no right, even if we had the inclination, to leave it
uncompleted. Certainly we shall not be so foolish, or play so false to
those who have supported us, as to fight on any ground but that of our
own choosing, or at any time but that most advantageous to the general
interest of the Progressive cause.

The circumstances of the period are peculiar. The powers of the House
of Lords to impede, and by impeding to discredit, the House of Commons
are strangely bestowed, strangely limited, and still more strangely
exercised. There are little things which they can maul; there are big
things they cannot touch; there are Bills which they pass, although
they believe them to be wrong; there are Bills which they reject,
although they know them to be right. The House of Lords can prevent
the trams running over Westminster Bridge; but it cannot prevent a
declaration of war. It can reject a Bill prohibiting foreign workmen
being brought in to break a British strike; it cannot amend a Bill to
give old-age pensions to 600,000 people. It can thwart a Government in
the minute details of its legislation; it cannot touch the whole vast
business of finance. It can prevent the abolition of the plural voter;
but it could not prevent the abolition of the police. It can refuse a
Constitution to Ireland, but not, luckily, to Africa.

Lord Lansdowne, in his leadership of the House of Lords during the
present Parliament, has put forward claims on its behalf far more
important and crude than ever were made by the late Lord Salisbury. No
Tory leader in modern times has ever taken so high a view of its
rights, and at the same time no one has shown a more modest conception
of its duties. In destroying the Education Bill of 1906 the House of
Lords asserted its right to resist the opinion of a majority of members
of the House of Commons, fresh from election, upon a subject which had
been one of the most prominent issues of the election. In rejecting
the Licensing Bill of 1908 they have paraded their utter unconcern for
the moral welfare of the mass of their fellow-countrymen.

There is one feature in the guidance of the House of Lords by Lord
Lansdowne which should specially be noticed, and that is the air of
solemn humbug with which this ex-Whig is always at pains to invest its
proceedings. The Nonconformist child is forced into the Church school
in single-school areas in the name of parents' rights and religious
equality. The Licensing Bill is rejecte