an aristocracy of
character or intellect, but an aristocracy--save the mark--of money,
which is bound to take its place.

Five short years and four rejected measures. Glance back over it all.
The wild blood on both sides, and the cunning on one. The foolish
comfortable words spoken in every drawing-room throughout the United
Kingdom. "Yes, they are terrible: what a lot of harm they would do if
they could. Thank God we have a House of Lords." Think now that this
was commonplace conversation only three short years ago. And all the
time the ears of the masses were being poisoned. Week after week and
month after month some laughed but others toiled. The laughers, like
the French nobles before the Revolution, said contemptuously, "They
will not dare." Why should they not? There were men among them for whom
the Ark of the Covenant had no sanctity. And then, when the
combinations were complete, when those who stood out had been
kicked--there can be no other word--into compliance, the blows fell
quickly. A Budget was ingeniously prepared for rejection, and, the
Lords falling into the trap, the storm broke, with its hurricane of
abuse and misrepresentation. We had one election which was
inconclusive. Then befell the death of King Edward. There was a second
election, carefully engineered and prepared for, rushed upon a nation
which had been denied the opportunity of hearing the other side. The
Government had out-maneuvered the Opposition and muzzled them to the
last moment in a Conference sworn to secrecy. It was remarkably clever
and incredibly unscrupulous. They won again. They had not increased
their numbers, but they had maintained their position, and this time
their victory, however achieved, could not be gainsaid. For a moment
there was a lull, only some vague talk of "guaranties," asserted,
scoffed at and denied, for the ordinary business of the country was in
arrears, and the Coronation, with all its pomp of circumstance and
power, all its medieval splendor and appeal to history and sentiment,
turned people's thoughts elsewhere.

And then, on the day the pageantry closed, Mr. Asquith launched his
Thunderbolt. Few men living will ever learn the true story of the
guaranties, suffice it that somehow he had secured them. Whatever the
resistance of the Second Chamber might be, it could be overcome. At his
dictation the Constitution was to fall. There was no escape; the Bill
must surely pass. It rested with the Lords themsel