whether King Demos will prove an exception. Members of the House of Commons, and a considerable portion of the middle class who regard the House of Commons with awe and reverence, will unquestionably be greatly moved by the last words of Mr. Asquith's Resolution,-namely, that the action of the Lords is a usurpation of the rights of the Commons. We find it difficult, however, to think that the bulk of the voters will feel any very great horror and detestation at this attempt to make their flesh creep. If Mr. Asquith had been able to talk, which he clearly could not without a too obvious departure from the region of truth and fact, of the usurpation of the rights of the electors, it would have been a very different matter. The democracy, though very keen about its own rights, is not apt to be particularly anxious-nor perhaps should it be-about the rights of its servants.

If the Lords had taken up the line that they are an independent power, that they are going to exercise their rights and duties no matter what may be the opinion of the electors, and that they will maintain the powers which they possess in the Constitution against all comers, the task of raising the country against them would have been easy enough. One breath of the people's will would have destroyed them But not even the most fanatical opponent of the House of Lords can venture to say that the Peers have taken up this position. Their crime, if it be a crime, is not that of resisting the will of the people, not even of permanently resisting the will of the representatives of the people. It is merely the crime of asking for orders. This, we must say once again, is a matter which we shall be much surprised to see the nation consider to be the unforgivable offence which it is represented to be on Liberal platforms and in Liberal newspapers.

Though the Liberals may try to keep as the main issue of the Election the question whether the Peers have or have not committed a criminal act in daring to insist that the country shall be consulted, we are pretty confident that they will not succeed in doing so. It takes two to make an issue. At least three other considerations will play an equal, if not greater, part at the Election. It must not be forgotten that at the last Election pretty nearly half the electors who went to the polls voted in favor of Tariff Reform. Happily, in our opinion, the country by a majority condemned the new departure; but it was only a majority of some eighty thousand votes It is idle to pretend, when the country is so nearly divided upon such a question, that onehalf of the electors will be able to prevent the other half from insisting that the Fiscal question shall be discussed in detail throughout the country. We deeply regret the fact, but the fact remains. Next, it will be impossible for the Government to prevent the controversial part of the Budgetthe land clauses and the licensing clauses-from being discussed also. Further, the Liberals will not be able to prevent the principles which underlie the land clauses, and which involve the whole question of private property in land, from being raised and debated, and also the methods by which those principles have been urged by the member of the Government chiefly concerned with the Budget and by those of his colleagues who share his views. The Limehouse and Newcastle speeches, and all they mean, will play their part at the Election, and cannot be glossed over, or buried under a Resolution about the alleged usurpation by the Peers.

Before we leave the subject of the Election we may point out a matter in which it appears to us that the Liberal Party is likely to find itself in a posi

tion of no small difficulty. Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Haldane have told us in unmistakable terms that they are Second-Chamber men,-that they believe in the necessity of having some strong and independent body to revise the work of the Lower House, and to prevent that omnipotence of the House of Commons which Cromwell, the most representative Englishman who has ever lived, said long ago was "the horridest arbitrariness in the world." Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Haldane do not stand alone. It is an open secret that a majority of their colleagues are also Second-Chamber men. Yet it would seem that the Cabinet are going to put forward as a solution of the problem which now confronts them a policy which, in effect if not in name, is the policy of a single, unchecked, omnipotent Lower House. It is impossible totally to abolish the veto of the Lords, which appears to be the official proposal of the Government, without in effect abolishing the Upper Chamber and coming to a single-Chamber system. If the abolition of the veto were to take place Sir Henry CampbellBannerman's plan of the three summonses to the Peers is virtual abolition-the Lords would be in a very real sense "side-tracked." The Commons would have left the old gatehouse standing, but made a road round it, so that any attempt to shut the gates by the gatekeeper would be the merest farce.

We can quite well understand that such action as this would suit ordinary Liberal Party men very well. Thougn omnipotent, the House of Commons would be able to point to the stately fabric of the House of Lords as still a gate-house in excellent repair. Next, they would as a party be freed from certain embarrassments which would come by total abolition, and by letting loose some two hundred to three hundred Peers to compete for seats in

the House of Commons. The Peers would be kept in their gilded cage as effectually as ever. Finally, Liberal Governments would still have what they find so useful and beneficial from a party point of view, the power of creating Peers, and in that way rewarding the faithful services of rich supporters. But though we can understand that this plan would suit the Liberal Party managers admirably, it is a course of action entirely incompatible with the declarations of Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Haldane. How the Cabinet are going to manage to get over these difficulties we cannot pretend to say but we are sure that we are raising no pedantic or captious point when we draw attention to them.

To judge from the tone of the Liberal Press and Liberal speakers, all moderate and "centre-minded" men ought to be in the depths of woe at the prospect now before the country. We fear, then, that we shall be regarded with something akin to cuutemptuous disgust by our Liberal contemporaries when we say that we find it impossible to regard the situation in a tragic light. The Lords may not have played their cards as well as they might, and in our opinion should, have played them, but of one thing we are certain. We are face to face with nothing in the nature of revolution. No doubt the babble of the political auction-room, always shrill, may rise during the next six weeks to a shriek. But that babble will find its usual quietus at the polls. As firm believers, not only in the necessity, but in the ultimate wisdom and justice of a democratic system of government, we have no fears as to the ultimate result. If the people adopt the view of the Opposition and turn out the present Government as unworthy of their confidence, they will do well. If, on the other hand, the voters continue their confidence in the present holders of

