alism, especially among the distant counties, has, to our misfortune, been very considerable. Twenty years ago we had fifteen Scotch county members. Now we have only six out of thirty-two. Wales, again, that is a distant county -one of the counties to be specially favored under this scheme. Well, in Wales twenty years ago we had a majority. Now we have only two out of thirty seats.

So that those places which Mr. Gladstone wished, by special exception from the numerical principle, to give a decided advantage to, were places in which his own particular politics were violently on the increase. Well, the circumference is to be favored, because it is Gladstonian.

Now, let us look at the center, which is to receive no favor. Twenty or thirty years ago we had not a single Conservative member in the metropolis. In 1874, dealing with the constituencies which existed then for the sake of comparison, we should have had-but for the minority seat which is an artificial arrangement in this city-we should have had half the members for the metropolis. So that you see what the center is which is to be treated with marked disfavor so far as the Gladstone scheme is concerned.

Do you think that is wholly accidental? I find it difficult to bring myself to such a conclusion. And it seems to me that that is a guiding line, and that that is a principle which will animate the people when they come to consider the ministerial redistribution scheme. I heard my right honorable friend say-and I cannot help stealing the phrase from him-that it would be a redistribution scheme by results. It will be favorable, so far as it can decently be done, to those parts of the country where Liberal principles obtain, and unfavorable to those parts where Conservatism is at present in the ascendant.

And to show you how embarrassing is this problem of redistribution, how strongly it presses on statesmen, how incomplete any measure of reform is without it, I should like to compare the representation of the communities represented in this room with the representation of that favored county where Mr. Gladstone lives, to which I have just referred the principality of Wales.

Whereas the principality represents some 1,400,000 inhabitants, we in this room represent some 5,000,000. Is it

possible, with that fact before you, to go forward with a reform bill that shall not include redistribution? Is it possible that, knowing that Mr. Gladstone has laid down a principle that will uplift Wales and depress the metropolis, we should feel confidence and allow him to draw up his own redistribution bill? And we have heard something of blank checks; but this is not merely a blank check-this is a blank disposal of all that we possess for all time, given into the hands of a man who, by the previous conduct of his party and by his own previous utterances, has given us every reason to mistrust him.

I meet with the statement that it is very unconstitutional for the House of Lords to indicate when her Majesty's government may, in their wisdom, please to dissolve Parliament. Well, I should have said, as a matter of constitutional law, that the person who dissolves Parliament is her Majesty the queen, and that that is one of the few cases in which, necessarily, by the hypothesis of the minister being in issue, or being supposed to be in issue with the people, it is precisely one of the cases in which the sovereign cannot abandon her will absolutely to the guidance of her advisers.

But now there is the question, how far is it legitimate for the House of Lords to press for a dissolution? Well, I think that any such claim on the part of the House of Lords simply would not be justified by the Constitution. But the House of Lords has a right to say this-"We do not approve of the measure you bring before us. If you like to accept its rejection, well and good; if you object to its rejection, your remedy is to appeal to the people.' And we do not think that under the Constitution there is any other remedy than that.

But with respect to the right, not only in the House of Lords, but in all of us, of pressing for a dissolution of Parliament, I admit that if it was to be done in respect to ordinary measures of controversy, or the ordinary legislation on which we have to decide, it would be matter of considerable inconvenience if we were to interfere with the discretion which is ordinarily reposed in the advisers of the Crown. But the fallacy, the fundamental fallacy, of all the reasonings of ministerial arguers upon this point is that

they ignore the fact that it is not a common question of legislation; it is a vital question, it is a question of the revision of the Constitution. And in neither of the other popularly governed countries is the revision of the Constitution treated even so lightly as we desire and are content to treat it.

Look at what they do in France. In France they have, curiously enough, the contemporaneous phenomenon of a Liberal minister who is trying to alter the constitution of the country in the hopes that it may affect agreeably the constitution of the next assembly that he has to meet. I presume that that is a characteristic of Liberal ministers all over the world. That whenever they don't know how to get a majority in any other way they try to revise the constitution; but it cannot be done by a simple bill in France as it can in England. There is an elaborate process of revision. A congress must be called under certain guaranties, and guarantees of a tolerably stringent character. It is not treated in an ordinary manner, and the very fullest recognition is given to the right of the second chamber to make its own opinions heard and felt in the conduct of that revision.

