Ir the House of Lords acted as ey body hoped they would in rejecting the Home Rule Bill, they also acted up to their traditiona in rejecting the ' Betterment" clause in the London County Couns Cil's Bill. There is a general consent that in doing this they made " grave mistake, The betterment clause came up from the Commons strongly backed by members of the Opposition xs well as of the Government, and it is too obvious that in rejecting it the Lords thought much wore of their ist of London Even the Times deplores their mistake; but the Government must be grateful to it, as it gives another and a good reason for attacking the Upper House, The Times say:
As the rejection of the Betterment clan will in all' probability cause the whole B to be abandoned, we do not consider that. the House of Lords is right in thus postponing for another year—or, as it would more truly seem, indefinitely—the whole case of London improvements. The Bill had been so pared down and made comparatively innocuous that pass it as an experiment could have done jeharm, To reject it—for that is what mounts to—is, on the cther hand, a ious step at this particular juncture, There will be outery enough against the House of Lords when they come to reject the Home Rule Bill, and it seems a pity that they should give their numerous enemies an additional ground for denouncing them, For their action in regard to the greater measure they will havea perfect defence. But as regards the lesser measure, although in theory it is {quite true that Betterment should wait till Parliament has considered it in " public Bill, the chance of getting such a Bill through is small, and therefore the prospect of obtaining our much-needed London improvements be: comes fainter and fainter. For this the House of Lords must now share the responsi-Dility with the County Council, The articles on the third reading of the Home Rule Bill are so thoroughly partisan, that it would be merely tedious to quote from them, but we may notice the Speaker's remark that no Bill of importaner, which had passed through all its stages in the House of Commons, has ever been more than temporarily delayed by the House of Lords." In former cases, however, public in the country has been at the back of the Bill; but it is impossible to say that in England at least the majority of the voters are in favour of Home Rule for Ireland.
What position the House of Lords really holds as a branch of the legishture is shown by the fact that when its members came together to throw out the Home Rule Bill, it was impossible to find any officials who could identify them, and the police were obliged to let anyone in who said he was Peer. Half or more of these hereditary legislators never come near the House except on a very rare field day like this, and surely there wust be very few
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.