submitted to an interference with the rights of property' in the case of Irish land which would hardly be tolerated in the case of any other property by any but the extremest section of the Radical party. Whether in particular cases they have been well-advised in the action they have taken could only be decided by such a minute investigation of all the Bills sent up to them, in connection with the whole condition of Ireland, economic and political, as would be more than sufficient to occupy the lifetime of a specialist. Meantime, it can only be said that the Liberal indictment, however plausible primâ facie it may appear, still awaits the verdict of history.

On the whole, then, a survey of the action of the Lords, from 1832 onwards, does not appear to have borne out the popular impression that they have been dominated by the narrow spirit of a caste. What it does show is that they have lagged behind the Commons in their willingness to substitute for the national ideal of the eighteenth century that which is probably destined to govern the twentieth. This attitude I conceive to be almost an inevitable corollary of their constitution, and therefore to be one which is likely to characterise them not less in the future than it has done in the past. From this admission Liberals would conclude to the summary abolition of their powers; but I do not think that the conclusion follows. For the extent to which we are prepared to support

the House of Lords, either as it is at present constituted or as it may be reformed, must depend upon our estimate of the House of Commons; and the question before us is not merely whether we altogether admire the constitution and action of the Upper House, but whether the dissatisfaction we feel is so grave, and our confidence in the representative House so complete, that we shall be willing to entrust the latter with the monopoly of government.

In order to answer this question we must endeavour to form some idea of the kind of problems that are likely in the future to come before the House of Commons, and the kind of spirit in which it is likely to deal with them. We will turn, therefore, to examine the course of opinion among the working class who form the majority of the nation, and whose ideas, it may be supposed, will influence the policy of the future. We shall then be in a better position to consider, from a national point of view, some at least of the bearings of the issue between the two Houses.

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CHAPTER IV

THE INTERPRETATION OF DEMOCRACY BY THE

WORKING CLASS

IN examining the development of which the Act of 1832 was the first phase, we came to the conclusion that it was never the deliberate intention of the governing class, either before or after the first Reform Bill, to accomplish the transition to democracy that has actually taken place. They continued to lower the franchise because, having once begun, there was no particular reason why they should stop; and they seem hardly yet to be aware that in pursuing this apparently continuous course they have been leading society to the verge of a critical transformation. But when we turn from the debates in parliament and the rhetoric of the National Liberal Federation, to examine the course of opinion among the masses who have been gradually admitted to power, we find that, on the one hand, so far as they have come to political consciousness at all, they have adopted from the beginning the democratic programme; on the other, that their object, in desiring political power, has been pri

marily to better their economic state, and more particularly, not only in the last ten years but also in the earlier decades of the century, has been conceived, with more or less distinctness, as a fundamental modification of the existing tenure of property.

Such an attitude was the natural and intelligible result of the position to which the working class were reduced by the new methods of industry. This is a story which has been written again and again, and need not be recapitulated here. It will be sufficient to observe that the more the dependence of the labourer on the capitalist increased, the more persistently the theory began to emerge and define itself, that his only hope of deliverance was in acquiring the control of the means of production. And though it is only in the last decade that this theory has taken the field as a vigorous and consistent collectivist propaganda, yet it was active, obscurely and confusedly, in the earlier revolutionary movements of the century, and gave a social significance to what appears on the surface to be a purely political agitation.

From the very beginning, in fact, the movement for parliamentary reform presented a phase, though no doubt a subordinate one, which in a certain vague sense may be called socialistic-that is to say, which proposed to benefit the poor at the expense of the rich. The second part of Paine's 'Rights of Man' is an elaborate scheme for supporting and educating at the public expense the

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poorest part of the population; and for raising funds by a progressive tax upon the land, with the intention of compelling the division and sale of large estates. With a less definite programme, but inspired by a similar idea, John Thelwall attacks the oppression of the poor by the rich, and assigns as its cause the monopoly of the government by the opulent and the strong; and though opposed to the notion of 'equality of property,' clearly regards the question of parliamentary reform from a social rather than a political point of view, and in particular sees in it a means for putting an end to monopolies and combinations of capitalists.1 The work of Godwin was of a more academic and abstract kind; but it may be noticed in this connection that in his 'Political Justice' (1793), which produced a great impression on its first appearance, he attributes to the established system of property evils in comparison with which those produced by kings and priests may be described as 'imbecile and impotent,' and lays down the communistic maxim that anything 'justly belongs' to him who most wants it, or to whom the possession of it will be most beneficial.2

1 See his Natural and Constitutional Rights of Britons, 1795, pp. 42-3. At a meeting of the 'Friends of Parliamentary Reform,' October 26, 1795, he proposed the following motion: 'Monopoly, stimulated by insatiable avarice, and uncontrolled by those equitable laws which we might expect from equal representation, frustrates the beneficence of our seasons, and forbids the industrious poor the immediate necessaries of life.' Ib. p. 19.

2 Godwin's Political Justice, ed. 1791, pp. 789, 791, seq.