Note (Back) — Chapter V

It is to be observed, however, that neither this programme nor any other that can be offered, unless it be that of popular election, affords much ground upon which to hope for harmonious relations between the upper chamber and a Liberal Government. The House of Lords—any House of Lords in which members sit for life or in heredity—is inevitably conservative in its political tendencies and sympathies, which means, as conditions are to-day, that the chamber is certain to be dominated by adherents of the Unionist party. History shows that even men who are appointed to the upper house as Liberals become adherents almost invariably, in time, of Unionism. The consequence is that, while a Unionist administration is certain to have the support of a working majority in both of the houses, a Liberal government cannot expect ever to find itself in the ascendancy in the Lords. Its measures will be easy to carry in the lower house but difficult or impossible to carry in the upper one. This was the central fact in the situation from which sprang the Parliament Act of 1911. By this piece of legislation the Liberals sought to provide for themselves a mode of escape from the impasse in which the opposition of the Lords so frequently has involved them. The extent, however, to which the arrangements effected will fulfill the purpose for which they were intended remains to be ascertained.[164] "An upper house in a true parliamentary system," says Lowell, "cannot be brought into constant accord with the dominant party of the day without destroying its independence altogether; and to make the House of Lords a mere tool in the hands of every cabinet would be well-nigh impossible and politically absurd."[165] Therein must be adjudged still to lie the essential dilemma of English politics.