Chapter XIII.

Miscellaneous Misdeeds.

Having dealt with the chief offences of the House of Lords under the leading counts in the popular indictment, there remain still to he noticed, although in the most cursory fashion, some of their miscellaneous misdeeds and misdemeanours which, although often of the first importance, do not lend themselves easily to classification.

The second great blot on the record of the Lords is, that, although from their position and their pretensions they should have been a restraining influence when the Empire was threatened with unjust and unnecessary war, they have been just the contrary. The House of Commons, which is page 85 exposed to the full blast of the passions of a bellicose populace, has beer on the whole less eager for war than the House of Lords The record [unclear: o] the Peers in this matter is very bad, as the following entries show. In 1840 a motion condemning the Opium War was negatived without a division. The Lords went headlong into both the Crimean War and the war in South Africa. In this they were no worse than the Commons although there were some voices in the Lower House raised against both of these national crimes. But in 1857, when the House of Commons [unclear: con]-demned the Chinese War, the House of Lords refused to censure the Government that made the war by a majority of 146 to 110; and in 1864 when the House of Commons refused to censure the Government that refused to make war against Germany in aid of Denmark, the House of Lords carried a vote of censure by 177 to 168 votes.

The statesmanship of the Upper House, and its keen appreciation [unclear: o] the forces which were remoulding Europe, are aptly illustrated by that vote for war with Germany. Not less characteristic in the same year was their rejection of Lord Grey's resolution deprecating war with Japan, and appealing for friendly intercourse with that nation. In 1878 they refused to censure the wanton war waged by Lord Beaconsfield in Afghanistan and in the following year they refused to condemn the Zulu War by [unclear: 156] votes to 61. When, after the fall of Khartoum, Mr. Gladstone's Government decided to desist from any further attempt to crush the Mahdi, the Lords passed a vote of censure upon his Ministry by 189 votes to 68.

The House of Lords has always been for war. Yet, when in 1875 Mr. Gladstone took the first indispensable step in Army Reform necessary to make our army efficient for war, by abolishing purchase, the [unclear: Peer] hung up the Bill and only desisted from their opposition when [unclear: purchase] was abolished without their leave by Boyal Warrant.

Another evil blot upon the escutcheon of the House of Lords has been its indifference to the humaner tendencies which have transformed modern society.

At a time when our penal code was the scandal of the world for the indiscriminating barbarity of its punishments, the House of Lords was the resolute and unbending advocate of its worst atrocities. When, in 1810 even the unreformed House of Commons passed a Bill abolishing capita punishment for thefts of 5s. from shops, the Lords rallied round the gallows and rejected the Bill. Next year they did the same thing. The [unclear: hangma] had no stauncher friends than the Peers, temporal and spiritual joining hands in the holy work of keeping up the number of his victims. Two years later, being still unrepentant, they again threw out the Bill, and again in 1818. When in 1820 they at last consented to abolish capital punishment for theft, they only did so on condition that if the goods [unclear: stole] exceeded £10 in value the thieves should swing as before. They kept [unclear: u] their defence of the gallows till after the Reform Act of 1832. Never [unclear: do] they seem to have taken the initiative in ridding England from a [unclear: penal] code of savage atrocity. Their only part was to check, thwart, postpone and impair the attempts of the reformer to humanise our laws.

This callous indifference to the promptings of humanity has shown itself in many other directions. In 1819 they refused to regulate [unclear: the] labour of the miserable little slaves employed in sweeping chimneys; Thirty years later they refused to abolish the cruel and unnecessary practice of sending children of tender age to sweep the chimneys. The opposed the earliest efforts to prevent cruelty to animals at the beginning of the century. In 1883 they refused to suppress pigeon shooting. [unclear: Fou] page 86 years before they threw out a Bill prohibiting vivisection by 97 votes to 16. They refused to condemn the introduction of Chinese labour into the mines of the Rand; and they have seldom betrayed any sympathy with the humanitarian movements which have appealed so powerfully to the generous instincts of the common people.

