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Salisbury and the Lords, 1868–1895*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Corinne C. Weston
Corinne C. Weston
Affiliation:
Herbert H. Lehman College, The City University of New York
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Extract

During the period from the Reform Act of 1832 to the early 1880s, when a change set in, the house of lords was perceptibly weaker than the house of commons. The prevailing view of its position, accepted for the most part even by the peers themselves, was expressed in Walter Bagehot's highly influential English constitution (1867, rev. 1872), where the house of lords is described as safe from rough destruction but not from inner decay, the danger coming not so much from assassination as atrophy, not from abolition but decline. This description drew on Bagehot's distinction between the dignified and efficient parts of the constitution. The house of lords belonged to the first category: that house in its dignified capacity inspired a reverence in the people that attached them to the government. Yet, paradoxically, in view of the great respect for the aristocracy, the house of lords had been subordinate as a legislative chamber to the house of commons even before the Reform Act of 1832; and since then this subordination had grown ever more pronounced.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 103 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Hanham, H. J., The nineteenth century constitution, 1815–1914 (Cambridge, 1969), p. 172Google Scholar. The Reform Act of 1832 introduced a new era in the history of the house of lords, partly because of its provisions but also because of the manner in which it passed. When Lord Grey threatened the house of lords with a large creation of peers if it continued to oppose the Reform Bill, he dealt a body blow to the prevailing theory of mixed government which held that the house of lords was a co-ordinate estate with an independent legislative power. To be sure, no new peers were created, but enough peers abstained on the critical vote for the measure to become law, and it was evident that the Grey government and the house of commons had won a great victory while the king and the house of lords had suffered a great defeat. The peers’ anguish deepened when the reformed electorate returned a large reforming majority of Whigs and Radicals in the general election of 1832–3; and the house of lords, seeking to reassert its legislative independence, now adopted an obstructionist course in its dealings with the reformed house of commons. The situation was full of danger to the house of lords, and it even seemed for a time as if the Whigs would be compelled to reform that house. That this was not the outcome was due to the emergence of the organized two-party system, in particular to the growing co-operation between Sir Robert Peel and the duke of Wellington, who commanded the Conservative forces in their respective houses. The political necessities of party overrode the combative instincts of the house of lords, and by the middle of the 1830s the peers had found more subtle ways of asserting their independence. The house of lords became passive after Peel took office in 1841. Though the harmony between the two houses was threatened in 1846, when repeal of the Corn Laws was at issue, the peers accepted Peel's measure at the instance of the leadership in both political parties. Lord John Russell held office between 1846 and 1851, at a time when the Conservative party was in disarray, but the scenes of the post-1832 period were not repeated, perhaps because Whig reforming zeal had slackened. No great political issues divided the parties after 1846, and the house of lords now sank into the somnolence to which contemporary observers called attention at mid-century. Gash, Norman, Reaction and reconstruction in English politics 1832–1852 (Oxford, 1965), chapters 11 and vGoogle Scholar. See also Anderson, Olive, ‘The Wensleydale Peerage Case and the position of the house of lords in the mid-nineteenth century’, English Historical Review, LXXXII, 324 (July 1967), 486–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for denial that the behaviour of the house of lords in 1856 constituted a reassertion of that house's political strength and ‘its re-emergence as a redoubtable Conservative stronghold’. Not the revival of the house of lords but such factors as ministerial ineptitude and carelessness explain why life peers were not added at this time to the house of lords. That house displayed signs of a renewed energy once more in i860 by rejecting Gladstone's Paper Duties Bill, only to be circumvented in 1861 when he consolidated all taxation measures in a single Finance Bill that the peers felt obliged to accept (May, G. H. L. Le, The Victorian constitution: conventions, usages and contingencies (London, 1979), pp. 132–3)Google Scholar. By 1869 the two houses were in opposition on the Irish church question, and to this subject it is necessary to return at a later stage in this article.

2 The English constitution (Ithaca, New York, 1966), pp. 121, 125–6, 128, 132, 149.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. pp. 126–7.

