G. A. Henty - "Through the Fray"

Rabindranath Tagore - "Stray Birds"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Malachi"

Martin Luther - "Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther"

The English Constitution

W >> Walter Bagehot >> The English Constitution




This advice, too, will be said to be obvious; but I have the
greatest fear that, when the time comes, it will be cast aside as
timid and cowardly. So strong are the combative propensities of man
that he would rather fight a losing battle than not fight at all. It
is most difficult to persuade people that by fighting they may
strengthen the enemy, yet that would be so here; since a losing
battle--especially a long and well-fought one--would have thoroughly
taught the lower orders to combine, and would have left the higher
orders face to face with an irritated, organised, and superior
voting power. The courage which strengthens an enemy and which so
loses, not only the present battle, but many after battles, is a
heavy curse to men and nations.

In one minor respect, indeed, I think we may see with distinctness
the effect of the Reform Bill of 1867. I think it has completed one
change which the Act of 1832 began; it has completed the change
which that Act made in the relation of the House of Lords to the
House of Commons. As I have endeavoured in this book to explain, the
literary theory of the English Constitution is on this point quite
wrong as usual. According to that theory, the two Houses are two
branches of the legislature, perfectly equal and perfectly distinct.
But before the Act of 1832 they were not so distinct; there was a
very large and a very strong common element. By their commanding
influence in many boroughs and counties the Lords nominated a
considerable part of the Commons; the majority of the other part
were the richer gentry--men in most respects like the Lords, and
sympathising with the Lords. Under the Constitution as it then was
the two Houses were not in their essence distinct; they were in
their essence similar; they were, in the main, not Houses of
contrasted origin, but Houses of like origin. The predominant part
of both was taken from the same class--from the English gentry,
titled and untitled. By the Act of 1832 this was much altered. The
aristocracy and the gentry lost their predominance in the House of
Commons; that predominance passed to the middle class. The two
Houses then became distinct, but then they ceased to be co-equal.
The Duke of Wellington, in a most remarkable paper, has explained
what pains he took to induce the Lords to submit to their new
position, and to submit, time after time, their will to the will of
the Commons.

The Reform Act of 1867 has, I think, unmistakably completed the
effect which the Act of 1832 began, but left unfinished. The middle
class element has gained greatly by the second change, and the
aristocratic element has lost greatly. If you examine carefully the
lists of members, especially of the most prominent members, of
either side of the House, you will not find that they are in general
aristocratic names. Considering the power and position of the titled
aristocracy, you will perhaps be astonished at the small degree in
which it contributes to the active part of our governing assembly.
The spirit of our present House of Commons is plutocratic, not
aristocratic; its most prominent statesmen are not men of ancient
descent or of great hereditary estate; they are men mostly of
substantial means, but they are mostly, too, connected more or less
closely with the new trading wealth. The spirit of the two
Assemblies has become far more contrasted than it ever was.

The full effect of the Reform Act of 1832 was indeed postponed by
the cause which I mentioned just now. The statesmen who worked the
system which was put up had themselves been educated under the
system which was pulled down. Strangely enough, their predominant
guidance lasted as long as the system which they created. Lord
Palmerston, Lord Russell, Lord Derby, died or else lost their
influence within a year or two of 1867. The complete consequences of
the Act of 1832 upon the House of Lords could not be seen while the
Commons were subject to such aristocratic guidance. Much of the
change which might have been expected from the Act of 1832 was held
in suspense, and did not begin till that measure had been followed
by another of similar and greater power.

