Second Chamber could be drawn much as the Irish representative peers in
the House of Lords are drawn from the general peerage of Ireland. It
would be far less party bound and far less mercenary than the American
Senate, and far more intelligent and capable than the British House of
Lords. And either of these bodies could be brought under a process of
deliberate conversion in this direction with scarcely any revolutionary
shock at all. [Footnote: In the case of the House of Lords, for
example, the process of conversion might begin by extending the Scotch
and Irish system to England, and substituting a lesser number of
representative peers for the existing English peerage. Then it would
merely revive a question that was already under discussion in middle
Victorian times, to create non-hereditary peerages in the three
kingdoms. The several Privy Councils might next be added to the three
national constituencies by which and from which the representative
peers were appointed, and then advisory boards might be called from the
various Universities and organized professions, and from authoritative
Colonial bodies to recommend men to be added to the voting peerage.
Life peers already exist. The law is represented by life peers. The
lords spiritual are representative life peers--they are the senior
bishops, and they are appointed to represent a corporation--the
Established Church. So a generally non-hereditary functional nobility
might come into being without any violent break with the present
condition of things. The conversion of the American Senate would be a
more difficult matter, because the method of appointment of Senators is
more stereotyped altogether, and, since 1800, unhappily quite bound up
with the political party system. The Senate is not a body of varied and
fluctuating origins into which new elements can be quietly inserted. An
English writer cannot estimate how dear the sacred brace of Senators
for each State may or may not be to the American heart. But the
possibility of Congress delegating the power to appoint additional