4 Ibid. p. 128.

5 Ibid. p. 134.

6 Ibid. pp. 129–31. Wellington's letter circulated widely in the well-known biographies of the duke written by A. H. Brialmont and George Gleig and published in the 1850s and 1860s. Brialmont's work appeared in French in 1856 and between 1858 and 1860 in Gleig's translation. In 1862 the latter published his own study of Wellington, which went through a people's edition. The life of Arthur first duke of Wellington (London, 1862), pp. 569–72.Google Scholar

7 Hanham, The nineteenth century constitution, p. 173.

8 It underlay the provisions of the Parliament Act of 1911. See also Prime Minister Asquith's speech of 2 Dec. 1909 after the house of lords rejected the Finance Bill. Parliamentary debates (commons), fifth series, xiii, 556–7 and his speech of 21 Feb. 1911 introducing the Parliament Bill. Ibid.xxi, 1748–9.

9 One sees references to the referendal authority, the referendal function, and the referendal capacity of the house of lords. The ‘referendal theory of the house of lords’ seems not to have been used but is logical. See, for example, Marriott, J. A. R., English political institutions (Oxford, third edition, 1925), xii, 164Google Scholar. Among the few modern scholars who have recognized the importance of this subject are Taylor, Robert, Lord Salisbury (London, 1975), pp. 34, 39, 76–7Google Scholar and, more fully, May, Le, Victorian constitution, pp. 133–45Google Scholar. The subject is not discussed in such modern works as Lord Blake's lecture on Salisbury in his Conservative party from Peel to Churchill (London, 1970), pp. 131–66Google Scholar; Paul Smith's introduction to his Lord Salisbury on politics: A selection from his articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860–1883 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 1–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Marsh, Peter, The discipline of popular government: Lord Salisbury's domestic statecraft, 1881–1902 (Sussex, 1978)Google Scholar. Smith does note the presence of this kind of reasoning in Salisbury's last article (‘Disintegration’) in the Quarterly Review but underestimates its importance and as a consequence devotes very little attention to it: Lord Salisbury on politics, p. 102. Basic materials are in Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert marquis of Salisbury (London, 1921), 11, 23–7Google Scholar. Hanham has reprinted the key portion of Salisbury's important speech of 17 June 1869, but his interpretation is seriously misleading: The nineteenth century constitution, pp. 172, 183–5. See also Low, Sidney, The governance of England (London, 1919), pp. 224–6Google Scholar. Low considered that this usage left the peers with only a limited and suspensory veto. Ibid.p. 223. This was not Salisbury's opinion. Low's Governance of England, published originally in 1904, went through five editions by 1919.

10 The law and custom of the constitution (Oxford, 4th edn, 1909), 1, 286Google Scholar. Although Anson was a Conservative partisan in the struggle over the Parliament Bill and the third Home Rule Bill, his statement was by this time a commonplace in political literature: McKechnie, William Sharp, The reform of the house of lords (Glasgow, 1909), pp. 19, 20.Google Scholar

11 Hansard[‘s parliamentary debates], third series, ccxc, 468–9. Salisbury was working in 1884 for a dissolution of parliament and a general election: Weston, Corinne Comstock, ‘The royal mediation in 1884’, English Historical Review, LXXXII (1967), 296–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Salisbury's article ‘Disintegration’ (1883), reprinted in Smith, Paul, Lord Salisbury on politics, pp. 335–76, in particular, 101–3, 345–70.Google Scholar