The work which the Duke of Wellington in part performed has now,
therefore, to be completed also. He met the half difficulty; we have
to surmount the whole one. We have to frame such tacit rules, to
establish such ruling but unenacted customs, as will make the House
of Lords yield to the Commons when and as often as our new
Constitution requires that it should yield. I shall be asked, How
often is that, and what is the test by which you know it? I answer
that the House of Lords must yield whenever the opinion of the
Commons is also the opinion of the nation, and when it is clear that
the nation has made up its mind. Whether or not the nation has made
up its mind is a question to be decided by all the circumstances of
the case, and in the common way in which all practical questions are
decided. There are some people who lay down a sort of mechanical
test; they say the House of Lords should be at liberty to reject a
measure passed by the Commons once or more, and then if the Commons
send it up again and again, infer that the nation is determined. But
no important practical question in real life can be uniformly
settled by a fixed and formal rule in this way. This rule would
prove that the Lords might have rejected the Reform Act of 1832.
Whenever the nation was both excited and determined, such a rule
would be an acute and dangerous political poison. It would teach the
House of Lords that it might shut its eyes to all the facts of real
life and decide simply by an abstract formula. If in 1832 the Lords
had so acted, there would have been a revolution. Undoubtedly there
is a general truth in the rule. Whether a bill has come up once
only, or whether it has come up several times, is one important fact
in judging whether the nation is determined to have that measure
enacted; it is an indication, but it is only one of the indications.
There are others equally decisive. The unanimous voice of the people
may be so strong, and may be conveyed through so many organs, that
it may be assumed to be lasting.

Englishmen are so very miscellaneous, that that which has REALLY
convinced a great and varied majority of them for the present may
fairly be assumed to be likely to continue permanently to convince
them. One sort might easily fall into a temporary and erroneous
fanaticism, but all sorts simultaneously are very unlikely to do so.

I should venture so far as to lay down for an approximate rule, that
the House of Lords ought, on a first-class subject, to be slow?--
very slow--in rejecting a Bill passed even once by a large majority
of the House of Commons. I would not of course lay this down as an
unvarying rule; as I have said, I have for practical purposes no
belief in unvarying rules. Majorities may be either genuine or
fictitious, and if they are not genuine, if they do not embody the
opinion of the representative as well as the opinion of the
constituency, no one would wish to have any attention paid to them.
But if the opinion of the nation be strong and be universal, if it
be really believed by members of Parliament, as well as by those who
send them to Parliament, in my judgment the Lords should yield at
once, and should not resist it.

My main reason is one which has not been much urged. As a
theoretical writer I can venture to say, what no elected member of
Parliament, Conservative or Liberal, can venture to say, that I am
exceedingly afraid of the ignorant multitude of the new
constituencies. I wish to have as great and as compact a power as
possible to resist it. But a dissension between the Lords and
Commons divides that resisting power; as I have explained, the House
of Commons still mainly represents the plutocracy, the Lords
represent the aristocracy. The main interest of both these classes
is now identical, which is to prevent or to mitigate the rule of
uneducated numbers. But to prevent it effectually, they must not
quarrel among themselves; they must not bid one against the other
for the aid of their common opponent. And this is precisely the
effect of a division between Lords and Commons. The two great bodies
of the educated rich go to the constituencies to decide between
them, and the majority of the constituencies now consist of the
uneducated poor. This cannot be for the advantage of any one.

In doing so besides the aristocracy forfeit their natural position?-
-that by which they would gain most power, and in which they would
do most good. They ought to be the heads of the plutocracy. In all
countries new wealth is ready to worship old wealth, if old wealth
will only let it, and I need not say that in England new wealth is
eager in its worship. Satirist after satirist has told us how quick,
how willing, how anxious are the newly-made rich to associate with
the ancient rich. Rank probably in no country whatever has so much
"market" value as it has in England just now. Of course there have
been many countries in which certain old families, whether rich or
poor, were worshipped by whole populations with a more intense and
poetic homage; but I doubt if there has ever been any in which all
old families and all titled families received more ready observance
from those who were their equals, perhaps their superiors, in
wealth, their equals in culture, and their inferiors only in descent
and rank. The possessors of the "material" distinctions of life, as
a political economist would class them, rush to worship those who
possess the IMmaterial distinctions. Nothing can be more politically
useful than such homage, if it be skilfully used; no folly can be
idler than to repel and reject it.

