the last election. The centre of all this mud-throwing is the House of Lords. At almost every meeting, at these great meetings in Lancashire, during the last ten days the Peers have been accused of almost every public and a good many private crimes. In our public capacity we are told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we are an effete oligarchy. (Some cheers). You may applaud the man; you will not applaud the statement. (Cheers). He tells us that we are an effete oligarchy, that we represent nobodjr — I am coming to that in a moment; do not think that I am going to leave that alone — and in our private capacity we are land-grabbers and blackmailers and thieves and poachers. (Laughter). No, there, I think, I do him an injustice. We are merely the broken glass on the top of the wall to keep out the poachers, who are the Radical party (laughter) — the only occasion in the speech to which I referred in which the distinguished speecher seems to me to have approximated to the margin of truth.
T h e H e r e d i t a r y P r i n c i p l e .
Well now, let me ask you gentlemen to-night to consider with me what is the case against the House of Lords. As I understand of the speeches which I am answering, it is twofold in character.
First, there is the general case against the House of Lords arising from the composition of that Assembly and from their conduct in bygone years. Secondly, there is a narrow and particular case against them out of their recent action. I think that will cover the whole ground. Well now, take our composition ; the first thing you hear said is this: — „What a ridiculous thing it is to say that a man should be a legislator because he is the son of his father!" I am not particulary concerned to defend the hereditary constitution of the House of Lords, and if we were all sitting in a room drawing up a new Second Chamber now, I do not imagine that any of us would attempt to constitute it mainly or exclusively on that basis. (Cheers). But the truth is that the House of Lords have grown up slowly, imperceptibly, upon no precon-ceived plan. Like most of our institutions, it has sprung from no definite plan or impulse. Its roots are deeply embedded in the remote origin of the past, and only by gradual and almost unforeseen measures has it attained its present development. And
yet on the whole, in spite of these features, throughout the ages for which it has existed, it has met with the satisfaction of the community as a whole — otherwise it would not have been al-lowed to continue to exist (cheers) — and it has contributed materially to the dignity and efficiency of the Government of the State. (Cheers). Now as regards the hereditary principle, I am not quite so sure as our critics are, that that principle does not play a considerable part in our public and every-day life. I need not speak of the part which it plays in filling our ancient and venerable throne. (Cheers). We have an hereditary Monarchy, and nobody, even among the most extreme socialists or advanced revolutionaries, would lay a finger either upon the character or the basis of that august institution.
E x a m p l e s of H e r e d i t y .
But I read the other day in a speech of one of these Minis-ters — „Is not an hereditary legislator just as absurd as an hereditary tailor would be?" Is an hereditary tailor entirely ab-surd? I have spent a good many years of my life in a country in the East where all professional occupations are hereditary, where every tailor and potter goldsmith and silversmith pursues his profession because he is the son of his father who did it before him. That is the basis of the whole of the professional life of the East, and I venture to submit to you that it is not entirely unknown in this country. We all of us know-you all know in Oldham-hereditary bankers, lawyers, soldiers, clergymen, and doctors, and I dare say hereditary cotton spinners (cheers), men who have taken to a trade because it was pursued by their fathers before them, and who take it up with all the advantages of the transmitted ability and experience which they derive from that source. Then take the hereditary system as applied to our legislators themselves. If you look at the English history of the middle of the 18th century you find that the three most promi-nent statesmen were Pitt, Fox, and Grenville. Cast your eye 40 years forward and you find that the three leading statesmen of England were their three sons, another Pitt, another Fox, and another Grenville. Then you need only refer to the Cannings, father and son, the Cecils, generation after generation (cheers), the Stanleys (cheers), the Cavendishes. Does not the list show you that there is a certain hereditary capacity that appears to pass down through the generations in the same family. Now, even in the House of Commons the hereditary principle is not altogether unknown. (Hear, hear). Have you never heard of a case of a man who was chosen for Parliament because he was the son of his father (cheers) who represented the place before him? I remember some years ago how glad we all were to well-come to that place a man bearing the distinguished name of Gladstone, and though he was justified himself by his subsequent
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career be was admitted to that because he was the son of his father, and for no other reason. I remember the congratulations that attended the first appearance of the distinguished son of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. (Cheers). And, again, if you look at your former member, although I understand he denies the pos-sibility of the transmission of hereditary political virtue, are we to believe he has done it by himself? (Laughter). May we not allow a little portion of the'credit of Mr. Winston Churchill to his distinguished father? (Hear, hear). While as I say, the here-ditary principle in almost every branch and aspect of our life is one of the most familiar and' acceptable principles, it only be-comes a blot and an offence when it is applied to the House of Lords.
T h e L o r d s a n d N a t i o n a l S e n t i m e n t .