12 The crisis of liberalism: new issues of democracy (London, 1909), p. viiGoogle Scholar. The Liberals contrasted Wellington's leadership with Salisbury's, to the latter's disadvantage: Asquith, H. H., Fifty years of British parliament (Boston, 1926), 1, 239Google Scholar; May, Le, The Victorian constitution, pp. 136–7Google Scholar; and the remarks in 1888 of Lord Granville, for more than a generation the Liberal leader in the house of lords. Granville also noted that Lord Aberdeen and Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) had been animated by a different spirit from Salisbury: Hansard, third series, cccxxiii, 1602. Salisbury defended the partisanship with which the referendal theory was used. See, for example, his speech at Liverpool, reported in The Times (14 Apr. 1882), p. 6. The Conservative attachment to the referendal theory in the early twentieth century can be seen in the formula that Lord Lansdowne used in moving the rejection of Lloyd George's Finance Bill in the lords on 22 Nov. 1909. He moved ‘that this house is not justified in giving its consent to the Bill until it has been submitted to the judgment of the country’. The subject is discussed by Blewett, Neal, The peers, the parties and the people (Toronto, 1972), pp. 98–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The formula was very carefully prepared: Ibid. p. 99; J. S. Sandars to Lansdowne, 6 Nov. 1909, Balfour papers, Add. MS 49730, fos. 21–6; Lansdowne to Arthur Balfour, 10 Nov. 1909, fos. 27–8; Balfour to Lansdowne, telegram, 11 Nov. 1909, fo. 29; and Lansdowne to Balfour, 13 Nov. 1909, fos. 30–1. For a similar formulation see the official opposition amendments in 1913 and 1914, intended to explain the lords’ rejection of the third Home Rule Bill: Part. deb. (lords), fifth series, xiv, 869, 881, 965; xv, 12. Also, Asquith, Fifty years of British parliament, 11, 149.

13 To Lord Blake, Salisbury was ‘ the most formidable intellectual figure that the Conservative party has ever produced’: Disraeli (London, 1966), p. 499Google Scholar. Smith considers that Salisbury's combative instincts at times exceeded reasonable bounds: Lord Salisbury on politics, p. 8. Smith's study should also be consulted for its analysis of Salisbury's political thought, in particular his view of politics as class struggle. No attempt has been made to deal with the matter here. For Salisbury's longstanding distrust of Gladstone see Curtis, L. P., Coercion and conciliation in Ireland (Princeton, 1963), pp. 67–8Google Scholar. See in addition note 60 below. Also to be noted is Salisbury's attitude towards the house of commons, which he left reluctantly in 1868 on the death of his father, and proceeded thereafter to treat with an air of great contempt. According to Henry Lucy, ‘whenever in debate he was compelled to allude to it, he managed to throw into his tone a note of contempt that greatly amused commoners thronging the bar, or privy councillors standing on the steps of the throne’. Lucy thought this attitude one of pure affectation: Memories of eight parliaments(London, 1908), p. 121Google Scholar. But this was not the opinion of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, an experienced politician with ample opportunity to observe Salisbury. He considered that the latter had ‘ small respect for the opinions of the house of commons, and constantly chafed against his obligation as prime minister to support in the lords proposals to which his colleagues in the commons had been obliged to agree’: cited in Hanham, The nineteenth century constitution, p. 68. Another contemporary, Lord Stanley, later fifteenth earl of Derby, wrote of Salisbury shortly after he entered the house of lords that he ‘seems to feel himself at home in the lords, which he never did altogether in the commons’: Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative party: journals and memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley 1849–1869, ed. Vincent, John (New York, 1978), p. 335Google Scholar. There is also relevant comment in Kennedy, A. L., Salisbury, 1830–1903: portrait of a statesman (London, 1953), p. 75Google Scholar. But Kennedy's statement that Salisbury had no desire to strengthen the house of lords in relationship to the house of commons is mistaken, as is his comment that Salisbury was willing to accept the will of the house of commons as supreme. Contemporaries dated a change in the house of lords from Salisbury's entrance: The Times (9 June 1869), p. 9Google Scholar; The Saturday Review, xxvii (26 June 1869), 829Google Scholar

14 May’ s constitutional history of England, ed.and cont. to 1911 by Francis Holland (London, 1912), 111, 206–7Google Scholar. For Salisbury's view in 1892 see Marsh, , The discipline of popular government, p. 222Google Scholar, and Curtis, , Coercion and conciliation, p. 398.Google Scholar

15 Hansard, third series, cxci, 507.

16 Ibid. cxciii, 88–90. Writing in the Central Literary Magazine (1903–4), p. 150, Isaac Bradley described the part of Salisbury's speech where it was said the peers would yield their opinion when the country's sustained convictions favoured a course as ‘ the celebrated statement, now accepted, practically, by all parties, as to the true position of the upper house’.

