191 1 ] The Lords Voted Their Own Death 361 



with tears, and anger at the way he had been treated and made use 

 of by them, and in the end worked to death. She lives at Hove, but 

 is staying with her sister (Mrs. Jones), who has a house called the 

 Manor House, at Storrington. 



" To-morrow the great debate begins in the House of Lords, which 

 is to seal its fate, old Halsbury leading the Opposition to Lansdowne, 

 who has gone over to the Government, and is supporting the Bill 

 which is to abolish the power of the Lords. It is a great occasion 

 inadequately dealt with. 



" nth Aug. — - Newbuildings. The Lords have voted their own death 

 by a majority of seventeen, great numbers abstaining, a pitiful ending 

 for an institution of such antiquity. They have played their game 

 with inconceivable stupidity, making miscalculation after miscalcula- 

 tion. When the quarrel began they had the game in their hands. 

 They might have declared for Irish Home Rule and defied the House 

 of Commons, which was at that time quite discredited. They might 

 have rejected or amended the budget as they chose, asserting their own 

 necessary position in the Constitution, and effecting a coup d'etat which 

 would have restored the Tories to power for another generation. Eut 

 they idiotically referred the decision to a General Election. Then they 

 counted on the King to help them, and they went in for a second elec- 

 tion, having first abandoned the hereditary position of the House, 

 which was the essence of its being. The revolt from all this absurd 

 blundering came too late, and now they are laid out dead as door 

 nails. Belloc maintains that the whole thing has been arranged from 

 the beginning between Balfour and Asquith, and it looks like it. Irish 

 Home Rule has now also, he says, been agreed upon between them. 



" 22nd Aug. — Spent the day with George Wyndham in Worth 

 Forest. George gave me a gloomy account of his campaign in the 

 Lords, which, however, he says, he was very near winning. They 

 did not count on so many traitors being found to vote their own 

 destruction as the thirty-one who voted with the Government. They 

 are especially angry against Curzon. It was all snobbishness, George 

 said, on Curzon's part. He could not bear to have his Order con- 

 taminated with the new creations. They are going to boycott him. 

 I asked if he had really quarrelled with Arthur, and he said, ' Yes, politi- 

 cally, but not privately.' The peer he thinks most of is Willoughby 

 de Broke, who when reproached with deserting his leader, Lansdowne, 

 said : ' As master of hounds, I don't like killing a fox without my 

 huntsmen, but it is better than losing my hounds.' 



" 23rd Aug. — The Russo-German agreement about Persia is pub- 

 lished in full text. It is clearly directed against England, but does not 

 make the situation worse for Persia than it already was. [Compare 

 Dr. Dillon's ' Eclipse of Russia.'] 



