Household. The Prime Minister walked in the procession for the first time. The other members of the Cabinet were present only as visitors. For once, at any rate, the King and his people confronted one another without political intervention. The King, in the words of the Archbishop of York, came to the Abbey "as the one man raised above private and local interests, to think of all, to care for all, to unite all in one fellowship of common memories, common ideals, common sacrifices." And the people acclaimed him on his passage to the Abbey, or greeted him within the sacred precincts, eagerly desiring to defend and to obey him. Nothing could be of happier augury than this confrontation of King and People. For, despite the democratic ten

dencies of the age, the King is still the symbol of patriotism and of power. That he should be this symbol is essential to monarchy. Above all is it essential to a complex Empire such as ours, which includes men of many races, many ideals, and many creeds. The wisest Prime Minister in the world cannot be expected to touch the imagination of the East, or to inflame the passionate ate loyalty of our oversea dominions. These duties of Empire can be discharged only by a King, conscious of his high destiny and confident in the strength of his people's support. And we left the Abbey after the crowning of King George V. with a better hope than ever we have felt of seeing Disraeli's dream come true of a loyal people and a patriot king.

FOR the last month one thought, and one thought only, has obsessed the mind of England. The Coronation of King George has filled the minds of the people with an enthusiasm in which the stress and strain of politics have been forgotten. The streets of London have been packed by a tireless, curious mob, eager to see whatever sights this season of rejoicing affords. Now, when the last procession has wound its way through Westminster and the City, when the King has been crowned in the Abbey with all the solemn ceremonial of ancient times, when the last banquet has been given, when London, at last uncased, resumes the aspect familiar to us all, we cannot but return to the consideration of practical affairs, we cannot but remember the dangers which threaten the State.

The situation is without precedent. A Cabinet, consisting of ambitious mediocrities—of whom not more than two will be known by name ten years hence -has resolved to destroy the Constitution whose balance and poise have been the envy and example of all the world. It has taken this resolution not because it believes or hopes that it will benefit the State, but because it is sure that a Single Chamber will strengthen its own impudent hands. the debates which have taken place in the House of Com

In

mons, no Radical demagogue has risen above the level of self-interest. We have heard much of revenge and vindictiveness. The Lords, we have been told, have brought the threat of destruction upon themselves.

We have heard

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much also concerning the profit of the Radical party, whose will, described as identical with the will of the People, is said to have been thwarted. House of Lords, in brief, is to be abolished not for the sake of England, but for the sake of Mr Asquith and his colleagues, who care not what the future brings forth. After them the deluge. What matters it if, by their aid, in twenty years a Labour Cabinet is able, by a majority of one, to suppress the navy, to discard the Colonies, and to spend upon itself all the ready money it can lay its hands on within the narrow space of a year.

The Parliament Bill, by far the greatest measure which has been introduced into the House of Commons since 1832, has passed the Lower House debated to empty benches. Mr Asquith, contemplating with perfect levity the destruction of the State, which accident has placed within his power, has not thought it worth while to defend or elucidate his proposals. Amendments have been brushed aside or guillotined, and a measure, ill-considered and half-discussed, has been thrust into the Upper

The Second Chamber was devised to be a check upon the hasty legislation of the Commons. It is of no value whatever if the principle of the Parliament Bill be admitted. If the House of Lords is reduced to a sham and a fraud, it does not matter the worth of a penny piece whether it be reformed or not. When a horse is dead, it is idle to attempt to amend his paces. It is not its business to accede to the clamour of a general election. Even if the country had twice approved the Parliament Bill, it would still be the duty of the Peers to reject it.

But the country has not approved once or twice the Parliament Bill. The general election of last December, prepared while the Conference was still sitting-a Conference which the Prime Minister could break up at any moment that suited the convenience of his party managers-and fought upon an old register, was the roughest method possible of discovering the opinion of the country. In the few weeks allowed for the contest the Parliament Bill was rarely discussed.

Though the Peers were forced to play their part in the Radical campaign, they came on only in the harlequinade. When the mob-orators of the Radical party were tired of fase economics they found relief in picturing the lurid vices of the

as

word on the Veto, they became very humorous at the expense of the Lords, a set of mythical personages whom they represented as responsible for the Osborne judgment, and forcing starvation on the people to fill their own pockets. They showed them to their dupes, in speech and poster, struggling in a state of intoxication to balance their coronets, which the electors believed were their only wear, evenly upon their uncertain heads. In brief, the Radicals extracted what prejudice they might from the hereditary principle, which they do not propose to eliminate, and then returned to Westminster, relying on a disloyal coalition, with what they called a mandate to pass the Parliament Bill. Never was there a greater absurdity enacted in the wildest democracy, and even if it were the duty of the Peers to bow to popular clamour, which it obviously is not, the champions of the "mandate" have not a shred of evidence wherewith to support their case.

It is not on such pretexts as this that the Constitution can be destroyed, and when the House of Lords meets again its duty lies clear before it. The Parliament Bill has been read a second time. It remains to amend it, and to amend it so thoroughly that it will be impotent for mischief so long as it remains in force. In the first place, it must be made evident that it is a stop-gap, and no more. It will be the

achievement. It has assumed with its growth such a shape as human ingenuity could not devise. It has been for six centuries a bulwark against the aggression of the people. It has won the admiration of foreign democracies, which have seen in it a perfect safeguard, staunch to defend and yet never irreconcilable. To destroy it seems easy enough to the thoughtless demagogue who, enslaved by vanity, believes that he is always right. To put it together again, if once it be utterly destroyed, will prove beyond the compass of the profoundest statesman. When Lord Rosebery made his last speech in the House of Lords, he quoted from a book by Professor Oman a passage which, suggested by Tiberius Gracchus, is particularly applicable to-day. "No statesman," wrote the Professor, "has the right right to pull down a Constitution about the ears of a people the moment he finds himself checked in his desires. However bad a Constitution may be, the man who upsets it without arranging for anything to put in its place is a criminal and anarchist if he knows what he is doing, and a mischievous madman if he does not." There is only one member of the present Cabinet who may by courtesy be called 8 'mischievous madman." History is not likely to deal lightly with him or with the others when it notes their interested ambition of anarchy. But happily the cause is not yet lost. The House of Lords can

not be abolished without its own consent, and we still have faith that it will defend its privileges, and will insist that, if a reform of its constitution be necessary, it will undertake that reform itself, and will not become the bound slave of the House of Commons, which, if the Veto Bill passed, would be able to cut and slash it at its will.

If the Peers need any encouragement in their task of defence they may find it in the fact that never was a strong Second Chamber more sternly necessary than to-day. Our credit and our justice are both in jeopardy. We are drifting on to the shoals of national bankruptcy. In an era of peace and prosperity we pay such an income-tax as only a state of war would make reasonable, and Government securities are sunk lower than ever they were save in a time of panic and perplexity. We rejoice in a Home Secretary who, like a true revolutionary, holds it no shame to insult the bench of judges, and thus to impair the very bulwark of civic life. He appears to think the doctrine of Tammany Hall a sound one, that justice should be administered in favour of the majority. If it were not for the House of Lords we should live under an unbridled tyranny. Our Ministers, arrogant in their well-drilled and dearly-compensated majority, decline to answer questions or to explain their policy. Their supporters have renounced the habit, if they have not lost the power, of thought. Not long