17 Hansard, third series, cxciii, 288.

18 The Times (30 June 1868), p. 11. ‘The defenders as well as the opponents of the Irish establishment…appeal to the nation’, ran another passage.

19 Bradley, , Central Literary Magazine, pp. 149–50Google Scholar. There is a Victorian interpretation of the events of 1868–9, published between the third Reform Act and the first Home Rule Bill, in Pulling, F. S., The life and speeches of the marquis of Salisbury (London, 1885), 1, 125–9.Google Scholar

20 Gathorne-Hardy, Alfred Erskine, Gathorme Hardy, first earl of Cranbrook (London, 1910), 1, 286.Google Scholar

21 May's constitutional history of England, 111, 75.

22 The Spectator, xlii (26 June 1869), 753.

23 Courtney, Leonard, The working constitution of the United Kingdom (New York, 1901), pp. 101–2.Google Scholar

24 Davidson, Randall Thomas and Benham, William, Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1891), 11, 18–19.Google Scholar

25 Cairns felt very strongly on the Irish church question, saying at one point that if the Irish church went, the English would follow in twenty years. Yet as late as 8 Apr. 1869 he told the shadow cabinet that the lords would not throw out the Irish Church Bill on the second reading though they might amend it in detail: Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative party, pp. 328, 331, 340. See also note 30, below.

26 Jones, Wilbur Devereux, Lord Derby and Victorian conservatism (Oxford, 1956), p. 345Google Scholar, note; Bell, P. M. H., Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales (Church Historical Society 90, 1969), p. 143Google Scholar. Cf. Fair, John D., ‘The Irish disestablishment conference of 1869’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xxvi, 4 (Oct. 1975), 385.Google Scholar

27 Blake, , Disraeli, pp. 516, 520–1Google Scholar; Feuchtwanger, E.J., Disraeli, democracy and the Tory party (Oxford, 1968), pp. 1–16.Google Scholar

28 Fair, ‘The Irish disestablishment conference’, pp. 383–7.

29 Life of Tait, n, 25.

30 The Times (7 June 1869), p. 5Google Scholar; Fair, , ‘The Irish disestablishment conference’, pp. 386–7Google Scholar; Hardinge, Sir Arthur, The Life of…earl of Carnarvon (London, 1925), 11, 9–10Google Scholar. According to The Times, however, Salisbury was undecided about the best course to be followed. Cairns's attitude is explained in Fair,’ The Irish disestablishment conference’, p. 386, note 2 and in Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland, p. 143. See also note 25 above.

31 The political correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, 1868–1876, ed. Ramm, Agatha (London, 1952), 1, 26.Google Scholar

32 Ibid. 1, 27.

33 Life of Tait, 11, 26–7; Carnarvon to Salisbury, 7 June 1869: Hatfield MSS 3M/Class E. I am grateful to the present marquess of Salisbury for permission to consult the papers of the third marquess and to quote from them.

34 Life of Tait, 11, 27–8.

35 Fair, ‘The Irish disestablishment conference’, p. 387.M

36 The Times (14June 1869), p. 8. The Spectator noted, however, that until the night of 14 June it was believed that Derby held the house in his hand: Ibid.xlii (26 June 1869), 753.

37 Ibid. (17 July 1869), 387; Lord Granville to Queen Victoria, 17 June 1869, Letters of Queen Victoria, ed. Buckle, G. E. (London, 1926), second series, 1, 610–11Google Scholar; Lord Fitzmaurice, Edmond, The life of…second earl of Granville (London, 1905), 11, 10Google Scholar; Pulling, , The life and speeches of…Salisbury, 1, 128–9Google Scholar. ‘The Nature of Democracy’, The Quarterly Review (October 1884), p. 329, noteGoogle Scholar. The author is said to have been Sir Henry Maine. See also Marsh, P. T., The Victorian church in decline (London, 1969), p. 35Google Scholar; Bell, , Disestablishment in Ireland, pp. 116–7Google Scholar. Bell implies that Disraeli, with Cairns, opposed a second reading of the Irish Church Bill in the house of lords.

