they must either accept the whole straggling and ill-constructed
measure as it stood, or be held up to public odium for rejecting it.
But when the Bill was looked at as a whole, it was found to contain
principles--novel principles as far as the great part of Scotland was
concerned, bad principles, as the experience of Ireland showed--which
the House of Lords, and not only the Conservatives in the House of
Lords, were not prepared to endorse. Was it Conservative criticism
which killed the Bill? It was riddled with arguments by a Liberal Peer
and former Liberal Prime Minister--arguments to which the Government
speakers were quite unable, and had the good sense not even to attempt,
to reply. And that is the instance which is quoted to prove that the
House of Lords is a Tory Caucus!

Now, before leaving this question of the House of Lords, let me just
say one word about its general attitude. I have not long been a member
of that assembly. I do not presume to take much part in its
discussions. But I follow them, and I think I follow them with a
fairly unprejudiced mind. On many questions I am perhaps not in accord
with the views of the majority of the House. But what strikes me about
the House of Lords is that it is a singularly independent assembly. It
is not at the beck and call of any man. It is a body which does not
care at all about party claptrap, but which does care a great deal
about a good argument, from whatever quarter it may proceed.
Moreover, I am confident that the great body of its members are quite
alive to the fact that they cannot afford to cast their votes merely
according to their individual opinions and personal prejudices--that
they are trustees for the nation, and that while it is their duty to
prevent the nation being hustled into revolution, as but for them it
would have been hustled into Home Rule in 1893, they have no right to
resist changes upon which the nation has clearly and after full