102 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



4 (276 to 272), and the friends of the Catholics 

 felt so sure that their defeat would but encourage 

 the Peers to persevere in their old attitude, that 

 they did not venture to move the question in the 

 House of Lords. But in the following session of 

 the same Parliament, after the Dissenters' bills 

 had been passed, the House of Commons passed 

 the Catholic Relief Bill by a majority of 6, while 

 the House of Lords refused it by a majority of 45. 

 In 1829 the Catholic Relief Bill was passed by a 

 majority of 188 (in the first and most critical 

 division) in a House of Commons of 508 members 

 (348 to 160), considerably more than two to one. 

 In the House of Lords, with all the power of the 

 Conservative Government, headed by the Duke 

 of Wellington in its favor, the second reading 

 was passed by 217 against 112, considerably less 

 than two to one. 



And I venture to say that the Irish Church 

 would never have been disestablished in 1869 

 if Mr. Gladstone had not been fortified by the 

 second great reform of Parliament in 1867. The 

 House of Lords rejected the Suspension Bill 

 in 1868, and would never have yielded in 1869 

 but for the great popular majority obtained in a 

 Parliament elected expressly on this subject, and 

 elected by the new suffrages. Indeed, the major- 

 ity in the Lower House under the old suffrage in 

 1868 was hardly more than half the majority ob- 

 tained under the new suffrage in 1869. In 1868 

 Mr. Gladstone's majority was 61 (331 to 270). In 

 1889 it was 118 (368 to 250). 



And if the more popular body has in this way 

 shown its great superiority over the less popular 

 body on a question on which the multitude has 

 such bitter prejudices as Roman Catholic claims, 

 this has been far more obvious in relation to the 

 claims of Dissenters. It was the unreformed 

 House of Commons which carried the repeal of 

 the Corporation and Tests Act, and forced that 

 policy on a reluctant Conservative Government, 

 which then, and not till then, used its majority in 

 the Lords in favor of the Dissenters. It was the 

 reformed House of Commons which, by a much 

 larger majority (89), carried a bill to repeal the 

 university tests in 1834 — a bill which was rejected 

 in the House of Lords by a majority of 102 (187 

 to 85), and which was not carried, for another 

 thirty-seven years, because whenever it was sent 

 up to the Lords, as it frequently was between 

 1860 and 1870, it was always rejected. Nor would 

 the House of Lords apparently ever have repealed 

 these university tests had not the second reform 

 of the House of Commons made the will of the 

 people so clear that it became impolitic to resist. 



Even after that second reform had produced a 

 majority of from 120 to 125 in the Commons for 

 the repeal of those tests, the Lords availed them- 

 selves once (in 1869) of the plea of the lateness 

 of the period of the session at which the bill was 

 sent up to them, to reject it, and once (in 1870) 

 of the pretext of a committee to consider safe- 

 guards, to shelve it. It was not till 1871, after 

 the measure had thrice passed the Commons by 

 majorities varying between 118 and 125, that the 

 Lords at last grudgingly and reluctantly yielded. 

 I have purposely selected questions on which 

 it is hardly possible to say that the selfishness of 

 the multitude was identified with the change de- 

 manded. Yet on all of them, as we have seen, 

 the House of Lords was the most opposed to any- 

 thing like wise statesmanship, the unreformed 

 House of Commons less opposed than the Lords, 

 and far more open to sympathetic pressure from 

 without, but still often bigoted and recalcitrant ; 

 the reformed House of Commons far in advance 

 of either ; while the doubly reformed House is 

 ahead of all of these assemblies in liberality of 

 spirit and earnestness of purpose. But if one 

 might introduce questions in which the people 

 are evidently and directly interested — questions, 

 for instance, of free trade, of representation, and 

 the labor laws — the contrast would be more strik- 

 ing still. Indeed, though I do not deny that there 

 may be some minute questions on which the Lords 

 have really shown more statesmanship than the 

 Commons, or on which the unreformed House of 

 Commons has been in advance of the reformed 

 House, these must be mere accidental curiosities 

 — political flies in amber — which constitute the 

 striking exceptions to ordinary rules. I can re- 

 call but one such case myself — the vote of the 

 Lords last session on the Burials Bill — and I sus- 

 pect it would be a very difficult matter to produce 

 many more similar cases. Even Mr. Disraeli's 

 Conservative House of Commons amended the 

 labor laws in a spirit which it would have been 

 impossible to elicit in the House of Commons at 

 any period before the second Reform Act, the act 

 of 1867 ; and I am quite sure that the religious 

 bickerings which were fatal to the educational 

 clauses of, the Factory Act of 1843 would have 

 been equally fatal to the act of 1870 but for the 

 same great popular reform. I think Lord Arthur 

 Russell should at least have produced one instance 

 on which the judgment of any large body which 

 could fairly pretend to represent the educated 

 portion of English society has exercised a wiser 

 and more far-sighted influence over political meas- 

 ures than that of the large popular electorate of 