38 Hansard, third series, CXCVII, 37. Sir Ivor Jennings seems to suggest that Derby's speech marks the beginning of the mandate on a regular basis in English politics. This was not in fact the case: Cabinet government (London, second edition, 1951), p. 467, note 6Google Scholar. See the rather different view in Emden, C. S., The people and the constitution: being a history of the development of the people's influence in British government (Oxford, second edition, Oxford Paperbacks, 1962), pp. 216–18Google Scholar. The best modern study of the mandate is Patricia Kelvin's ‘The development and use of the concept of the electoral mandate in British politics, 1867 to 1911’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1977.Google Scholar

39 Hansard, third series, cxcvii, 83–4.

40 Ibid. 85; Le May, The Victorian constitution, pp. 135–6.

41 Hansard, third series, cxcvii, 305.

42 Fitzmaurice, Granville, 11, 10; Hansard, third series, cxcvii, 304–7.

43 Ibid. cxci, 532–41. The speech was given on 30 Mar. 1868. See the comment in Blake, Disraeli, pp. 498–500 and in Jeyes, S. H., The life and times of.the marquess of Salisbury (London, 1895), 1, 119Google Scholar. Lord Stanley considered Salisbury more conciliatory after he went to the lords but still unwilling to act with Disraeli: Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative party, pp. 335, 340, 345.

44 Cited in Curtis, Coercion and conciliation, p. 8. The letter is dated 6 Mar. 1868.

45 Gathorne-Hardy, Cranbrook, 1, 268. See also Ibid. p. 266.

46 Ibid. I, 281; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, democracy and the Tory party, p. 5; Blake, M Disraeli, p. 544; William F. Monypenny and George E. Buckle, The life of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield (New York, 1929), pp. 378, 427, 434, 451–2, 513.

47 Smith, Lord Salisbury on politics, pp. 256–7, 263–6, 272–3, 276, 277, etc.

48 Marten, C. H. K., ‘The marquess of Salisbury’, The political principles of some notable prime ministers of the nineteenth century, ed. Hearnshaw, F. J. C. (London, 1926), p. 280Google Scholar; Cecil, , Life of Salisbury, 11, 24–6Google Scholar. See also the D.N.B. article on Salisbury, written by his nephew, Algernon Cecil. The latter refers to Salisbury's speech of 26 June 1868, as laying down, in words often quoted since, what he considered the function of the peers in the modern state. And he adds that Salisbury reaffirmed the doctrine in an impressive speech after the general election of 1868, advising the peers to pass the second reading of the Irish Church Bill.

49 Parl. deb. (lords), fourth series, CLXVI, 702.

50 Ibid.CLXXIV, 15–16. This portion of Devonshire's speech was quoted by Bernard Henry Holland in a political biography of the duke published in 1911, the year of the Parliament Act: The life of Spencer Compton, eighth duke of Devonshire (London, 1911), 11, 406–7Google Scholar. In Devonshire's view, the action of the house of lords in 1869 provided convincing proof that the peers did not hesitate to defer to the will of the electorate even when that will was contrary to their own: Ibid. 11, 406. See also the speech of Lord Robertson, about the same time, in Parl. deb. (lords), fourth series, CLXXIII, 1264. Robertson was a law lord and faithful member of the Conservative (Unionist) party.

51 The Times (5 Sept. 1893), p. 7.

52 Jeyes, Salisbury, 1, 120. Jeyes wrote: ‘The Irish church was emphatically a case in point.’ See also Earl Cadogan's speech on 7 July 1884: Hansard, third series, ccxc, 185.

53 Brock, Michael, The Great Reform Act (London, 1973), p. 57Google Scholar; Kemp, Betty, ‘Reflections on the repeal of the Corn Laws’, Victorian Studies (March, 1962), pp. 201–4Google Scholar. For the debates on catholic emancipation see Hansard, new series, xx, 437–8 (Gascoyne), 787 (O'Neill), 854 (Blandford), 1170–1 (Sadler), 1288 (Peel); xxi, 271 (earl of Guilford). For the debates on the corn laws, see Ibid., third series, LXXXIII, 941 and LXXXVI, 1174–5 (Lord Stanley); LXXXIV, 253–4, 261–2 (Bankes), etc. The speakers’ willingness to carry out their implied promises went untested since there were no general elections in 1829 and 1846.

