Post-Prandial Philosophy: 24. Of Second Chambers

24. Of Second Chambers

A Second Chamber acts as a drag. Progress is always uphill work. So we
are at pains to provide a drag beforehand--for an uphill journey.

There, in one word, you have the whole philosophy of Second Chambers.

How, then, did the nations of Europe come to hamper their legislative
systems with such a useless, such an illogical adjunct? In sackcloth and
ashes, let us confess the truth--we English led them astray: on us the
shame; to us the dishonour. Theorists, indeed (wise after the fact, as
is the wont of theorists), have discovered or invented an imaginary
function for Second Chambers. They are to preserve the people, it seems,
from the fatal consequences of their own precipitancy. As though the
people--you and I--the vast body of citizens, were a sort of foolish
children, to be classed with infants, women, criminals, and imbeciles (I
adopt the chivalrous phraseology of an Act of Parliament), incapable of
knowing their own minds for two minutes together, and requiring to be
kept straight by the fatherly intervention of Dukes of Marlborough or
Marquises of Ailesbury. The ideal picture of the level-headed peers
restraining the youthful impetuosity of the representatives of the
people from committing to-day some rash act which they would gladly
repent and repeal to-morrow, is both touching and edifying. But it
exists only in the minds of the philosophers, who find a reason for
everything just because it is there. Members of Parliament, I have
observed, seem to know their own minds every inch as well as earls--nay,
even as marquises.

The plain fact of the matter is, all the Second Chambers in the world
are directly modelled upon the House of Lords, that Old Man of the Sea
whom England, the weary Titan, is now striving so hard to shake off her
shoulders. The mother of Parliaments is responsible for every one of
them. Senates and Upper Houses are just the result of irrational
Anglomania. When constitutional government began to exist, men turned
unanimously to the English Constitution as their model and pattern. That
was perfectly natural. Evolutionists know that evolution never proceeds
on any other plan than by reproduction, with modification, of existing
structures. America led the way. She said, "England has a House of
Commons; therefore we must have a House of Representatives. England has
also a House of Lords; nature has not dowered us with those exalted
products, but we will do what we can; we will imitate it by a Senate."
Monarchical France followed her lead; so did Belgium, Italy,
civilisation in general. I believe even Japan rejoices to-day in the
august dignity of a Second Chamber. But mark now the irony of it. They
all of them did this thing to be entirely English. And just about the
time when they had completed the installation of their peers or their
senators, England, who set the fashion, began to discover in turn she
could manage a great deal better herself without them.

And then what do the philosophers do? Why, they prove to you the
necessity of a Second Chamber by pointing to the fact that all civilised
nations have got one--in imitation of England. Furthermore, it being
their way to hunt up abstruse and recondite reasons for what is on the
face of it ridiculous, they argue that a Second Chamber is a necessary
wheel in the mechanism of popular representative government. A foolish
phrase, which has come down to us from antiquity, represents the
populace as inevitably "fickle," a changeable mob, to be restrained by
the wisdom of the seniors and optimates. As a matter of fact, the
populace is never anything of the sort. It is dogged, slow,
conservative, hard to move; it advances step by step, a patient,
sure-footed beast of burden; and when once it has done a thing, it never
goes back upon it. I believe this silly fiction of the "fickleness" of
the mob is mainly due to the equally silly fictions of prejudiced Greek
oligarchs about the Athenian assembly--which was an assembly of
well-to-do and cultivated slave-owners. I do not swallow all that
Thucydides chooses to tell us in his one-sided caricature about Cleon's
appointment to the command at Sphacteria, or about the affair of
Mitylene; and even if I did, I think it has nothing to do with the
question. But on such utterly exploded old-world ideas is the whole
modern argument of the Second Chamber founded.

Does anybody really believe great nations are so incapable of managing
their own affairs for themselves through their duly-elected
representatives that they are compelled to check their own boyish ardour
by means of the acts of an irresponsible and non-elective body? Does
anybody believe that the House of Commons works too fast, and gets
through its public business too hurriedly? Does anybody believe we
improve things in England at such a break-neck pace that we require the
assistance of Lord Salisbury and Lord St. Leonards to prevent us from
rushing straight down a steep place into the sea, like the swine of
Gadara? If they do, I congratulate them on their psychological acumen
and their political wisdom.

What the Commons want is not a drag, but a goad--nay, rather, a
snow-plough.

No; the plain truth of the matter is this: all the Second Chambers in
the world owe their existence, not to any deliberate plan or reason, but
to the mere accident that the British nobles, not having a room big
enough to sit in with the Commons, took to sitting separately, and
transacted their own business as a distinct assembly. With so much
wisdom are the kingdoms of the earth governed! How else could any one in
his senses have devised the idea of creating one deliberative body on
purpose to mutilate or destroy the work of another? to produce from time
to time a periodical crisis or a periodical deadlock? There is not a
country in the world with a Second Chamber that doesn't twice a year
kick and plunge to get rid of it.

The House of Lords was once a reality. It consisted of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy--the bishops and mitred abbots; with the
official hierarchy--the great nobles, who were also great satraps of
provinces, and great military commanders. It was thus mainly made up of
practical life-members, appointed by merit. The peers, lay and
spiritual, were the men who commended themselves to the sovereign as
able administrators. Gradually, with prolonged peace, the hereditary
element choked and swamped the nominated element. The abbots
disappeared, the lords multiplied. The peer ceased to be the leader of a
shire, and sank into a mere idle landowner. Wealth alone grew at last to
be a title to the peerage. The House of Lords became a House of
Landlords. And the English people submitted to the claim of
irresponsible wealth or irresponsible acres to exercise a veto upon
national legislation. The anomaly, utterly indefensible in itself, had
grown up so slowly that the public accepted it--nay, even defended it.
And other countries, accustomed to regard England--the Pecksniff among
nations--as a perfect model of political wisdom, swallowed half the
anomaly, and all the casuistical reasoning that was supposed to justify
it, without a murmur. But if we strip the facts bare from the glamour
that surrounds them, the plain truth is this--England allows an assembly
of hereditary nobodies to retard or veto its legislation nowadays,
simply because it never noticed the moment when a practical House of
administrative officers lapsed into a nest of plutocrats.

Mend or end? As it stands, the thing is a not-even-picturesque medi�val
relic. If we English were logical, we would arrange that any man who
owned so many thousand acres of land, or brewed so many million bottles
of beer per annum, should _ipso facto_ be elevated to the peerage. Why
should not gallons of gin confer an earldom direct, and Brighton A's be
equivalent to a marquisate? Why not allow the equal claim of screws and
pills with coal and iron? Why disregard the native worth of annatto and
nitrates? Baron Beecham or Lord Sunlight is a first-rate name. As it is,
we make petty and puerile distinctions. Beer is in, but whiskey is out;
and even in beer itself, if I recollect aright, Dublin stout wore a
coronet for some months or years before English pale ale attained the
dignity of a barony. No Minister has yet made chocolate a viscount. At
present, banks and minerals go in as of right, while soap is left out in
the cold, and even cotton languishes. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer
put up titles to auction, while abolishing the legislative function of
the Lords, there would be millions in it. But as we English are not
logical, our mending would probably resolve itself into fatuous
tinkering. We might get rid of the sons, but leave the fathers. We might
flood the Lords with life peers, but leave the veto. Such tactics are
too Britannic. "Stone dead hath no fellow!"

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