CHAPTER XXIV.

LORDS AND SENATORS.

The existence of a hereditary House of Lords is a standing insult to the common sense of the English people.

England is governed by the eldest sons of the aristocracy.

Now, all who have had much to do with youth are perfectly agreed that, as a rule, the eldest son is the least intelligent in each family.

The first born is a _ballon d'essai_.

Moreover, the eldest son of the aristocrat is the sole heir to his father's title and estates. He knows that the fortune cannot escape him. And so, at school, he does no work; he leaves that sort of thing to his younger brothers, who will have to make their way in the world. When he leaves school or college, his chief subjects of preoccupation are Jews and jockeys.

It is needless to add that, in the House of Lords, the proportion of Conservatives to Liberals is overwhelming.

Consequently, when the Liberals are in power, the House of Lords is a dangerous institution, which may at every moment hinder the working of the governmental machine; and when the Conservatives are in power, the House of Lords is a useless institution, because its approbation can be relied upon in advance by the Government.

Does it not seem as if any second chamber must necessarily be dangerous or useless?

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There is an episode of French history which, to my mind, has been forgotten much too soon.

It teaches a great lesson on the usefulness of Upper Houses.

It was under the Second Empire.

The French Senate was then, intellectually speaking, a body of men superior to the House of Lords, since they were picked men--chosen by the Emperor, it is true, but still chosen. With the exception of Sainte-Beuve, these senators of the Empire were more or less Bonapartists; cardinals, archbishops, marshals, generals, literary men, all men of importance. The duty of the Senate was to watch over the Constitution, and to stop any bill, passed by the Chamber of Deputies, that might have endangered the existence of the actual form of Government.

Well, in July, 1870, the Franco-Prussian war broke out, and, on the 4th of September, in the same year, the Chamber of Deputies deposed the Emperor, and proclaimed the Republic.

Here was a grand opportunity for the senators of showing their power, and of earning the 30,000 francs that they each received from their master.

Yet what happened?

Not one voice was raised by the Senate against the act of the deputies.

Better still: nobody thought of taking the trouble to dismiss them officially. In presence of the strong will of the people, they packed up their traps quietly, and, to the best of my recollection, even forgot to go to the counting-house to receive their month's pay.

Poor senators! they seemed to have the measure of their power in stormy times to an inch.

In presence of the will of the nation, strongly manifested, the House of Lords would be as powerless as the French Senate was in 1870.

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A strange application of that great English principle, "the right man in the right place," is the existence of this same Upper House in England!

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What! can it be that this, the most sensible nation of the world, who has withdrawn all the privileges of its monarchs, who has imposed restrictions upon them, and will not even allow them to make the slightest political allusion in public, can it be this nation that has given itself so many masters at once? If the English do not allow their kings unlimited power, it is because, in their wisdom, they fear that those kings may be born fools, or grow into despots; but out of five hundred lords, three or four hundred may be born fools; where then is the gain? Better be governed by one fool than by three or four hundred.

Among a free people, intellect alone ought to be admitted into the councils of the nation.

No one could have a word to say against such men as the Duke of Argyll and the Marquis of Salisbury having a vote to cast into the scales of England's destinies; but would not these able members of the aristocracy of birth gain in influence and prestige, if they sat in an elected house, side by side with the aristocracy of talent?

Perhaps they may think so themselves.

The House of Lords owes its existence to the English taste for antiquities or curiosities; this people, to its honor be it said, only slowly rids itself of its trammels.

It may safely be predicted that the first great political gust of wind will blow away to pieces this sort of hydropathic establishment.