der if the Conservative Party realise, to
use an expressive vulgarism, what they are "letting themselves in for"
when this question comes to be fought out on every platform in every
constituency in the country? They will not have to defend an ideal
Second Chamber; they will not be able to confine themselves to airy
generalities about a bicameral system and its advantages; they will
have to defend _this_ Second Chamber as it is--one-sided, hereditary,
unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee. They will have to
defend it with all its anomalies, all its absurdities, and all its
personal bias--with all its achievements that have darkened the pages
of the history of England. And let me say that weighty constitutional
authorities have not considered that the policy on which we have
embarked in moving this Resolution is unreasonable. Mr. Bagehot says
of the House of Lords:

"It may lose its veto as the Crown has lost its veto. If most of its
members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of one
class, and that not quite the best; if its doors are shut against
genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not L5,000 a
year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so
much kingly power is gone--no one knows how."

What is the position of the Conservative Party when they attempt to
defend the House of Lords? They are always telling us to imitate the
Colonies; they are always telling us that we ought to adopt the fiscal
systems and other methods employed in the self-governing Colonies; but
what is their unprejudiced view of the relations which are held
between the two Chambers under the bicameral system in the Colonies
and as established by their own Australian Commonwealth Act in the
last Parliament? By that Act they have given power to the Lower
Chamber to over-ride the Upper Chamber in certain circumstances. The
Commonwealth Act says that when the Chambers differ they shall meet
together, and that the majority shall decide, measures being taken,
however, that the numbers of the Upper Chamber shall not be such as
to swamp the opinion of the Lower Chamber. Imitating them, and
following in their footsteps, we have adopted such a plan in the
Transvaal and Orange River Colony Constitutions.

The Leader of the Opposition asked us yesterday whether the people are
not often wrong, and he proceeded characteristically to suggest that
he always considered them wrong when they v