Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/657

Rh, but of hereditary wealth. It has never acted as what it is imagined by the political architects of Europe to be, an Upper Chamber revising with maturer wisdom and in an impartial spirit the hasty or ultra-democratic legislation of the more popular House. It has always acted as what it is, a privileged order in a state of decay and jeopardy, resisting as far as it dared each measure of change, not political only, but legal, social, and of every kind—habeas corpus, reform of the criminal law, abolition of the slave-trade, and a cheap newspaper press, as well as extension of the franchise—because change in whatever line threatened directly or indirectly its own existence. So far from being a Senate, it deliberately declared that it was not and would not be made a Senate, by refusing to let a life Peer take his seat.

The Upper Chamber or Senate is of course intended to have a character of its own distinct from that of the Lower House, otherwise the institution would be futile. The House of Lords has a distinct character with a vengeance, and shows it on all occasions; but this nobody proposes to reproduce, modern society having decidedly pronounced both against hereditary legislation and entailed estates. What, then, is the distinction to be? Of what special elements is the Upper Chamber to consist? This is what no political theorists tell us, while they all busy themselves in devising modes of appointment or election. Whether this or the other mode of production is the best, it is impossible to judge, unless we are told what is the thing to be produced. Is the Senate to be a house of old men? If so, it will have the weakness of age, it will be ridiculed and despised. Is it to be a house of the rich, that it may specially protect the interests of property? If so, it will be odious, and expose to political as well as social attacks the very interest which it is set to guard. Is it to be a house of superior wisdom and character? If so, the popular house will be bereft of its natural moderators, and delivered over to the passion and impulse which it is the object of the institution to control, while, its voice being the more direct expression of the national will, it is sure, in any collision, to carry the day. This was seen in the case of Cromwell's attempt to relieve his government from the stress of conflict with the House of Commons by reviving the Upper House, the only result of which was that the Lower House was left leaderless, and the two fell foul of each other. The very existence of an Upper Chamber is found, in the United States for example, to increase the recklessness of the Lower Chamber, which feels itself at liberty to do what is popular at the moment, leaving it to the Upper Chamber to prevent mischief by the exercise of its veto. A Senate nominated, as is that of the Dominion of Canada, by the Executive, besides being an outrage on elective principle, is a nullity, though with a lurking possibility of misuse under the party system and in a country where politics are fierce and constitutional tradition weak, as was seen when the Provincial Senate of Quebec was used for the purpose of a sort of coup