Before I pass from this hereditary principle there are two con-siderations which I should like to submit to you which I think go far to justify its application. The first is this. That the prin-ciple has enabled the House of Lords for many centuries to re-present what I may call the permanent sentiment and temper of the British people. In the House of Commons, as- you know, you_ have constant and great changes. Sometimes the change is attributed to the swing of the pendulum. At other times great gusts of passion sweep across the surface of the country. You can never guarantee that in one Parliament you will have a great majority and in the next Parliament you will not have a greater majority on the other side. There are only 7]- millions of people on the roll of electors, but they are not the whole country, they are only 7 | out of 45 millions. Do you imagine that the whole country is swinging to and fro in the same ratio?
Not a bit; there is always in the background a steady, immu-table, stable factor in the national sentiment and national judg-ment, and it is precisely because you have had the hereditary element in the House of Lords that it has succeeded in more or less representing this more or less permanent factor in the national life.
T h e D a n g e r of P o p u l a r E l e c t i o n .
And the second consideration is this — you know it very well;
it has often been put before you — the members of the House of Lords, by virtue of their composition, are not exposed to all the dangers and temptations of popular election. I have been a member of Parliament and I know pretty well what they are.
You have to keep a pretty stiff upper lip and a very firm back in order to resist them. In the House of Lords there is no dan-ger of that. We do not have to trim our sails there to catch the passing gusts of popular passion. We are not threatened by gusts, we are not pestered by crotchet-mongers running around us to
force us to agree with their particular fads, and, most of all, we are not bound by pledges, too often rashly given, and at a later date most reluctantly redeemed. I want to be quite reasonable and I do not want to put the case for the hereditary principle too high. I have no doubt that in a reformed House of Lords that principle would be greatly modified in practice. I am enti-rely in favour of that being done (cheers) ; but before you de-nounce the hereditary principle in toto, before you eliminate it altogether from a Second Chamber, just listen to these words
— they were the words of Mr. Gladstone himself in 1871: —
„The reform of the House of Lords which has been recommen-ded is briefly this, that we shall reject and expel from the House of Lords what is called the hereditary principle. Now, Gentle-men", he went on, „I hope that I am, at least in earnest and sincere intention, what is called a Liberal politician, but before I agree and before I commit myself to expelling from the House of Lordsjthe hereditary principle, I will think once, I will think twice, I will even think thrice." (Cheers). Mr. Gladstone was prepared to think three times before he would consent to the abolition of the hereditary principle. Are his degenerate successors prepared to think once? Why, they tell you that they are not even prepared to think about the matter at all. (Laughter). And yet I think that the words which I have just read are worthy of the careful thought and attention of every sober-minded elector in this country. (Cheers).
T h e P e r s o n n e l of t h e H o u s e s .
But the House of Lords is, after all, not exclusively an here-ditary House. There are the Bishops, who, of course, represent their sees; there are the law-lords, who are placed there because of their great legal abilities in order to constitute the highest appellate tribunal in the land (cheers) ; and there are all the peers — a large number — who have been appointed for the first time in their own persons and whose peerage will only be-come hereditary in succeeding generations. When, therefore, I hear the House of Lords accused of being a non-representative body, I feel tempted to point out that there are no fewer than 170 members of that body who have been selected by popular constituencies for the House of Commons, some of them once, many of them twice, and some of them three times and more, and who, if they were there now, I venture to say, would be retur-ned again and again. (Cheers). Are we to say that all represen-tative character, all popular favour, all virtue drops away from these people the moment their fathers die and they find them-selves in the House of Lords ? (Cheers) . . .
Mr. G l a d s t o n e ' s O p i n i o n of t h e L o r d s .
I will answer the question in words which again you will respect because they are the words of Mr. Gladstone. He said
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in the House of Commons in July 1857: — „When I look back on the course of legislation in this country, when I recollect the Corporation and Test Acts, the Bill for the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament, the Reform Act, the Municipal Corpora-tion Bill, the Bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Navigation Laws and the Succession Test Bill — when I re-member that one and all of these have been acceded to, some-times in conscientious reluctance, but always in honourable and gracefull concession on the part of the Lords to the wishes of the people, I am not prepared lightly to forgo that confidence which I repose in the House of Lords, and I am not prepared to say that if that House conscientiously withholds its assent from a particular measure which it deems to be at variance with the principles of the Constitution it is not entitled to give that judgment; and nothing but a consideration of the highest and most urgent public interest should induce us to interfere with its free and independent action". Gentlemen, that is a very notable quotation, and here again I prefer to be on the side of Mr. Gladstone to that of his successor in the present day. (Hear, hear). Well, I will now leave this part of the subject and will only say that I hope upon it I have said enough to show that the House of Lords has exercised its function as a Second Chamber on the whole with circumspection, with moderation, and with judgment, and that it has on the whole correctly ganged public opinion.
(Cheers). Sometimes it has anticipated and even led it. It has seldom miscalculated it; it has never defied it. It has not been anxious to defy it now, and if the claim I have made can be established then I think it cannot be denied that the House of
(Cheers). Sometimes it has anticipated and even led it. It has seldom miscalculated it; it has never defied it. It has not been anxious to defy it now, and if the claim I have made can be established then I think it cannot be denied that the House of