would probably have been mutilated or cast out by
the House of Lords, and the Executive Government would have found
itself responsible for carrying out the government of Colonies on
lines of which it wholly disapproved, and after their own policy had
been rejected.

I proceed to inquire on what principle the House of Lords deals with
Liberal measures. The right hon. Member for Dover[8] by an imaginative
effort assures us that they occupy the position of the umpire. Are
they even a sieve, a strainer, to stop legislation if it should reveal
an undue or undesirable degree of Radicalism or Socialism? Are they
the complementary critic--the critic who sees all the things which the
ordinary man does not see? No one can maintain it. The attitude which
the House of Lords adopts towards Liberal measures is purely tactical.
When they returned to their "gilded Chamber" after the general
election they found on the Woolsack and on the Treasury Bench a Lord
Chancellor and a Government with which they were not familiar. When
their eyes fell upon those objects, there was a light in them which
meant one thing--murder; murder tempered, no doubt, by those
prudential considerations which always restrain persons from acts
which are contrary to the general feeling of the society in which they
live. But their attitude towards the present Government has from the
beginning been to select the best and most convenient opportunity of
humiliating and discrediting them, and finally of banishing them from
power.

Examine, in contrast with that of the Education Bill, their treatment
of the Trades Disputes Bill. Lord Halsbury described that Bill as
outrageous and tyrannous, and said it contained a section more
disgraceful than any that appeared in any English Statute. On what
ground then did they pass that Bill, if it was not the ground of
political opportunism and partisanship? What safeguard can such a
Second Chamber be to the commercial interests of this country? Is it
not clear that they are prepared to sacrifice, if necessary, what they
consider to be the true interests of the country in order to secure an
advantage for the political Party whose obedient henchmen they are?
The Trades Disputes Bill was a very inconvenient measure for the
Conservative Party to leave open, because so long as it was left open
a great mass of democratic opinion was directed against them. And so
it was passed. On the other hand, the Education Bill was very
inconvenie