The Great Events by Famous Historians

And who will deny the word "exceptional"? To a seventh of them it must perforce be applicable, for they have been specially selected to serve in an Upper House. And to the rest, those who sit by inheritance, does it not apply even more? It is not what they have done in life. This was no question of capacity or achievement. By the accident of birth alone they had been put in a position different from other men. How shall each in his wisdom or his folly interpret that well-worn motto which still has virtue both to quicken and control, "Noblesse oblige"?

Very curious indeed was the result. It is useless to consider the preliminaries, the pronouncements, the meetings, the campaign which raged for a fortnight in the Press both by letter and leading article. It is even useless to try and discover who, if anybody, was in favor of the Bill which was the original bone of contention. Its merits and defects were hardly debated. On that fateful 10th of August the House of Lords split into three groups on quite a different point. The King's Government had seized on the King's Prerogative and uttered threats. Should they or should they not be constrained to make good their threats, and use it?

The first group said: "Yes. They have betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position. Let their crime be brought home to them and to the world. All is lost for us except honor. Shall we lose that also? To the last gasp we will insist on our amendments."

The second group said: "No. They have indeed betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position, but why add to this disaster the destruction of what remains to safeguard the Empire? We protest and withdraw, washing our hands of the whole business for the moment. But our time will come."

The third group said: "No. We do not desire the King's Prerogative to be used. We will prevent any need for its exercise. The Bill shall go through without it."

And, the second group abstaining, by seventeen votes the last prevailed against the first. But whether ever before a victory was won by so divided a host, or ever a measure carried by men who so profoundly disapproved of it, let those judge who read the scathing Protest, inscribed in due form in the journals of the House of Lords by one who went into that lobby, Lord Rosebery, the only living Peer who has been Prime Minister of England.

It is unnecessary to print here more than the tenth and last paragraph of this tremendous indictment. It runs—"Because the whole transaction tends to bring discredit on our country and its institutions."

How under these extraordinary circumstances did the Peerage take sides, old blood and new blood, the governing families and the so-called "backwoodsmen," they who were carving their own names, and they who relied upon the inheritance of names carved by others?

The first group, the "No-Surrender Peers," mustered 114 in the division. Two Bishops were among them, Bangor and Worcester, and a distinguished list of peers, first of their line, including Earl Roberts and Viscount Milner. When the story of our times is written it will be seen that there are few walks of life in which some one of these has not borne an honorable part.

Then at a bound we are transported to the Middle Ages. At the Coronation, when the Abbey Church of Westminster rang to the shouts, "God Save King George!" five Lords of Parliament knelt on the steps of the throne, kissed the King's cheek, and did homage, each as the chief of his rank and representing every noble of it. They are all here:—

The Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal and premier Peer of England, head of the great house of Howard, a name that for five centuries has held its own with highest honor.

The Marquis of Winchester, head of the Paulets, representative of the man who for three long years held Basing House for the King against all the forces which Cromwell could muster, but descended also from that earlier Marquis of Tudor creation, who, when he was asked how in those troublous times he succeeded in retaining the post of Lord High Treasurer, replied, "By being a willow and not an oak." To-day the boot is on the other leg.

The Earl of Shrewsbury, head of the Talbots, a race far famed alike in camp and field from the days of the Plantagenets.

The Viscount Falkland, representative of that noble Cavalier who fell at Newbury.

The Baron Mowbray and Segrave and Stourton, titles which carry us back almost to the days of the Great Charter.

Nor does the feudal train end there. We see also a St. Maur, Duke of Somerset, whose family has aged since in the time of Henry VIII. men scoffed at it as new; a Clinton, Duke of Newcastle; a Percy, Duke and heir of Northumberland, that name of high romance; a De Burgh, Marquis of Clanricarde; a Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, twenty-sixth Earl, and head of a house which for eight centuries has stood on the steps of thrones; a Courtenay, Earl of Devon; an Erskine, Earl of Mar, an earldom whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, and many another.