54 Hatfield MSS 3M/D31/22, typescript copy. See Salisbury to Carnarvon as late as 1 Jan. 1882: Ibid. 3M/D31/81; and 19 Jan. 1883, Ibid. 3M/D31/88; Cecil, Salisbury, 11, 27.

55 Hardinge, Carnarvon, 11, 24.

56 Annual Register, N.S. (1871), p. 77; Hardinge, Carnarvon, 11, 24.

57 Described in the Annual Register, N.S. (1871), p. 79.

58 Hansard, third series, ccviii, 475–80.

59 Smith, Lord Salisbury on politics, p. 339.

60 See Salisbury's extraordinary speech of 6 May 1861, on the resolution for the repeal of the paper duties. Assigning a high importance to extra-parliamentary opinion, it foreshadows the better-known speeches of 1868, 1869 and 1872, from which the referendal theory came, and suggests that Salisbury (at the time Lord Robert Cecil) had, as early as this, strong personal objections to Gladstone as a political leader: Pulling, Salisbury, 1, 44–9. See also Lucy's comment on Salisbury's attitude towards Gladstone in Memories of eight parliaments, p. 116, and Salisbury's earlier views on the house of lords in the Saturday Review, xii (3 Aug. 1861), 113–14; XVII (7 May 1864), 547,548; xx (8July 1865), 44–5. That Salisbury wrote these articles may be seen in Pinto-Duschinsky, Michael, The political thought of Lord Salisbury, 1854–1868 (London, 1967), pp. 162–88.Google Scholar

61 The letter is published, without the postscript, in Cecil, Salisbury, 11, 25–6. A typescript copy of the complete letter is at Hatfield House. Salisbury to Carnarvon, 20 Eeb. 1872, Hatfield MSS 3M/D31/23.

62 Hansard, third series, ccxi, 1493–4.

63 Ibid. 1495.

64 Both speeches are quoted in Leach, Arthur, ‘House of Lords’, Fortnightly Review, xxxviii, old series (1882), 358–60Google Scholar. Gladstone's response was that the house of commons, not the house of lords, represented the country's solid and permanent opinion. That opinion was Liberal, as could be seen from the parliaments elected since the Reform Act. Hanham, The nineteenth century constitution, p. 203.

65 Smith, Lord Salisbury on politics, p. 338; Salisbury at Sheffield, reported in The Times (23 July 1884), p. 10; Taylor, Lord Salisbury, p. 79. Very probably Salisbury also took note when a strong segment of public opinion rallied to the house of lords after its appellate jurisdiction was ended by Gladstone's Judicature Act of 1873. Although this was a Liberal measure, the product of Lord Chancellor Selborne, it had the support of Disraeli and Cairns. After the general election of 1874 a group of Conservative backbenchers forced a reversal of policy on their leaders and secured the restoration of the lords’ appellate jurisdiction in the Judicature Act of 1876: Stevens, Robert, Law and politics. The house of lords as a judicial body, 1800–1976 (Chapel Hill, 1978), pp. 44–67Google Scholar. Stevens writes that ‘the real purpose of the pressure groups behind the bill [of 1876] had been to bolster the peers as a branch of the legislature.’ Ibid. p. 67.

66 In this speech, which was given wide circulation as a publication of the National Union, Salisbury made his argument from direct democracy even more explicit when he declared that ‘the direct action of the people is superseding the indirect action of its representatives’: Pulling, Salisbury, 11, 117–18Google Scholar. See Curtis, , Coercion and conciliation, p. 411Google Scholar, for an account of how Salisbury in 1893 exploited, for propaganda purposes, the government's control over proceedings in the house of commons and Marsh, The discipline of popular government, pp. 200–2Google Scholar for a description of the propaganda of the National Union.