All

power, and the action of the Lords is condemned, we cannot profess to say that we shall think that the end of the world has come. We shall, as in duty bound, acquiesce in the decision arrived at by those in whose hands the sovereignty of the nation lies. that will remain for us and those who think like us will be to watch with care and vigilance the manner in which the Liberal Party carry out the orders of their and our master. That the order will be for a single unchecked Chamber we do not for a moment believe. It is possible, if the order is for a reformed Second Chamber that we shall get one which will prove much more efficient than the existing House of Lords. It must not be supposed that such a decision, it it is clear and unmistakable, will very greatly trouble the more active Members of the House of Lords. If the House of Lords goes, the chief Peers on the Unionist side will, of course, be able to sit in the House of Commous. We can well imagine that though out of a sense of loyalty they feel that they must now stand together and by their own House, it would be a matter of real satisfaction to the majority of them to be able to enter the Lower House. Men like Lord Lansdowne, Lord Curzon, Lord Milner, Lord Cawdor, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, to take only a few names at random, will not be driven out of political life, or have their public influence diminished, should the House of Lords be abolished. On the contrary, their personal influence on public affairs would be inThe Spectator.

creased by abolition. The people to suffer by the abolition of the House of Lords will be the men-and the number is not small-who at present hold seats in the House of Commons, because the man who is the most popular, or who, as we may say, is the most natural representative of the district, is now debarred from seeking the votes of the electors.

But though, on the whole, we are unperturbed by the prospect before as, our readers must not imagine that our optimism will prevent us, or should prevent other moderate-minded men, from doing their very utmost at the coming Election to defeat the present Government. In our opinion, the present Government have adopted principles of political action likely to have an exceedingly bad effect on the commonwealth, and have propagated those principles by demagogic action of the most dangerous and demoralizing kind. Politicians, like other men, are at times the better for a sharp lesson. We want to see a mark set upon action like that of the present Government, and a lesson given which will be remembered by politicians on both sides for a generation at least, the lesson that violence does not pay, and that it is bad policy in a country like this to scout the influence and ignore the views of moderate men. If we can contrive to give our politicians a lesson of that kind, it will be infinitely better, not only for the nation, but for the internal welfare of both parties in the State. We want to put a brand upon "Limehouse" and all that it means.

Is Thackeray coming into his own again? There seems to be a certain revival of interest in the great Victorian novelist, who for some years past has

been a little under a shadow. There is no question at all as to the hold of Dickens upon the present generation; he is almost as much read as in the

very heyday of his fame during his own lifetime, and perhaps even more appreciated. But with Thackeray it is different. The reading public hardly knows the great books, and while Mr. Pickwick and Winkle and Tupman and Dick Swiveller and Mr. Wegg and Uriah Heap and Pecksniff, and all the rest of the famous Dickensian gallery are familiar to everybody, we doubt whether the names of Fred Bayham and Mr. Honeyman and the Chevalier Strong and the Earl of Bareacres, and possibly even the Marquis of Steyne and Sir Pitt Crawley, would convey any particular meaning to the average well-informed British middle-class reader of books.

In his own day Thackeray suffered somewhat from the reputation of being a cynic; he was aware of the imputation, and always resented it, with good reason, for in essentials he was about as little of a cynic as any man that ever lived. The fact comes out clearly enough in the excellent new life of Thackeray which Mr. Lewis Melville has just published.' The book is not merely an extension of the author's earlier sketch of Thackeray, but a larger and much more complete work, with an elaborate and comprehensive bibliography for which all students of Thackerayana must be grateful. They will be grateful to Mr. Melville also for the judicious and well-balanced portrait he has drawn of the novelist. After reading his pages we have no further excuse for misunderstanding the personality of Thackeray, even if Lady Richmond Ritchie and Sir Leslie Stephen had left us any. If there is cynicism in Thackeray's writings it 18 clear there is none at all in his life. So far from being a cynic, he may without injustice be described as an extreme sentimentalist. He was not merely one of the kindest-hearted, but

1"William Makepeace Thackeray: A Biography." London: John Lane. Two vols. 25s.

one of the softest-hearted mortals that ever lived to put pen to paper. His great round face and big loose-jointed frame were always bursting with feeling not too scrupulously suppressed. He has a most un-English fashion of confessing that he is often moved to the melting-point; and we know that any little tale of human sorrow, any touch of pathos in a book or play, or any fragment of simple human nature in an episode of real life, was enough to moisten his eyes behind his spectacles. A cynic one supposes to be a person who could live contentedly in his tub alone, avoiding as much as possible intercourse with his fellow-mortals; but Thackeray's cynicism showed itself in a dog-like hunger for society, and he could never bear to be alone for many hours together. Even in his study and at his work he could hardly endure solitude; and we have it on record that it was his frequent custom to go down to one of his clubs with some sheets of manuscript in his pocket and finish a whole chapter of a novel or write a complete Roundabout Paper amid the distractions of that cheerful place of resort. His friendships were many and intimate, and no man loved his friends better or cultivated them with more assiduity or took to heart more keenly anything in the nature of slight or neglect. He was full of kindness and generosity, and Mr. Melville reminds us how his brief career as editor of the Cornhill Magazine was saddened by the painful duty of having to reject manuscripts which came to him with an appeal based on the necessities of the writer. Frequently this most unbusinesslike of editors would pretend to accept a quite hopeless manuscript in order to have an excuse for sending the unlucky writer a cheque which, as it happened, was drawn on his own private banking account, not on that of the proprietors of the periodical.