an essentially representative element (though not resulting
from direct election), apart altogether from the fact that heredity
maintained there a number of persons whose title had descended
from men who were originally representative Englishmen,
and whose successors, on the whole, were no less so. In the
days when kings really governed in England, the most powerful
check on the king, in the interest of the nation at large, was the
peerage; the earls and barons, in parliament, were the chief
bulwark of the people against tyranny. It was they who stood
for the nation in extorting Magna Carta from King John;
and as time went on, the representation of the commons in
parliament was largely due, not to any direct popular pressure,
but to the desire of the kings to influence the lower ranks of
society independently of the nobles. Up to the reign of Charles I.,
at all events, the House of Lords was actually the predominant
partner in parliament; the House of Commons was recruited
from and returned by only a small section of the commons as
now understood; and Oliver Cromwell—certainly a “popular”
leader in the ordinary sense—made as short work of it as he
did of the king himself. Up to 1832, when the first modern
Reform Act was passed, the House of Commons was an oligarchical
body, and the electors themselves were a small and
privileged class. It is only since then—except in the granting of
supplies—that first equality, and then predominance, in respect of
the House of Lords, has been asserted by the House of Commons,
owing to the fact that an extended suffrage has made the estate
of the commons more adequately coincident with the nation as a
whole. Prior to 1832 it was the king who directly made and
unmade ministries; in 1835 for the first time the result of a
general election caused a change of ministry; and the modern
view of the House of Lords as purely a revising chamber dates
only from then. But the very fact that the responsibility
for creating new peerages now passed to ministers dependent
on popular suffrage may well justify the contention that henceforth
it indirectly included a select number of representative
men of the nation, holding their seats in virtue of authoritative
nomination and not by heredity. In the sixty years preceding
1906 no fewer than 419 new peerages were created, 238 by the
Liberal party, 181 by the Conservative, or a balance of 57 creations
on the Liberal side.[1] It is fair to assume that all these new
peers were created as being representative men in the nation for
one reason or another. And an analysis of the composition of the
House of Lords in 1906 would have led an unprejudiced outside
observer to suppose that its competence to speak on national
affairs had not been weakened by any dependence on the
hereditary title. It included 166 men who had been M.P.’s
(i.e. had been elected by popular vote to the House of Commons),
172 who had held government office, 140 who had been mayors
of county councils, 207 who had served in the army or navy,
40 who had been judges or lawyers, 7 ex-viceroys, 16 ex-governors
of colonies, 50 who had been eminent in art, letters,
manufactures or trade, and 21 archbishops or bishops (appointed
by ministerial recommendation, but only after they had worked
up to eminence from being curates, and therefore had wide
experience of the social life of the people).
It is possible to compare a chamber so composed somewhat favourably with a modern House of Commons, if the point at is surf the provision of “representative men” (Le. men generally accepted as national spokesmen)—be strictly considered, apart from the method of selecting them by direct popular vote.[2] In the House of Lords the method is heredity plus selection by the political party which the popular vote has put in power; while in the election of members of the House of Commons the popular choice is doubly limited—first, by the fact that only the enfranchised commons can vote (in 1910 about 712 millions out of 43); and secondly, because the choice must be made from among candidates who are themselves not disqualified for various reasons (for instance they must not be clergymen, nor entitled to seats in the House of Lords). Now, to carry out the real “will of the nation” in parliament must require (1) a reasonable knowledge of the wishes of the nation, and (2) an understanding of the best ways of expressing those wishes in legislation and administration. In the case of the peers, those who sit as having been originally created and therefore selected for the purpose—a considerable section of those actively attending—the qualifications are obvious: and it is only necessary to deal with those qualified by inheritance of title. Here too, in a number of cases, preceding experience in the House of Commons, to which the popular vote has returned them while they were only in the succession to a peerage, is a frequent factor; but, apart from that, the art of legislation is one which may well be considered to require a certain special disposition and mental equipment. Though allowance must be made for exceptional cases, it is obvious that the son of a man who has been responsible for legislating, who has himself been brought up as one who will have to take his part in legislating, is most likely, in any society, to have qualified himself for the business, as in the case of any profession or trade. He has been accustomed to breathe the parliamentary atmosphere, and as one of a leisured class has had the opportunity to study the subject of legislation, and to obtain experience of its conditions. This is so generally accepted that, in fact, the same theory is commonly applied to candidates for the House of Commons, and predominantly to members of that House who are given office. The names of more than one generation are writ large in English history in the case of the Pitts, Foxes, Grenvilles, Cannings, Cecils, Stanleys and Cavendishes. The sons of famous political commoners, a Gladstone, a Harcourt, a Churchill, a Primrose, a Chamberlain, have by consent a superior claim, even within the radical or popular party, by no means resting originally or primarily on known personal merit or proved experience, for selection as candidates and then for preferment to office; and it is a very common occurrence for younger sons of peers to be selected as candidates (liberal as much as conservative) for parliament, even though from general intellectual considerations they may appear in no way the equals of other men. They have been brought up to the business; and they are therefore adapted for it by heredity. If the House of Commons were deprived of those members who obtained their seats or their offices primarily for reasons of heredity, it would lose many of its best men—as indeed it occasionally does, to its disadvantage and possibly to the chagrin of the individuals themselves, when succession to a peerage forces a prominent parliamentarian to relinquish his seat in the Lower House and to take his place in the “unrepresentative” chamber.
It remains nevertheless the fact that, in politics, “representative”
government means not so much government by men
really representative of the nation as government in
the name of the whole body of citizens (and predominantly
the estate of the commons) through a chamber
or chambers composed of elected deputies. TheExpression of the “Will of
the People.”
object in view is the expression of the “will of the
people”—the people, that is, who are sovereign. Clearly the
only pure case of such government can be in a republic,
where there is only one “estate,” the free citizens. The home
and historical type of representative government, the United
Kingdom, is strictly no such case, since the monarchy and
the House of Lords exist and work on lines constitutionally
independent of any direct contact with the electorate. British
practice, however, is of vital importance for the theory of representative
institutions, and it is worth while to point out that
the “will of the people” may even so be effectively expressed—some
people may think even more effectively expressed than
in a pure republic. The king and the House of Lords, quâ
- ↑ Between January 1906 and January 1910 thirty-five more new peers were created by Liberal premiers, and seven more in June 1910.
- ↑ Speaking at Oldham on December 15, 1909, Lord Curzon said: “I have taken out the figures of the past 200 years, and I tell you this, that during that time 41 of our prime ministers have sat in the Lords and only 17 in the Commons; of our foreign secretaries, 56 in the Lords and only 8 in the Commons; of our colonial secretaries, 46 in the Lords and 25 in the Commons; of our war ministers, 29 in the Lords and 31 in the Commons; of first lords of the Admiralty, 48 in the Lords and 28 in the Commons.”
