Support for Rosebery, varying greatly both in its enthusiasm and in the assumptions on which the speakers were acting, came from Curzon, Salisbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Newton, Cawdor, Cromer, and Lansdowne. Curzon was probably the most enthusiastic, although he thought that Rosebery had over-stated the case against the hereditary principle and claimed that ‘in India the House of Lords was regarded with enormous veneration and respect, largely because its composition rested on a basis familiar throughout Indian society’. The Archbishop set the tone for a rather condescending speech by telling their lordships that his title to sit in the House was 600 years older than that of any hereditary peer. In the quarrel between the Lords and the Government there had been exaggeration on both sides. Rosebery’s proposals, ‘got into shape’, should produce the adjustment necessary to relieve the strain. The bishops were ready to help. It all sounded very easy.
Cawdor devoted most of his speech in favour of a new House of Lords to defending the existing one. On Home Rule, the Education Bill, the Licensing Bill, and the Budget it had represented the mind of the people far better than had the Commons. His conclusion did not seem to follow very obviously from his premises. Salisbury was another rather static reformer. The character and reputation of the House of Commons had declined, and so had the independence of its members. But in the House of Lords there was perfect independence (a perfection which was somewhat blemished, however, by Crewe’s reminder that the only Scottish representative peer1 who had voted for the Budget had been deprived of his seat). The hereditary principle had the merit of ‘trusting a man because of his sense of public duty; it meant that a man reverenced the example of his fathers and avoided prejudicing his son’s prospects’. But some reform appeared to be necessary and the best plan was the selection of representative peers and the nomination of some members by the Crown. Cromer interpreted the ‘silent voters’—ex hypothesi a safe body of men to whom to attribute views—as being frightened of single-chamber government, and insisted that a reformed House should have full powers over finance.
Lansdowne made the most important speech. He was in favour of going into committee, but reform must result in preserving the historic continuity of the House of Lords. He was not prepared to change its name, to renounce the hereditary principle, or greatly to reduce the number of hereditary peers. He was against election by the county councils or anyone else, but thought that a certain non-hereditary element might be secured by life peerages and by Government nominations for a substantial term. This speech greatly disappointed Rosebery.
‘I honestly think,’ he wrote to Lansdowne. ‘that if you cannot go beyond the limits you laid down last night, the House of Lords plan will be stillborn. The great mass of the Lords are not solicitous about reform at all; if they must have it, they will go for the minimum, and it is the minimum which their leader offers and declares to be sufficient.’e
Two members of the Government—Morley and Crewe—took part in the debate. They were even less enthusiastic than Lansdowne. Morley thought that the changes proposed would not free the House of Lords from the imputation of class prejudice, nor did they contain any provision for removing or diminishing deadlocks. Crewe, with his usual good sense, said that 'the Liberals in the House of Commons and the country would believe that the object of the reforming peers was to consolidate the power of the union ist party and to increase it by limiting the prerogative of the Crown. The real point at issue was the deadlock between the two Houses, and any considerable reform must destroy or weaken the unwritten understanding between them.' This was the essence of the problem: a reformed House of Lords would inevitably destroy the constitutional safety-valve of large-scale creation, and the union ist reformers, who from almost every other point of view were perfectly satisfied with the existing chamber, were urged forward by the knowledge that this would be so.
Crewe’s prescience, however, did not lead him to oppose Rosebery in the division lobby, either on the motion to go into committee or on the substantive resolutions. This task was left to Lord Halsbury, who could be depended upon, rather like a comedian achieving his laughs by the repetition of a well-known series of catch-phrases, to put up his standard performance of opposition to all change. ‘It was impossible to make an institution more practically useful for its purpose than the present House,’ he declared on this occasion. He was supported by one or two die-hard peers like Willoughby de Broke1 and Oranmore and Browne. But he divided only against the last resolution, and mustered a lobby of no more than fifteen. The Government peers voted with the majority.