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 an essentially representative element (though not resulting from direct election), apart altogether from the fact that heredity maintained there a number of persons whose title had descended from men who were originally representative Englishmen, and whose successors, on the whole, were no less so. In the days when kings really governed in England, the most powerful check on the king, in the interest of the nation at large, was the peerage; the earls and barons, in parliament, were the chief bulwark of the people against tyranny. It was they who stood for the nation in extorting Magna Carta from King John; and as time went on, the representation of the commons in parliament was largely due, not to any direct popular pressure, but to the desire of the kings to influence the lower ranks of society independently of the nobles. Up to the reign of Charles I., at all events, the House of Lords was actually the predominant partner in parliament; the House of Commons was recruited from and returned by only a small section of the commons as now understood; and Oliver Cromwell—certainly a “popular” leader in the ordinary sense—made as short work of it as he did of the king himself. Up to 1832, when the first modern Reform Act was passed, the House of Commons was an oligarchical body, and the electors themselves were a small and privileged class. It is only since then—except in the granting of supplies—that first equality, and then predominance, in respect of the House of Lords, has been asserted by the House of Commons, owing to the fact that an extended suffrage has made the estate of the commons more adequately coincident with the nation as a whole. Prior to 1832 it was the king who directly made and unmade ministries; in 1835 for the first time the result of a general election caused a change of ministry; and the modern view of the House of Lords as purely a revising chamber dates only from then. But the very fact that the responsibility for creating new peerages now passed to ministers dependent on popular suffrage may well justify the contention that henceforth it indirectly included a select number of representative men of the nation, holding their seats in virtue of authoritative nomination and not by heredity. In the sixty years preceding 1906 no fewer than 419 new peerages were created, 238 by the Liberal party, 181 by the Conservative, or a balance of 57 creations on the Liberal side. It is fair to assume that all these new peers were created as being representative men in the nation for one reason or another. And an analysis of the composition of the House of Lords in 1906 would have led an unprejudiced outside observer to suppose that its competence to speak on national affairs had not been weakened by any dependence on the hereditary title. It included 166 men who had been M.P.’s (i.e. had been elected by popular vote to the House of Commons), 172 who had held government office, 140 who had been mayors of county councils, 207 who had served in the army or navy, 40 who had been judges or lawyers, 7 ex-viceroys, 16 ex-governors of colonies, 50 who had been eminent in art, letters, manufactures or trade, and 21 archbishops or bishops (appointed by ministerial recommendation, but only after they had worked up to eminence from being curates, and therefore had wide experience of the social life of the people).

It is possible to compare a chamber so composed somewhat favourably with a modern House of Commons, if the point at is surf the provision of “representative men” (Le. men generally accepted as national spokesmen)—be strictly considered, apart from the method of selecting them by direct popular vote. In the House of Lords the method is heredity plus selection by the political party which the popular vote has put in power; while in the election of members of the House

of Commons the popular choice is doubly limited—first, by the fact that only the enfranchised commons can vote (in 1910 about 7 millions out of 43); and secondly, because the choice must be made from among candidates who are themselves not disqualified for various reasons (for instance they must not be clergymen, nor entitled to seats in the House of Lords). Now, to carry out the real “will of the nation” in parliament must require (1) a reasonable knowledge of the wishes of the nation, and (2) an understanding of the best ways of expressing those wishes in legislation and administration. In the case of the peers, those who sit as having been originally created and therefore selected for the purpose—a considerable section of those actively attending—the qualifications are obvious: and it is only necessary to deal with those qualified by inheritance of title. Here too, in a number of cases, preceding experience in the House of Commons, to which the popular vote has returned them while they were only in the succession to a peerage, is a frequent factor; but, apart from that, the art of legislation is one which may well be considered to require a certain special disposition and mental equipment. Though allowance must be made for exceptional cases, it is obvious that the son of a man who has been responsible for legislating, who has himself been brought up as one who will have to take his part in legislating, is most likely, in any society, to have qualified himself for the business, as in the case of any profession or trade. He has been accustomed to breathe the parliamentary atmosphere, and as one of a leisured class has had the opportunity to study the subject of legislation, and to obtain experience of its conditions. This is so generally accepted that, in fact, the same theory is commonly applied to candidates for the House of Commons, and predominantly to members of that House who are given office. The names of more than one generation are writ large in English history in the case of the Pitts, Foxes, Grenvilles, Cannings, Cecils, Stanleys and Cavendishes. The sons of famous political commoners, a Gladstone, a Harcourt, a Churchill, a Primrose, a Chamberlain, have by consent a superior claim, even within the radical or popular party, by no means resting originally or primarily on known personal merit or proved experience, for selection as candidates and then for preferment to office; and it is a very common occurrence for younger sons of peers to be selected as candidates (liberal as much as conservative) for parliament, even though from general intellectual considerations they may appear in no way the equals of other men. They have been brought up to the business; and they are therefore adapted for it by heredity. If the House of Commons were deprived of those members who obtained their seats or their offices primarily for reasons of heredity, it would lose many of its best men—as indeed it occasionally does, to its disadvantage and possibly to the chagrin of the individuals themselves, when succession to a peerage forces a prominent parliamentarian to relinquish his seat in the Lower House and to take his place in the “unrepresentative” chamber.

It remains nevertheless the fact that, in politics, “representative” government means not so much government by men really representative of the nation as government in the name of the whole body of citizens (and predominantly the estate of the commons) through a chamber or chambers composed of elected deputies. The object in view is the expression of the “will of the people”—the people, that is, who are sovereign. Clearly the only pure case of such government can be in a republic, where there is only one “estate,” the free citizens. The home and historical type of representative government, the United Kingdom, is strictly no such case, since the monarchy and the House of Lords exist and work on lines constitutionally independent of any direct contact with the electorate. British practice, however, is of vital importance for the theory of representative institutions, and it is worth while to point out that the “will of the people” may even so be effectively expressed—some people may think even more effectively expressed than in a pure republic. The king and the House of Lords, quâ