From Behind the Speaker's Chair.
IX.
(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)
THE HOUSE OF LORDS. IN the closing weeks of the Session the House of Lords enjoyed the unaccustomed privilege of knowing that the eyes of the country were fixed upon it. At length, for a strictly limited time, the Lords have cut out the Commons. The period during which they have had the Home Rule Bill in charge has been brief compared with the long stretch of time during which they were as entirely ignored as if their existence had terminated. For weeks and months through the Session the House of Lords might easily, and more conveniently, have fulfilled all its legislative functions if it had met on the Monday and made holiday through the rest of the week.
Lord Herschell.
For the large majority of noble lords, whether the House is sitting or not is a matter of small consequence. If they have time and inclination they may look in on the way to the Park or club, or they may forbear. They have no responsibilities to meet, no constituencies jealously counting the number of divisions from which they are absent. Indeed, there are very few divisions to take part in. When such an event occurs the House of Lords is inclined, as Mr. Disraeli once irreverently wrote, to cackle with content as a hen that has laid an egg. Still, there are the Lord Chancellor, the Ministers, and one or two ex-Ministers, not to mention the exhausted officials, who must needs be in their places if a sitting be appointed, and who would welcome an arrangement that would relieve them from an engagement that has not the value of utility to recommend it. Often it has come to pass that the Lord Chancellor in wig and gown, accompanied by Pursebearer and Mace, with Black Rod on guard at the Bar, has marched to the Woolsack, and having advanced a group of private Bills a formal stage, has marched back again, and so the House was "up."
It would, however, never do to admit by adoption of such an arrangement as that suggested, that the country could get along without the House of Lords. Therefore it will sit, though it has no work to do. A few years ago, when things were particularly dull, it suddenly resolved that it would meet an hour earlier than heretofore, so as to be the better able to grapple with accumulation of work. Lord Sherbrooke, a new recruit to the Chamber, was so tickled with this, that he dropped into verse, which appeared anonymously in the Daily News:—
They found they had nothing to keep them alive;
By wasting more time they expect to do more,
So determine to meet at a quarter-past four.
It was explained at the time that the new arrangement was made with a view to giving an opportunity to the younger peers to take part in debate. It is only in rare and exceptional circumstances that noble lords will sacrifice their dinner on the altar of the State. It ordinarily requires a cry of either the Church or the Land in danger to keep them sitting after eight o'clock. Complaint was made that, meeting at five o'clock, nearly the whole of the time up to the adjournment was occupied by the front benches, or the Duke of Argyll. It was said if the House met an hour earlier young fellows like Lord Denman might have the chance of showing what metal they are made of. No notable change has been wrought in that direction consequent upon the new departure.
