Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1883 — The House of Lords. [ARTICLE]

The House of Lords.

Mr. H. Labouchere, a member of Parliament, writing to the Fortnightly Review, says the House of Lords is composed of hereditary land-owners, who collectively own- 14,258,527 acres of land, and whose collective incomes are about £15,000,000. They have persistently opposed, so far as they dared, every measure of reform brought forward during the present century, and more especially every measure that has militated against their own class interests. Not only are they conservative in the real sense of the word, but in the party sense. When a conservative ministry is in power they are useless; when a liberal ministry is in power they are actively pernicious. Notwithstanding their wealth, they are not independent. They are place-hunters; they are clamorous for decorations, and they dip heavily into the public exchequer. In pay, pensions and salaries they divide among themselves (including the salaries of the Bishops) £621,336 per annum. It may be an open question whether the system of one or two chambers is the more desirable. No. sensible person, however, can advocate a chamber, destined to act with comtrolling impartiality, composed of enormously wealthy men, draining vast incomes from lands, absorbing large amounts of public money in pay and pensions, and perpetually intriguing to secure the triumph of the party to which the great majority of them permanently belong. It is surprising that so astounding a legislative assembly as our House of Lords can have existed so long in a country inhabited by sane human beings, and its existence in any country where the paramount assembly is elected by a numerical majority wotfld, of course, be out of the question.