The House of Lords, in 1898, tried to deprive the conscientious objector to vaccination of the liberty promised him by the Unionist Government and the House of Commons. They struck out the clause by 40 to 38. The Commons reinstated it by 129 to 34. Thereupon the Lords, being strongly adjured by Lord Salisbury, reversed their previous vote by 55 to 45.

A wife is robbed by the law of her property, therefore let it also continue to rob her of her children. Could anything be more convincing? It convinced the House of Lords, which thereupon threw out the Bill.

It may be asked whether the Peers did anything to redress the robbery of a wife's property thus admitted by Lord Brougham. A whole generation of wives passed away before the question of protecting the property of married women was handled by the Peers. They did not take the initiative. In matters of justice and human right they never do. For the defence of property they are keen enough, but not of the property of the sex to which they do not belong, or the class which is unrepresented in the House of Lords. They remodelled Mr. Russell Gurney's Married Woman's Property Bill of 1870, so as to leave the old law of forfeiture on marriage intact, while providing for the removal of some of the more objectionable abuses to which it gave rise.

For twelve years the wives of Englishmen were mocked by this eviscerated measure. Then, thanks chiefly to the untiring exertions of Mrs. Elmy and of Mr. Bryce, sufficient pressure was brought to bear upon the Lords to induce them to grant in 1882 the protection to the property of married women which they had refused twelve years before.

When the Contagious Diseases Acts were enacted, and the womanhood of Britain were in revolt under the leadership of Mrs. Butler, it was in the Commons, not in the Lords, where the victory was won, the Bishops in this great moral issue proving themselves to be as weak a reed to lean upon as they have been in all other great causes which postulate the existence of a righteous ruler of the universe.

In the later phases of woman's struggle for justice and civic rights the Lords have played their usual rôle. The London County Council, having to act in loco parentis for many thousands of persons lodged in their great asylums, thought it well that women should share the parental responsibility. They elected two women as aldermen, who did admirable work. A judge, under strong sex bias, decided that they were not legally entitled to do the work. The London County Council asked Parliament to permit them to utilise the services of capable and willing women as councillors and aldermen. The House of Lords in 1898, by way of response, added a clause to the London Government Bill expressly excluding women from the London Borough Councils, although they had sat unchallenged on the Vestries which these Councils superseded. In 1904, waxing bolder in their defiance of the claims of justice, the Lords rejected by fifty-seven to thirty-eight a Bill which proposed to allow electors to elect the best candidates to seats on the local governing authorities, regardless of their sex.

The House of Lords has always contained among its members some of the most eminent lawyers of the country. Nevertheless, or perhaps as some would say on that account, it has retarded the progress of legal reform. Session after session it resisted the demands of the Commons for the abolition of imprisonment for debt. The Bill was rejected one year, referred to a Select Committee another, and abandoned for want of time a third. It was not without much reluctance and much wrangling with the Commons that they consented to remove that disgrace of our criminal law, which forbade a prisoner the benefit of counsel, and denied him copies of the depositions on which he had been committed. For years they prolonged the needless expenses and delays which stood between the poor and the cheap and speedy justice of the county court. They obstructed the reform of the Augean stables of the Court of Chancery. They repeatedly rejected measures simplifying the procedure of the common law courts in England and Court of Session in Scotland. They threw out the Bill extending the jurisdiction of the Court of Admiralty in 1839—an act which Lord Melbourne, who was not usually given to invective, declared was "one of the most disreputable and unprovoked acts of power that ever I knew to be exercised." In 1875 they succeeded in compelling Mr. Disraeli s Government to abandon the attempt to complete the Judicature Act of 1873.

Fifteen years have passed since then, and the nation is still bearing the same state of things. Are we going to continue bearing it for ever?

That is the question of the hour.