Show Privilege It was only natural that those Utah newspapers which keep from their readers most of what is going on in the way of political progress in other states our own nation would do something similar in the case of the momentous struggle now going on between the advocates of equal political rights the defenders of special privileges in Do You Do the people remember or have they already how the and all other papers timidly hut steadily championed the cause of the House of the titled aristocracy of These local who are untrue to Lincoln's favorite conception of a free government one for and by the people make no comments now on what is contrary to their in old England They even hide away the news about these stirring events and seek to convey the impression that the aristocracy of birth over there is in-the same secure position of power that the aristocracy of wealth occupies in What Is Going therefore give a news item on this since the papers of privilege have practically suppressed By the full government majority of in a packed house of the House of Commons a fortnight ago passed the House of Lords Veto Certain as the outcome was the formal fact deserves note as marking an historic moment in the history of the English No serious fears are entertained of the bill's failing to become The Liberal press takes for granted the king's promise to create a sufficient number of Liberal peers to override a hostile majority in the upper It also points to the fact that the country at large has absolutely refused to rise to the Unionist appeal against Asquith's constitution The taming of the Lords taken everywhere for The question henceforward knot of the Lords' right to but of the Lords' ability to In other the really lost the first battle two years when they allowed the Lords to reject the are now forming a second line of battle on the question of the of the House of And this is a matter J which they are more interested than the great mass of the Liberal pledged though it formally is to the A Momentous f this great and struggle now going on m where mother of parliaments 1 the greatest con sequences to all the American he Tory papers are saying little or noting and are actually seeking to belittle the mighty issues involved in it by hiding the truth and abridging the news dispatches that relate to Justin the a member of says that there is something of immense significance in even the formal movement of a scheme o legislative reform which everybody who has real interest in the working of the British constitution knows to be absolutely It is a curious and a very significant fact that the kind of resistance now being offered to the passage of the bill for depriving the Lords of their power of putting a veto over financial measures introduced by a Radical government should be introduced in the same region as that which is characterized by its experiments for a conquest of the kingdoms of the The Result Looks He does not mean to suggest by this reflection that there is anything uncertain or problematical about the accomplishment of the purpose which the Liberal government have for the restriction of the hereditary peers to something like their reasonable limits of But the mere fact that such a restriction should have to be introduced and battled for in an age like ours seems to bring the Britons of today into a sort of connection with the whenever these the nation's aerial grappling in the central There was a curious and almost comic absence of reality about the efforts made by those who exhibited themselves as battling for the hereditary claims of the House of Lords to maintain its hereditary claims to permit or to sanction the financial measures of the representative Fortunately for the they own a great and the one combatant on the Tory side certainly who came out of the struggle with renewed and even increased reputation for eloquence and parliamentary Talented cannot save the powers of the House of The English The Liberal papers find endless delight in contemplating the sufferings of their defeated They have only to look at the correspondence columns of the London Times to find plenty of evidence not only of but of bitter or contemptuous within the ranks of The people who must still be regarded as the backbone be the case a or of the whatever may year two hence set their of firmly against the idea of a referendum being necessary for the of their protectionist which they V see no reason for subjecting to a severer test than any other piece of and as for the referendum as a general proposition they join the Liberals in de- claring their emphatic opposition to one of the chief organizers of the brands as a deserter a parliamentary who declared that he was still a Re- but wished to postpone the protection ques- P- tion to the constitutional Travail of and the Opposition Breaking are typical headings of editorials in Liberal and one of them declares that the Unionist people are so absorbed in fighting each other that they are almost forgetting to attack the None of of ever finds its way into the columns of our local organs of privilege and which deeply with the British and are hoping that something will yet turn up to save rich and well in their exemptions from tax-paying and in their security of a seat in an irre- branch of The Lords' It was a foregone conclusion that the Lords' Veto bill would pass the House Commons in the form the government S The real interest in the controversy has centered in the question whether the House of Lords would tamely submit to be shorn of the veto which it has so long abused for partisan or whether resort must be had to the creation of hundreds of new peers for the express purpose of overwhelming the brute Tory majority in the House of The time is now near I at hand when the peers must announce their The coronation affords them only a brief respite from their Fr the Lords to reject the Veto bill after the r lar mandate of last winter would bring further dis credit upon As the guardians of the fortunes of the Conservative regardless of their own they are called on to sacrifice themselves for the party that steadfastly defended their class Political expediency will naturally dominate their They have failed to agree among them- selves upon Lord Lansdowne's plan of reforming the p House of which would retain only hereditary 1 peers in the upper On the other the government's Veto bill would leave them all members V of the House of though with greatly reduced powers as a legislative But the Liberals also after they have curtailed the Lords' powers a further drastic reform that will turn most of the peers out of At the Present moment the Liberals are far more concerned with making the House of Commons predominant chamber than with dealing with hereditary The anomaly is presented of Conservative peers attacking that the desperate hope that by other means the House of may be preserved as a stumbling-block to Liberal And in our own country the spectacle is presented of Tory papers professing to be official party organs which have plainly shown their sympathies to be with privileged aristocracy of birth in just as they are defending the privileged and tariff-fostered monopolies of special privilege in our own |