Some Scattered Thoughts which, with Good Fortune, will Terminate their Long and Anguished Journey at the House of Lords
What did the House of Lords ever do for us?
I would imagine that the House of Lords has some pretty distant origins. I don’t know a huge amount about its existence before the Civil Wars so you’ll have to find out about all that on your own.
After the Civil Wars, the House of Lords fit into a model of mixed government which everyone quite liked the sound of. Aristotle thought there were 6 basic forms of government, they were distinguished based on how many people ruled and how well they ruled. This gives us monarchy (good rule by one), tyranny (bad rule by one), aristocracy (good rule by a few), oligarchy (you get the pattern by now), politeia (ok, this one’s more complicated, maybe we’ll get to it later) and democracy. Later Cicero would say that the Romans employed a combination of these forms of government: they had two consuls who were basically monarchs (they alternated who was in charge, so at any one time there was one consul actually in power), the senate constituted the aristocratic element and the tribal assemblies and tribunes of the plebs represented the many. Cicero thought this was better than any single form of government, because the good parts of each could be allowed to shine while the bad parts were held in check by the other elements. This idea was advocated by Charles I in his response to the Nineteen Propositions which aimed to reduce his power. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Britons basically adopted the idea wholesale.
Eighteenth-century Britons were obsessed with balance. Much of the political debate hinged on whether you thought that the King taking too much power was more of a threat than the oligarchy that ruled the commons taking too much power or even the masses out on the streets. For example, early in the century, efforts were made by the ‘Country Interest’1 to kick out ‘placeholders’—people who were in the pay of the crown and thus loyal to the government—from Parliament. They also passed Land Qualification Acts which meant MPs had to own land, the idea was that in order to represent your constituents and the national interest you needed an independent income rather than an income that came directly from others and could thus be used to influence you. The country interest was opposed by the court interest which tended to see all this as the necessary workings of politics.
The reign of George III contains many exciting examples of how people sought to maintain balance in the constitution. Edmund Burke2 wrote Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents in 1770 in which he argued that the threat to liberty came, not from the King’s prerogative powers, but through his powers of patronage. In other words, he could buy support in the Commons. In 1783, efforts were made by Charles Fox and Lord North to past the India Bill, which would have taken away the King’s power to appoint people to the East India Company and vested it in Parliament. Opponents of the act, such as the King, saw this as a step too far in Parliaments favour, it would debalance the constitution too far in favour of the Commons.
It’s important to note that the mixed constitution is quite a different beast from the separation of powers. Both ideas have a common lineage, in fact the separation of powers is basically the result of Montesquieu misunderstanding how the British system operated. Those American rebels decided this misunderstanding seemed good enough. Probably the key difference is the degree to which the ‘branches’ of government are in conflict. The American system is based on the assumption that the legislative branch will fight tooth and nail to keep the president’s power at its proper level, and vice versa. Mixed government is based on more of a partnership between the ‘branches’ in which their distinct virtues are expressed.
In 1832, the mixed constitution came to an end. The Great Reform Act put an end to rotten boroughs, at least in England, which made it impossible for parliamentary majorities to be bought wholesale. Suddenly the electorate took centre stage and success in politics depended more on appealing to them than to the strategic use of money. The power of the monarch remained to a degree, but it was substantially less important than it had been. The House of Lords also remained important, but its influence diminished and in 1909, after they had vetoed the Liberal Party’s budget, the Liberals passed an act to substantially reduce their power (the act was passed by the Lords after King George V threatened to create enough Liberal peers to pass the bill if they rejected it). It’s interesting that the King’s influence was necessary to at last break the House of Lords, but it was only possible for him to make this threat with the backing of the Liberal government.
So anyway, this whole thing is meant to be about the House of Lords. Since 1910, it has been difficult to identify the role of the Lords. They used to be an aristocratic check on the excesses of democracy, but now it’s hard to imagine many people endorsing the idea that the will of the people should be stymied by the opinions of people who hold their position through an accident of birth.
In 1999, the Blair government stuck the last nail in the coffin of the House of Lords as it had been. They removed the vast majority of hereditary peers so now the Lords is mostly appointed by the Prime Minister. Perhaps this opens up the possibility of a new form of mixed government. Rather than democracy being balanced by the vast wisdom of aristocrats, it can be balanced by the expertise of technocrats appointed by the Prime Minister. This hasn’t happened of course, the House of Lords is now a dumping ground for friendly donors and political allies. Even if a system could be found to ensure that only ‘proper experts’ were appointed, it would be quite a major political innovation, one that would fundamentally change how British democracy works (I think probably for the worse) and I don’t think there are enough neo-Aristotelians still knocking about to make it particularly popular. Maybe the technocratic mixed constitution already exists in the power of the civil service or quangos or something anyway, who knows.
[After a break of 4 days, I have returned to this, and damned if I’m going to reread anything, so there may be a sudden jump in the argument (is there an argument??)]
Generally, it’s considered best to think through the political systems that you want to impose. People take a look at the House of Lords, and they can see that it doesn’t really fit into our contemporary ideas of how a political system should work, as a result they reach for the nearest tool to hand which is labelled ‘make it elected.’ But we should consider more deeply the implications of creating a second chamber which has just as much, possibly more, legitimacy as the first. British politics has never been based on an American style separation of powers and if we’re going to upend everything we should probably think more deeply about what powers will be taken from the Commons.
Hell, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be better. One of the things smart people like to say about the British constitution is that it’s an elective dictatorship. You win a majority in the commons and you can basically do what you want. This isn’t entirely true of course, if your party thinks you look like a liability for the next election they’ll kick you out, but the system depends on them knowing when to do that, or when to vote against what the party leaders tell them to. Introducing an elected house of lords could stop this. On the other hand, it may tip the balance too far in the direction of juristicto and away from gubernaculum sometimes you need someone to yank the tiller in a particular direction, this is far harder in systems like the German one and probably a lot easier in president based systems. Maybe Britain strikes a middle ground at the moment.
I probably don’t have time to explain this fully, but, for our purposes here, the Country interest basically means people who were very concerned about corruption (there is a lot more to it though!!)
Cast from your mind the image of Burke as any sort of reactionary: he was a Whig who, before the French Revolution, was mainly afraid of monarchical power.