Well, but we pass from France, with which we have only a certain point of analogy, and go to our kith and kin on the other side of the Atlantic, who, full of English traditions, but cut off by circumstances from monarchy, set up a republic according to their own judgment for themselves. What did they do? They surrounded the question of the revision of the constitution with the most minute and elaborate guarantees. It can only be proposed, in the first instance, by a two-thirds majority in both of the houses of the legislature, and when it has been proposed that is not sufficient. It has to be submitted to each state of the country, and passed there by three-fourths of the states.

That is the amount of security which the Anglo-Saxon mind, by circumstances cast loose from tradition, has judged to be absolutely necessary in the conduct of a popular government. And now, because the House of Lords interposes, and says that by a vote of a House of Commons, in the fifth year of its existence, passed at the bidding of a dictatorial minister-and thrown into an unprecedented

form-because the House of Lords demurs to such a measure passing into law without the people having been consulted, you are told that they have been guilty of some strange and intolerable arrogance.

Just consider for a moment what the authority of the House of Commons is. I wish to speak of the House of Commons with the highest respect, and there is no doubt that, for ordinary purposes, dealing with ordinary bills, its authority is full and unquestioned to the term of its natural career; but when it lays hands upon the Constitution for the purpose of revising it, a very different state of things arises, and then you cannot turn away your attention from the fact that it is a House of Commons on the decline -that it has already existed longer than the average of Parliaments which have been since the Reform bill of 1832 -the average is four years and two months, and we have passed that-and that its action is discredited and disavowed by every election that takes place in those constituencies which this bill is intended to affect.

You tell me that this bill has been passed by the representatives of the people. In a legal sense they are the representatives of the people-in a legal sense every Act of Parliament is submitted to the unfettered will of the sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons; but if you pass from a legal to an actual sense they are not the representatives of the people; they are the representatives of what the people were five years ago. And between that day and this there is an absolute gulf, so completely has the whole surface of the political world changed, so entirely different are all the objects of political controversy and interest, so utterly have passed away the burning questions upon which the last election was decided.

Now Mr. Bright tries to dispose of the House of Lords by saying that it is a Tory caucus. He tries to give you the impression that it was a Tory caucus under Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, for he mentions their names. But my memory, I think, is as fresh as Mr. Bright's. I can perfectly remember what took place in the House of Lords, for instance. We will not deal with Lord Aberdeen's government. We will deal with Lord Palmerston's. There were two great questions which shook the ministry and

closely divided the House of Commons.

They were two

They were the

of the most burning questions of the day. questions of the Chinese war and the Danish war.

The decision of one of them forced Lord Palmerston to dissolve. The decision of the other in his favor was regarded as the great victory of his administration. How did the House of Lords, this Tory caucus, vote? On both occasions the lords assembled at Westminster voted in favor of Lord Palmerston.

The truth is, that until Mr. Gladstone became a leading figure became the leader of the Liberal party-there was no talk about this permanent majority in the House of Lords, and my belief is that if ever Mr. Gladstone ceases to be the leader of the Liberal party there will then be no longer that decided Tory majority in the House of Lords.

For, whatever else you may say about his legislation, at least there can be no doubt of this: that he has applied principles to the rights of property of his fellow-subjects which we never heard of in this England of ours before. Whether they were right or wrong, they were absolutely new, and they seemed to lead not only to gross injustice in the present, but to an illimitable horizon of spoliation in the future, and therefore it is that in the legislative body which has special charge of those interests and those rights, and to watch over the conservance and the protection of those rights of our fellow-citizens-that in them that alarm at Mr. Gladstone's proceedings has spread and increased with every year.

I told you when Lord Palmerston was in office he was able on great critical questions to obtain a majority of the House of Lords. Since that time fifty-one Liberal peers have been created, against only thirty-one Conservatives, and yet the normal majority is between fifty and seventy against the government in the House of Lords. Is it surprising that the lords have felt something of that apprehension which has spread to every class and interest and industry in this country?

Look around. Where will you find men who count on a secure and certain future in the history of trade? Everywhere you will hear of industry languishing, of commerce unable to find profitable channels, of the hearts of men of