t so far as to say that "the House of Commons has more sense than
any one in it". But there is no such "sense" in the House of Lords,
because there is no life. The Lower Chamber is a chamber of eager
politicians; the Upper (to say the least) of not eager ones.

This apathy is not, indeed, as great as the outside show would
indicate. The committees of the Lords (as is well known) do a great
deal of work and do it very well. And such as it is, the apathy is very
natural. A House composed of rich men who can vote by proxy without
coming will not come very much.[5] But after every abatement the real
indifference to their duties of most peers is a great defect, and the
apparent indifference is a dangerous defect. As far as politics go
there is profound truth in Lord Chesterfield's axiom, that "the world
must judge of you by what you seem, not by what you are". The world
knows what you seem; it does not know what you are. An assembly--a
revising assembly especially--which does not assemble, which looks as
if it does not care how it revises, is defective in a main political
ingredient. It may be of use, but it will hardly convince mankind that
it is so.

[5] In accordance with a recent resolution of the House of Lords
proxies are now disused.--Note to second edition.

The next defect is even more serious: it affects not simply the
apparent work of the House of Lords but the real work. For a revising
legislature, it is too uniformly made up. Errors are of various kinds;
but the constitution of the House of Lords only guards against a single
error--that of too quick change. The Lords--leaving out a few lawyers
and a few outcasts--are all landowners of more or less wealth. They all
have more or less the opinions, the merits, the faults of that one
class. They revise legislation, as far as they do revise it,
exclusively according to the supposed interests, the predominant
feelings, the inherited opinions, of that class. Since the Reform Act,
this uniformity of tendency has been very evident. The Lords have
felt--it would be harsh to say hostile, but still dubious, as to the
new legislation. There was a spirit in it alien to their spirit, and
which when they could they have tried to cast out. That spirit is what
has been termed the "modern spirit". It is not easy to concentrate its
essence in a phrase; it lives in our life, animates our actions,
suggests our thoughts. We all know what it means, though it would take
an essay