LORDS AND COMMONS
Thoughhoused in the same building, though separated by a mere matter of yards of stone-flagged corridor and lobby, no two assemblies more essentially different in character, than the House of Commons and the House of Peers, could easily be imagined. They exist, it is true, for legislative purposes, the one being complementary to the other; but when that has been said not many points of similarity remain. The Speaker of the Commons is enthroned in a majestic canopied chair, dominating the Assembly over which he rules; the Lord Chancellor, who presides over the proceedings of the House of Lords, squats on a monstrous crimson cushion, like a feather-bed gone mad, facing a yet more monstrous crimson cushion upon which, on occasions of State, His Majesty’s Judges sit back to back, reproducing that obsolete formation, the hollow square, with which we won the battle of Waterloo. The Speaker of the Commons is so called because he so seldom speaks—because, indeed, he is the only member of the House who may not speak, except as the House directs him. The Lord Chancellor, on the other hand, may, and habitually does, indulge in any flights of dithyrambic eloquence that happen to surge out of his teeming brain; and,though, unlike the Speaker, it does not lie with him to determine the order in which Noble Lords shall address the House, he might, if he chose, monopolise the whole time with his own speeches. Indeed, when Lord Birkenhead was Chancellor such a happening was not regarded as....
Fortunately, no such proceeding is possible in the House of Commons, or, with a series of stunning reports, Mr. Pringle, Commander Kenworthy and Mr. David Kirkwood would explode from suppressed mortification; and there are others whose peace of mind would be seriously impaired. But in the House of Lords they are only too anxious to avoid speaking; indeed, the difficulty usually seems to be, to overcome the natural reluctance of Noble Lords to allow their voices to be heard, in that rarefied atmosphere, before they have reached the years of threescore and ten, laid down by the Psalmist as the normal span of mankind.
In such circumstances of difference what wonder that each House regards the other as a sort oflusus naturæ, a freak, a giant pumpkin? This sense of strangeness finds the extreme of its expression, in the House of Commons, in such outbursts as Mr. Jack Jones’s bitter expostulation against “those marionettes,” on the occasion when the Commons were sent for by the Lords to hear a Commission read, and found in theGilded Chamber five Lords Commissioners resplendent in robes, seated in line; a solitary Back Bench Bishop, and one very junior Peer, probably a mere Baron, who, having wandered in by mistake, sought to efface himself under the lee of Black Rod’s box. “That,” said Mr. Jack Jones bitterly, “is what they think ofUs.” Indeed, a chilling disdain is the chief characteristic of the public attitude of the Upper towards the Lower House—as for instance when the latter, in a new Parliament, are haughtily bidden to “repair to the place where you are to sit,” as though they were fowls, “and proceed to the choice of some proper person to be your Speaker,” as though, without that admonition, they would choose somebody from the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. This well-bred contempt is repaid, in the Commons, by veiled references to “another place.” On this exchange of courtesies, the Peers seem to come off best; though, when it comes to practicalities, the positions are reversed, as any student of the Parliament Act knows only too well—little now remaining to the Peers of their former legislative glory.
They get it back upon the faithful Commons, in virtue of their position in the Constitution as the Supreme Judicial Tribunal of the kingdom, whereby it follows that, if, under the Parliament Act, they cannot oppose indefinitely the legislativewill of the Commons, they can to some small extent indemnify themselves, in their capacity of final interpretative authority, after the legislation has been passed. In practice they delegate this function to the Law Lords, five of whom, seated on the red benches with rickety desks in front of them, spend interminable mornings appraising subtle and circumlocutory arguments addressed to them from the Bar of the House by learned Counsel, standing at a kind of lectern, and surrounded by their fellows eager to propound distinctions. There is, however, nothing to prevent any Noble Lord so minded from partaking in this intellectual feast. Indeed, a legend obtains of a sturdy independent Peer, jealous of what would be called in the House of Commons “private members’ rights,” who, for years, insisted on attending, on these occasions, and delivering himself of ponderous allocutions of which no one present, himself least of all, understood one word of the meaning. It says much for the self-restraint of our Hereditary Nobles that his example has not been followed in modern times—though with Sir Frederick Banbury elevated to the Peerage one can never be quite sure.
The House of Lords, in short, is a living example of the utility of the unworkable, the practicality of the impracticable, and the incrediblesanity of the British Constitution. By all the rules of the game, in a Chamber composed of more than 600 people, fully half of whom have no serious political interests, governed apparently by no rules of procedure, and held in check, in fact, by nothing except tradition, the proceedings might be expected to be those of a disorderly rabble. In fact, 80 members is a good attendance, and 50 is nearer the average. The speeches are as a rule so closely reasoned, so admirably informed and of such excellence of style, as to be a source of never-ending envy to members of the Commons. Such a thing as a “constituency” speech is, of course, unknown. There are no “dockyard” members. Nothing need be said with a view to a general election. Nor can a member of the Upper Chamber be imagined making a speech, for the sake of speaking. It is not exactly an inviting atmosphere for such an undertaking. Imagine yourself standing up to address a huge and almost empty chamber, furnished with crimson benches, and tenanted by a smattering of elderly gentlemen all staring with polite fixity at their boots. It really looks as though this undemocratic and almost atavistic body, despite all its anomalies, was in practice something of an example to its elective fellow-House, both in the expeditious transaction of business and in the orderliness of its proceedings.Their very method of voting is indicative of their critical keenness, their impatience with the institutions of this world, their determination to be satisfied with nothing less than perfection. The form of the vote is not, as in the Commons, “Aye” and “No,” but “Content” and “Not Content.”
Usually they are not content.