No. 21. [From The Scotsman, October 5, 1907.] 



AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS? 



IN expectation of the campaign against the House of 

 Lords to be opened by the Prime Minister, it may not be 

 out of place to look a little closer at the House of Commons 

 and its methods, so that, when the worst has been said about 

 the House of Lords, we may be able to form an independent 

 judgment as to which Chamber is really the more useful to 

 the people. 



At all times it has been the custom of autocrats, when the 

 abuses of personal rule at home have become too evident 

 to pass much longer unnoticed, to involve their country in 

 a foreign war. The generous instinct of a patriotic people 

 is then appealed to to sink minor matters, and to let no 

 consideration divert them from their primary duty to over- 

 come the country's enemy. 



Our autocrats are of a different type. When a Parlia- 

 mentary dissolution is impending, it has been the practice, 

 from time to time during the last forty or fifty years, for the 

 Government of the moment to start some burning question 

 and so to belabour the people with speeches on this one 

 subject that many of them are deluded into the belief that 

 they themselves have originated it, and that the matter is 

 really of greater importance to them than the calm revision 

 and deliberate appraisement of the value to themselves as 

 a community of the legislative and administrative work of 

 the expiring House of Commons. 



It is commonly observed that these burning questions 

 furnished for use at general elections rarely have anything 

 to do with the welfare of the British people; and this has 



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