In the first session of the 1832 Parliament the Lords had behaved with great restraint. Confronted with the huge Government majority in the House of Commons and chastened by their recent humiliation, they had allowed such controversial measures as the abolition of slavery, Scottish burgh reform and the Irish Church Bill to pass. In Peel’s words: ‘The business was got through, but only because that which we prophesied took place; namely that the popular assembly exercised tacitly supreme power; that the House of Lords, to avoid the consequences of collision, declined acting upon that which was notoriously the deliberate judgment and conviction of a majority.’f But as soon as the Government’s ‘honeymoon’ period was over and there were indications that it might be losing some support in the country, the Tory peers began to regain their courage. In the 1834 session an Irish Tithes Bill was rejected and a measure for the prevention of bribery at elections was so amended as to cause its withdrawal by the Government. After the interlude of the Peel Government of 1834-35, the Lords proceeded to deal in a still more brutal fashion with bills sent up from the Commons. Both the English and the Irish Corporation Bills were smothered in amendments, and the Irish Tithes Bill went down for a third time. So sweeping, indeed, was their policy of rejection or wholesale amendment that when, in 1836, they allowed the passage of a bill permitting persons accused of felony to be defended by counsel (which had already been passed on three occasions by the Commons) it was regarded as a triumph of moderation and a vindication of the liberal sentiments of Lord Lyndhurst, who had at the last moment changed his mind on the issue. And all this occurred when the Tory peers were under what was subsequently regarded as the unusually restraining influence of Wellington’s leadership. At times, however, as in the case of the English Corporations Bill, the degree of restraint exercised was so little that even the Tory Opposition in the House of Commons could not subscribe to the demands of the peers; but at least this meant that the Upper House was acting as something more than the servant of the leader of the Opposition in the Commons.
Strong interference by the Lords with Government measures continued so long as the Whig Administration lasted, although the decline in the reforming zeal of the latter naturally tended to lessen the force of the conflict. During the greater part of the life of Peel’s 1841-46 Government there was no conflict. It was a Tory Government, and trouble showed signs of arising only when the Prime Minister had quarrelled with his less enlightened supporters on the issue of the Corn Laws. On this occasion Wellington fully acted up to his reputation. He wrote individually to each of the Tory peers, urging them not to oppose the bill, and they accepted his advice.
Between 1846 and 1868 the Tory majority in the House of Lords was smaller than at any other time between 1789 and the present day, and the country was governed by a series of weak Administrations, none of which commanded the support of a straight party majority in the House of Commons. As a result, conflicts between the two Houses were comparatively rare, and most of those which arose were not on matters of major importance. In the case of the principal exception to this rule, that of the Paper Duty Bill of 1860, the effect of rejection on Gladstone may have been great, but that on most people was modified by the limited support which the measure enjoyed in the Cabinet, and the even more limited support which the Cabinet enjoyed in the country. And in the following year, by reverting to the earlier practice of taking all the major financial measures as one, the Chancellor was able to get his Paper Duty provisions through as part of the Finance Bill.
The Reform Bill of 1867 passed the Upper House with little difficulty. Lord Derby had anticipated some trouble, but, except for a few rumblings from such high Tories as Salisbury1 and Rutland, none developed. The colour of the Government was more important than the content of the bill.
In 1868 the colour of the Government changed, and the Liberals came back with a majority of 112—the strongest party Government for a quarter of a century. Its first major measure was the Irish Church Bill of 1869, which the majority of their lordships vehemently disliked, but to which they gave a second reading by a majority of thirty-three. Thirty-six Conservative peers, led by Lord Salisbury,2 voted for the bill. Salisbury was no doubt giving effect to a view which he expressed three years later that it was the duty of the Lords to give way ‘only when the judgment of the nation has been challenged at the polls and decidedly expressed’.g This principle, he thought, was ‘so rarely applicable as practically to place little fetter upon our independence’. Certainly he applied the principle very sparingly, and his moderation towards the Irish Church Bill was not repeated for any of the Government’s other major measures. The bill to abolish the purchase of army commissions, which had met with bitter Tory opposition in the Commons, was summarily rejected by the Lords; but in this case the Government was able to obtain its objective by administrative action. The Ballot Bill twice failed in the Upper House, and would probably have done so a third time had not Disraeli’s caution proved stronger than Lord Salisbury’s pugnacity.