67 Salisbury at Sheffield, The Times (23 July 1884), p. 10. See also his speech at Glasgow, , The Times (2 Oct. 1884), p. 7Google Scholar; Kelso, 12 Oct. 1884, Speeches of the marquis of Salisbury, ed. Lucy, William Henry (London, 1895), pp. 142–4Google Scholar; Dumfries, 22 Oct. 1884, Ibid. pp. 15–3; and the Junior Constitutional Club, The Times (8 July 1893), p. 12.

68 Taylor, Lord Salisbury, pp. 76–7.

69 The last function of the house of lords (London, 1884), p. 30.Google Scholar

70 Hansard, third series, ccxc, 124 (Cairns); 149, 153 (Balfour of Burleigh); 155–6 (Stanhope); 185 (Cadogan); 384–5 (Carnarvon); 425 (Rutland), 438 (Wemyss). See also the Annual Register (1884), pp. 98–9, 207.

71 Part. deb. (lords), fourth series, xvii, 26–31 (Devonshire); 238–9 (Playfair commenting on Devonshire); and 296–7 (Ripon on Devonshire). See also 70–1 (Cowper) and 204–5 (Argyll).

72 See, for example, The Times on 24, 29, and 31 July 1884 and on 5 Sept. 1893, p. 7. By the end of the nineteenth century G. Lowes Dickinson was writing: ‘The peers no longer stand upon their rights as an independent and co-ordinate estate [the language used during the parliamentary debates on the Reform Bill of 1832]; they recognize that the “will of the people,” when once it has been really pronounced, must be law; and if they oppose the commons, they do so ostensibly on the ground that the representative house is misrepresenting the nation.’ ‘This position’, he added, ‘has become so familiar to us that we hardly pause to observe that it implies a revolution in the theory of the constitution.’ The development of parliament during the nineteenth century (London, 1895), pp. 98–9.Google Scholar

73 Political speeches delivered in August and September 1884 by W. E. Gladstone (Edinburgh, n.d.), p. 20Google Scholar. See also Gladstone's speech at the foreign office on 10 July 1884, reprinted in The Times (11 July 1884), p. 10Google Scholar; Hanham, , The nineteenth century constitution, p. 189Google Scholar; The Times (16 July 1884), P. 9.Google Scholar

74 Pulling Salisbury, 11, 223; The Times (29 July 1884), p. 10. Salisbury was addressing deputations from the various Conservative associations of London and Middlesex.

75 Salisbury wrote to A. V. Dicey on 26 Nov. 1892: ‘I fully concur in your opinion that some form of the referendum is the solution towards which we are tending, and indeed the only one by which a termination can be put to the entire divergence of view which has grown up between the two houses of parliament. I am rather doubtful whether you do not exaggerate the speed with which we are likely to reach that end. My own impression is that there will be a good deal of troubled water to pass through first’: Hatfield MSS 3M/C7/486. See also the account of Salisbury's speech at the Junior Constitutional Club, The Times (8 July 1893), p. 12, and Marriott, English political institutions, p. 228, for the latter's belief that the referendum was the logical outcome of the insistence on a mandate.

76 Quoted in Hamer, D. A., Liberal politics in the age of Gladstone and Rosebery (Oxford, 1972), p. 174Google Scholar. See also Ibid. pp. 156–61. Gladstone was aware before the general election that the referendal theory would be resurrected to deny legitimacy to his legislative proposals if he was returned to office: Asquith, Fifty years of British parliament, 1, 269.

