The bill was given a first reading. But when it came up for second reading, three weeks later, the union ist leadership had returned to the more cautious hands of Lansdowne, who while deploying a number of arguments in favour of the referendum, which, he held, ‘had become indispensable’, thought that the bill went further than he was prepared to go at the time, and asked Lord Balfour not to press it. After Cromer had given strong support to the measure on the entertaining ground that it would involve each party in one unsuccessful referendum and one unsuccessful general election within eighteen months, purging the Liberals of Home Rule and the union ists of tariff reform, the request was complied with. The debate was adjourned, and was never resumed.
Meanwhile some progress had been made with the more serious official union ist proposals. Selborne unfolded a few details in a series of speeches in the middle of March. A combination of the methods of indirect election, selection by the hereditary peers, qualification by office, and nomination by the Government might effect what he called ‘a moderate reform’. The two Houses might then attempt to settle differences by informal conferences. If these failed they might sit and vote together. In certain cases a joint committee, presided over by the Speaker and made up in accordance with the relative strength of the parties in the two Houses, could order the submission of bills to a referendum. A number of points remained very vague.
On March 28, Lansdowne announced his intention of moving an Address to the Crown to deal with the difficulty that his Bill would limit the prerogative in so far as it related to the creation of peers and to the issue of writs of summons to existing peers. Royal consent would therefore be necessary in advance.1 Three days later he moved his motion, quoting a number of precedents for the course. Lord Morley, for the Government,2 rather typically added a few precedents which Lord Lansdowne had omitted and announced that His Majesty’s Ministers, while retaining their full freedom of action, had no wish to impede discussion of a reform bill and would accede to the motion. Rosebery, very difficult to please, lugubriously observed that he ‘had hoped, rather than expected, that the Government would refuse its concurrence’, and the matter was then disposed of.
The bill itself did not come up until well after Easter. Lansdowne presented it for first reading on May 8. Its provisions were very close to the plans which had been outlined by Curzon in February and by Selborne in March, although more detail was given. The reconstituted House was to be limited to about 350 members, for no hereditary peer (except for Princes of the Blood) was to be summoned unless he were a ‘Lord of Parliament’ as defined by the bill. Of these Lords of Parliament, 100 were to be elected by the whole body of hereditary peers from amongst such of their numbers as held or had held certain scheduled offices: ex-Ministers, former Viceroys, Governors, High Commissioners, and Ambassadors and others Heads of Mission were qualified; so were Privy Councillors, members of the Army Council or the Board of Admiralty, captains in the Navy and colonels in the Army, and permanent heads of Government departments. On the territorial side, Lords Lieutenant of counties, chairmen of county councils or sessions and Lord Mayors or Provosts of cities were included.
Another 120 were to be indirectly elected on a regional basis. The members of Parliament for the region would constitute the electoral colleges. The third main group of Lords of Parliament were to be another 100 appointed by the Government of the day, in strict proportion to the strength of the parties in the House of Commons. In addition there were to be seven Lords Spiritual (the two archbishops and five bishops elected by the Episcopate), together with sixteen peers who had held high judicial office. These law lords would sit for life and the two archbishops would sit so long as they held their sees. The other Lords of Parliament, including the five bishops, were to be elected for periods of twelve years, with a quarter of each category retiring every third year.
The other main provisions of the bill limited the right of creation of new hereditary peerages (except for those conferred upon past or present holders of Cabinet office) to a maximum of five a year, and freed hereditary peers who did not become Lords of Parliament from their ineligibility for membership of the House of Commons.
Perhaps the most interesting comment on the bill was supplied by Lansdowne himself in his speech of introduction. He calculated that under the conditions then existing (i.e. a Government majority of 126 in the Commons) the new House would have a union ist majority of eighteen, ‘which’, he added complacently, ‘was not too large for purposes of revision and delay’.i Furthermore, it should be noted, the initial bias of the new chamber against a Liberal Government would be less than that which might be expected to develop in the future. The union ist majority of eighteen would be produced despite the fact that the Lords of Parliament nominated by the Government and chosen by the electoral colleges would, to begin with, all reflect the existing balance of parties in the Commons. At subsequent periods of radical Government substantial proportions of the representatives of these two categories would not reflect the then existing balance of parties, but would be a ‘hangover’ from the balance of parties, probably less favourable to the left, which had existed three or six or nine years before. With a similar Liberal majority in the Commons, a union ist majority in the reconstituted Upper House of substantially more than eighteen was therefore likely in the future.