defeat the passage of reform? Was it right in resisting the Ballot
Bill? Was it right in the almost innumerable efforts it made to
prevent this House dealing with the purity of its own electoral
machinery? Was it right in endeavouring to prevent the abolition of
purchase in the Army? Was it right in 1880, when it rejected the
Compensation for Disturbance Bill? I defy the Party opposite to
produce a single instance of a settled controversy in which the House
of Lords was right.

[An honourable Member: What about Home Rule?]

I expected that interruption. That is not a settled controversy. It is
a matter which lies in the future. The cases I have mentioned are
cases where we have carried the law into effect and have seen the
results, and found that they have been good.

Let me remind the House that, but for a lucky accident, but for the
fact that Letters Patent can be issued by the Crown and do not require
the statutory assent of Parliament, it would very likely have been
impossible for this Government to have made the constitutional
settlement in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony, because
the Constitutions would probably have been mutilated or cast out by
the House of Lords, and the Executive Government would have found
itself responsible for carrying out the government of Colonies on
lines of which it wholly disapproved, and after their own policy had
been rejected.

I proceed to inquire on what principle the House of Lords deals with
Liberal measures. The right hon. Member for Dover[8] by an imaginative
effort assures us that they occupy the position of the umpire. Are