77 Marsh believes that Salisbury wanted the rejection of the second Home Rule Bill to take place in the house of lords ‘in order to demonstrate that, at least on the great issue of home rule, the house of lords represented British opinion in the new parliament better than the house of commons’: The discipline of popular government, p. 225Google Scholar. The same idea is in Curtis, , Coercion and conciliation, p. 412Google Scholar. But this is to take Salisbury's rhetoric at face value. See also Marsh's account of Salisbury's elaborate preparation for the lords’ veto: The discipline of popular government, pp. 226–7.Google Scholar

78 Rosebery's statement is in Part. deb. (lords), fourth series, XXII, 32. See also Ensor, R. C. K., England since 1870 (Oxford, 1960 edn), p. 216Google Scholar; Marquess of Crewe, Lord Rosebery (London, 1931), 11, 444–5Google Scholar. According to The Times, he had at one blow shattered the fabric of Liberal policy (cited Ibid. p. 445); Annual Register, N.S. (1894), pp. 68–73. In Cranbrook's opinion, Rosebery had ‘distinctly varied the home rule condition by expressing his concurrence with Salisbury that England must be converted before it could be adopted’ (Gathorne-Hardy, Cranbrook, 11, 344). Asquith followed Rosebery's lead in 1901. See the latter's remarks as prime minister on 14 Feb. 1912, in the debate on the address before the introduction of the third Home Rule Bill. Asquith declared:’ We have now what we had not in 1893 - we have got a majority for home rule in Great Britain’: Part. deb:. (commons), fifth series, xxxiv, 34.

79 Stead, William T., Peers or people? The house of lords weighed in the balance and found wantingM (London, 1907), p. 3Google Scholar. See also May, Le, The Victorian constitution, p. 145.Google Scholar

80 ‘Constitutional revision’, National Review, no. 117 (Nov. 1892), pp. 295–6, 297, 299. According to Alfred Austin, editor of the National Review, Salisbury's article made a very deep impression: Austin to Salisbury, 26 Sept. 1893, Hatfield MSS 3.M/Class E. See also Jenkins, Roy, Mr Balfour's poodle: An account of the struggle between the house of lords and the government of Mr Asquith (London, 1954, rep. 1968), pp. 33–4Google Scholar; May, Le, The Victorian constitution, pp. 140–2.Google Scholar

81 Parl. deb. (lords), fourth series, XVII, 640; XXII, 22–5.

82 Printed in The Times (8 Apr. 1895), p. 9.

83 Ibid. (23 May 1895), p. 6. The ideas of 1868–9 were also revived in 1895 when the barrister S. H. Jeyes published a biography of Salisbury. Jeyes gave the speech on the Suspensory Bill extensive coverage, finding its language as relevant in 1895 as it had been earlier: Salisbury, 1, 113–20. See also Sir Spencer Walpole's The history of twenty-fiveyears (London, 1904), 11, 366Google Scholar. This four-volume work, published in the years from 1904 to 1908, is still the fullest history of the period from 1856 to 1880. Discussing the Irish church controversy, Walpole writes of Salisbury as seeing ‘rightly or wrongly, [that] the fate of the Irish church had been referred to the constituencies in 1868, and that, in every part of the kingdom, the electors had given a reply which could not be misinterpreted by the dullest intellectt [italics added]’. And he added that Salisbury was ‘too wise to refuse assent to its [the Irish Church Bill's] principle’. See also Le May, The Victorian constitution, p. 141.

84 The Quarterly Review, cxcvi (July-Oct. 1902), 652–3.

85 A Victorian diarist: extracts from the journals of Mary, Lady Monkswell, 1873–1895, ed. Collier, E. C. F. (London, 1944), pp. 238–9Google Scholar. See also Stead, Peers or people?, pp.3–5Google Scholar; Lecky, W. E. H., Democracy and liberty (London, 1896), 1, 438Google Scholar; McKechnie, , The reform of the house of lords, pp. 18–19; and note 77 above.Google Scholar

86 Gathorne-Hardy, Cranbrook, 11, 351–2. This is an entry in Cranbrook's diary, dated 23 July 1895. See also Low, Sidney, ‘The house of lords as a constitutional force’, The New ReviewM, x, 58 (Mar. 1894), 257–64Google Scholar. This was a Conservative publication. For a rather different estimate of the lords’ position at this time see The Spectator, LXXVII (1 Aug. 1896), 132–3Google Scholar and May, Le, The Victorian constitution, pp. 144–5.Google Scholar

87 The letter, dated 13 Apr. 1906, was originally published in Lord Newton, Lord Lansdowne: a biography (1929) and is reprinted in Hanham, The nineteenth century constitution, p. 192.