The worship is the more politically important because it is the
worship of the political superior for the political inferior. At an
election the non-titled are much more powerful than the titled.
Certain individual peers have, from their great possessions, great
electioneering influence, but, as a whole, the House of Peers is not
a principal electioneering force. It has so many poor men inside it,
and so many rich men outside it, that its electioneering value is
impaired. Besides, it is in the nature of the curious influence of
rank to work much more on men singly than on men collectively; it is
an influence which most men--at least most Englishmen--feel very
much, but of which most Englishmen are somewhat ashamed.
Accordingly, when any number of men are collected together, each of
whom worships rank in his heart, the whole body will patiently hear-
-in many cases will cheer and approve--some rather strong speeches
against rank. Each man is a little afraid that his "sneaking
kindness for a lord," as Mr. Gladstone put it, be found out; he is
not sure how far that weakness is shared by those around him. And
thus Englishmen easily find themselves committed to anti-
aristocratic sentiments which are the direct opposite of their real
feeling, and their collective action may be bitterly hostile to rank
while the secret sentiment of each separately is especially
favourable to rank. In 1832 the close boroughs, which were largely
held by peers, and were still more largely supposed to be held by
them, were swept away with a tumult of delight; and in another
similar time of great excitement, the Lords themselves, if they
deserve it, might pass away. The democratic passions gain by
fomenting a diffused excitement, and by massing men in concourses;
the aristocratic sentiments gain by calm and quiet, and act most on
men by themselves, in their families, and when female influence is
not absent. The overt electioneering power of the Lords does not at
all equal its real social power. The English plutocracy, as is often
said of something yet coarser, must be "humoured, not drove"; they
may easily be impelled against the aristocracy, though they respect
it very much; and as they are much stronger than the aristocracy,
they might, if angered, even destroy it; though in order to destroy
it, they must help to arouse a wild excitement among the ignorant
poor, which, if once roused, may not be easily calmed, and which may
be fatal to far more than its beginners intend.

This is the explanation of the anomaly which puzzles many clever
lords. They think, if they do not say, "Why are we pinned up here?
Why are we not in the Commons where we could have so much more
power? Why is this nominal rank given us, at the price of
substantial influence? If we prefer real weight to unreal prestige,
why may we not have it?" The reply is, that the whole body of the
Lords have an incalculably greater influence over society while
there is still a House of Lords, than they would have if the House
of Lords were abolished; and that though one or two clever young
peers might do better in the Commons, the old order of peers, young
and old, clever and not clever, is much better where it is. The
selfish instinct of the mass of peers on this point is a keener and
more exact judge of the real world than the fine intelligence of one
or two of them.

If the House of Peers ever goes, it will go in a storm, and the
storm will not leave all else as it is. It will not destroy the
House of Peers and leave the rich young peers, with their wealth and
their titles, to sit in the Commons. It would probably sweep all
titles before it--at least all legal titles--and somehow or other it
would break up the curious system by which the estates of great
families all go to the eldest son. That system is a very artificial
one; you may make a fine argument for it, but you cannot make a loud
argument, an argument which would reach and rule the multitude. The
thing looks like injustice, and in a time of popular passion it
would not stand. Much short of the compulsory equal division of the
Code Napoleon, stringent clauses might be provided to obstruct and
prevent these great aggregations of property. Few things certainly
are less likely than a violent tempest like this to destroy large
and hereditary estates. But then, too, few things are less likely
than an outbreak to destroy the House of Lords--my point is, that a
catastrophe which levels one will not spare the other.

I conceive, therefore, that the great power of the House of Lords
should be exercised very timidly and very cautiously. For the sake
of keeping the headship of the plutocracy, and through that of the
nation, they should not offend the plutocracy; the points upon which
they have to yield are mostly very minor ones, and they should yield
many great points rather than risk the bottom of their power. They
should give large donations out of income, if by so doing they keep,
as they would keep, their capital intact. The Duke of Wellington
guided the House of Lords in this manner for years, and nothing
could prosper better for them or for the country, and the Lords have
only to go back to the good path in which he directed them.

The events of 1870 caused much discussion upon life peerages, and we
have gained this great step, that whereas the former leader of the
Tory party in the Lords--Lord Lyndhurst--defeated the last proposal
to make life peers, Lord Derby, when leader of that party, desired
to create them. As I have given in this book what seemed to me good
reasons for making them, I need not repeat those reasons here; I
need only say how the notion stands in my judgment now.

