d in the highest interests of
temperance. Professing to be a bulwark of the commercial classes
against Radical and Socialistic legislation, the House of Lords passes
an Old-Age Pensions Bill, which it asserts will be fatal alike to
public finance and public thrift, a Mines Eight Hours Bill, which it
is convinced will cripple British industry, and a Trades Disputes
Bill, which it loudly declared tyrannous and immoral. Posing as a
Chamber of review remote from popular passion, far from the swaying
influences of the electorate, it nevertheless exhibits a taste for
cheap electioneering, a subserviency to caucus direction, and a party
spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective
Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of
notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we
discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip
from the party agent.

It is not possible for reasonable men to defend such a system or such
an institution. Counter-checks upon a democratic Assembly there may
be, perhaps there should be. But those counter-checks should be in the
nature of delay, and not in the nature of arrest; they should operate
evenly and equally against both political parties, and not against
only one of them; and above all they should be counter-checks
conceived and employed in the national interest and not in a partisan
interest. These abuses and absurdities have now reached a point when
it is certain that reform, effective and far-reaching, must be the
necessary issue at a general election; and, whatever may be the result
of that election, be sure of this, that no Liberal Government will at
any future time assume office without securing guarantees that that
reform shall be carried out.

There is, however, one reason which would justify a Government,
circumstanced and supported as we are, in abandoning prematurely the
trust confided to us by the country. When a Government is impotent,
when it is destitute of ideas and devoid of the power to give effect
to them, when it is brought to a complete arrest upon the vital and
essential lines of its policy, then I entirely agree that the sooner
it divests itself of responsibilities which it cannot discharge, the
better for the country it governs and the Party it represents. No one
who looks back over the three busy years of legislation which have
just been completed can find any grounds for such a view of our
p