The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 81
[title page]
Why the Lords Must Go
The "Peers or People" Series of Papers for the Crisis.
A Plain Statement of what the Peers have done in the last Hundred Years.
By W. T. Stead.
"The issue is tremendous. It is the greatest issue that has been put to this country since your fathers resisted the tyranny of Charles I. and James II You are entering upon a great campaign, and it will not be an affair of rosewater. You must be prepared to take off your waistcoats, not merely your coats. If you do not you will annihilate your own representation and abide contentedly by the unbiassed, patriarchal, mellow wisdom of the House of Lords. You will thank them for having done you the favour of having been born. It will be unnecessary any further to go through the musty and superfluous process of popular election; for you will have beside you a self-constituted body that will save you any trouble of the kind. In this great contest there are behind you, to inspire you, all the great reforms, all the great aspirations, and all the great measures on which you have set your hearts. And I would ask you, if you are prepared to go into this fight, to fight it as your old Puritan forefathers fought—fight with their stubborn, persistent, indomitable will—fight as those old Ironsides fought in Yorkshire, never knowing when they were beaten—and determined not to be beaten We fling down the gauntlet. It is for you to back us up."
The Earl of Rosebery at Bradford, Oct. 27, 1894.
Price Sixpence.
Stead's Publishing House, Bank Buildings Kingsway, London, W.C.
December, 1909.