I cannot look on life peerages in the way in which some of their
strongest advocates regard them; I cannot think of them as a mode in
which a permanent opposition or a contrast between the Houses of
Lords and Commons is to be remedied. To be effectual in that way,
life peerages must be very numerous. Now the House of Lords will
never consent to a very numerous life peerage without a storm; they
must be in terror to do it, or they will not do it. And if the storm
blows strongly enough to do so much, in all likelihood it will blow
strongly enough to do much more. If the revolution is powerful
enough and eager enough to make an immense number of life peers,
probably it will sweep away the hereditary principle in the Upper
Chamber entirely. Of course one may fancy it to be otherwise; we may
conceive of a political storm just going to a life-peerage limit,
and then stopping suddenly. But in politics we must not trouble
ourselves with exceedingly exceptional accidents; it is quite
difficult enough to count on and provide for the regular and plain
probabilities. To speak mathematically, we may easily miss the
permanent course of the political curve if we engross our minds with
its cusps and conjugate points.

Nor, on the other hand, can I sympathise with the objection to life
peerages which some of the Radical party take and feel. They think
it will strengthen the Lords, and so make them better able to oppose
the Commons; they think, if they do not say: "The House of Lords is
our enemy and that of all Liberals; happily the mass of it is not
intellectual; a few clever men are born there which we cannot help,
but we will not 'vaccinate' it with genius; we will not put in a set
of clever men for their lives who may as likely as not turn against
us". This objection assumes that clever peers are just as likely to
oppose the Commons as stupid peers. But this I deny. Most clever men
who are in such a good place as the House of Lords plainly is, will
be very unwilling to lose it if they can help it; at the clear call
of a great duty they might lose it, but only at such a call. And it
does not take a clever man to see that systematic opposition of the
Commons is the only thing which can endanger the Lords, or which
will make an individual peer cease to be a peer. The greater you
make the SENSE of the Lords, the more they will see that their plain
interest is to make friends of the plutocracy, and to be the chiefs
of it, and not to wish to oppose the Commons where that plutocracy
rules.

It is true that a completely new House of Lords, mainly composed of
men of ability, selected because they were able, might very likely
attempt to make ability the predominant power in the State, and to
rival, if not conquer, the House of Commons, where the standard of
intelligence is not much above the common English average. But in
the present English world such a House of Lords would soon lose all
influence. People would say, "it was too clever by half," and in an
Englishman's mouth that means a very severe censure. The English
people would think it grossly anomalous if their elected assembly of
rich men were thwarted by a nominated assembly of talkers and
writers. Sensible men of substantial means are what we wish to be
ruled by, and a peerage of genius would not compare with it in
power.

It is true, too, that at present some of the cleverest peers are not
so ready as some others to agree with the Commons. But it is not
unnatural that persons of high rank and of great ability should be
unwilling to bend to persons of lower rank, and of certainly not
greater ability. A few of such peers (for they are very few) might
say, "We had rather not have our peerage if we are to buy it at the
price of yielding". But a life peer who had fought his way up to the
peers, would never think so. Young men who are born to rank may risk
it, not middle-aged or old men who have earned their rank. A
moderate number of life peers would almost always counsel moderation
to the Lords, and would almost always be right in counselling it.

Recent discussions have also brought into curious prominence another
part of the Constitution. I said in this book that it would very
much surprise people if they were only told how many things the
Queen could do without consulting Parliament, and it certainly has
so proved, for when the Queen abolished Purchase in the Army by an
act of prerogative (after the Lords had rejected the bill for doing
so), there was a great and general astonishment.

But this is nothing to what the Queen can by law do without
consulting Parliament. Not to mention other things, she could
disband the army (by law she cannot engage more than a certain
number of men, but she is not obliged to engage any men); she could
dismiss all the officers, from the General Commanding-in-Chief
downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off
all our ships of war and all our naval stores; she could make a
peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest
of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom,
male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United
Kingdom a "university"; she could dismiss most of the civil
servants; she could pardon all offenders. In a word, the Queen could
by prerogative upset all the action of civil government within the
Government, could disgrace the nation by a bad war or peace, and
could, by disbanding our forces, whether land or sea, leave us
defenceless against foreign nations. Why do we not fear that she
would do this, or any approach to it?

Because there are two checks--one ancient and coarse, the other
modern and delicate. The first is the check of impeachment. Any
Minister who advised the Queen so to use her prerogative as to
endanger the safety of the realm, might be impeached for high
treason, and would be so. Such a Minister would, in our technical
law, be said to have levied, or aided to levy, "war against the
Queen". This counsel to her so to use her prerogative would by the
Judge be declared to be an act of violence against herself, and in
that peculiar but effectual way the offender could be condemned and
executed. Against all gross excesses of the prerogative this is a
sufficient protection. But it would be no protection against minor
mistakes; any error of judgment committed bona fide, and only
entailing consequences which one person might say were good, and
another say were bad, could not be so punished. It would be possible
to impeach any Minister who disbanded the Queen's army, and it would
be done for certain. But suppose a Minister were to reduce the army
or the navy much below the contemplated strength--suppose he were
only to spend upon them one-third of the amount which Parliament had
permitted him to spend--suppose a Minister of Lord Palmerston's
principles were suddenly and while in office converted to the
principles of Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, and were to act on those
principles, he could not be impeached. The law of treason neither
could nor ought to be enforced against an act which was an error of
judgment, not of intention--which was in good faith intended not to
impair the well-being of the State, but to promote and augment it.
Against such misuses of the prerogative our remedy is a change of
Ministry. And in general this works very well. Every Minister looks
long before he incurs that penalty, and no one incurs it wantonly.
But, nevertheless, there are two defects in it. The first is that it
may not be a remedy at all; it may be only a punishment. A Minister
may risk his dismissal; he may do some act difficult to undo, and
then all which may be left will be to remove and censure him. And
the second is that it is only one House of Parliament which has much
to say to this remedy, such as it is; the House of Commons only can
remove a Minister by a vote of censure. Most of the Ministries for
thirty years have never possessed the confidence of the Lords, and
in such cases a vote of censure by the Lords could therefore have
but little weight; it would be simply the particular expression of a
general political disapproval. It would be like a vote of censure on
a Liberal Government by the Carlton, or on a Tory Government by the
Reform Club. And in no case has an adverse vote by the Lords the
same decisive effect as a vote of the Commons; the Lower House is
the ruling and the choosing House, and if a Government really
possesses that, it thoroughly possesses nine-tenths of what it
requires. The support of the Lords is an aid and a luxury; that of
the Commons is a strict and indispensable necessary.

These difficulties are particularly raised by questions of foreign
policy. On most domestic subjects, either custom or legislation has
limited the use of the prerogative. The mode of governing the
country, according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut,
and most administrations move in it because it is easier to move
there than anywhere else. Most political crises--the decisive votes,
which determine the fate of Government--are generally either on
questions of foreign policy or of new laws; and the questions of
foreign policy come out generally in this way, that the Government
has already done something, and that it is for the one part of the
legislature alone--for the House of Commons, and not for the House
of Lords--to say whether they have or have not forfeited their place
by the treaty they have made.

I think every one must admit that this is not an arrangement which
seems right on the face of it. Treaties are quite as important as
most laws, and to require the elaborate assent of representative
assemblies to every word of the law, and not to consult them even as
to the essence of the treaty, is prima facie ludicrous. In the older
forms of the English Constitution, this may have been quite right;
the power was then really lodged in the Crown, and because
Parliament met very seldom, and for other reasons, it was then
necessary that, on a multitude of points, the Crown should have much
more power than is amply sufficient for it at present. But now the
real power is not in the Sovereign, it is in the Prime Minister and
in the Cabinet--that is, in the hands of a committee appointed by
Parliament, and of the chairman of that committee. Now, beforehand,
no one would have ventured to suggest that a committee of Parliament
on foreign relations should be able to commit the country to the
greatest international obligations without consulting either
Parliament or the country. No other select committee has any
comparable power; and considering how carefully we have fettered and
limited the powers of all other subordinate authorities, our
allowing so much discretionary power on matters peculiarly dangerous
and peculiarly delicate to rest in the sole charge of one secret
committee is exceedingly strange. No doubt it may be beneficial;
many seeming anomalies are so, but at first sight it does not look
right.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.