radical difference of disposition-as great a difference as can exist between persons of equal moral worth. If we put aside all those who are actuated by the repellent fault of meanness or by the inconvenient quality of pugnacity, the people who cannot bear to be cheated represent those in whom the sense of justice is strong and living; in whom, indeed, it is the motive power of the moral nature. The men and women, on the other hand, who see themselves "done" without any emotion, however good or trustworthy they may be, are not moved by that dynamic force. An insult offered to the blind goddess and her scales does not strike them as a profanity. They are no worshippers of hers.

It used to be taken for granted that a sense of justice was the root of all virtue; now it seems to be regarded as the flower, to be, in fact, the most exclusively human of all the virtues. Huxley affirmed that the love of one's neighbor was an earlier moral sentiment than the abstract sense of justice to which it gave rise. Certainly our inferior relations upon four legs, while they show both affection and self-sacrifice, have no sense of abstract justice.

Perhaps, then, we may regard those in whom the sense of justice is weak as primitive. We do not mean that they resemble savages, or that they are, in any particular, ill-conducted. They are not necessarily undeveloped morally-often they are very highly developed-but they have developed upon primitive lines. So far as conduct goes, there are plenty of substitutes for a sense of justice. Sympathy will, in nine cases out of ten, keep a man from taking advantage, and that useful quality, pride, which does instead of so many virtues, will easily cover the tenth case. A good man without much sense of justice is most often unjust to himself. His sense of moral beauty, while it is keen,

is incomplete. He has a love of color but little appreciation of line. At every moral juncture he wishes to do well, to play a handsome part, but he is incurably ignorant of-is even perhaps incapable of grasping-the moral anatomy of the situation. He does what is generous because he is not quite sure what is just, and fears to do what is wrong. An immense number of women are in this case, and we believe it is commoner among men than is usually believed. The false idea that the sense of justice is strong in all but bad people makes the careless moral critic impute it to every well-doing individual.

There is, however, a certain strength in the man with a strong sense of justice and a weakness somewhere in the man who is without it. Experience of life may teach the first to say de minimis, and he may learn never to make himself ridiculous, but he will always feel, however secretly, a shock when the rules of the game are violated ever so little. The wrong note jars on him. He would like to stop the performance, and have the passage played over again. He is conscious, too, of the solidarity of the race; he takes, even if unconsciously, an interest in whether other people do right, builds his bit of the tower of civilization and makes them build theirs. There are no born rulers without this sense. The good man with a strong sense of justice does really care to improve the world, even though he would deny the charge. He wants to strengthen the moral backbone of society, to keep bright the armor of sincerity which alone can save it from destruction. Good men without a sense of justice care chiefly to ease its sufferings, mental and bodily, and show weakness most where their own interests are not concerned. They are strongly moved by pity and incline always to the cause of the under dog. As critics, however,

they are often useful to the cause of justice. They have no temptation to fix their minds upon the accuracy of the scales, and so forget in delicate comparisons the facts of positive weight. "So-and-so was over-harsh," they will say: "his action was positively cruel. What has the provocation to do with it? What he did ought not to be done." A lack of the sense of justice is not a defect of which many people are aware. They do not look up to the man who has it, but very often condemn him for a want of quick sympathy, and always feel that there is something despicable in taking much account of little matters, having an instinct to avoid friction.

To return to our theory-that the man who is amused, and not annoyed, when he finds that he has been "done" is a man of primitive moral type. The love of mystification is inherent in human nature, and some of us cannot resent it. All children love to take someone in. So does the primitive savage. The silliest riddle will delight the most intelligent child. Some sentence with a "catch" in it appeals with irritating certainty to the childish mind. They have an astonishing wish to dress up, for instance. At the back of every man's memory lies some childish joke at which he still smiles, and of which a trick was a part. Slight deceptions are apparently natural vents for high spirits. Something of this unreasonable delight lingers in us all. All good talk which is not debate has its origin in "pretending." The instinct is very deep-rooted, and lies close The Spectator.

to the origins of humor and romance. When the instinct for romance-that is, what we usually call the artistic instinct-is very strong, the sense of justice is, we think, seldom keen and dominating. People created to enjoy the pageant of life to the full have not, as a rule, got it. It limits the interest. It may, of course, be truly said that all moral sentiments do this in some degree, and in the abstract such an argument may be maintained. Practically, however, sympathy increases the powers of perception to a marked extent, and while vivifying the drama saves the soul of the spectator. Sympathy, plus self-respect, will replace the seven living virtues, however we may like to define them. Children have, of course, a strong feeling for revenge, and if revenge is "a sort of wild justice," then justice is the earliest of all sentiments. But it is not distinctively human. A jelly fish, we should imagine, is capable of it. Revenge is not the origin of that ever-present sense of fair play, which is the outcome rather than the origin of civilization, and which goes on increasing in strength while revenge weakens with the years, but which is a less instinctive thing than either pity or romance.

Have we made out that people who do not mind being "done" are inclined to be sly? We do not think so. Slyness and pettiness are inseparable companions, and no disinterested person is ever sly. But they have not, as a rule, the qualities which make for progress, either in the best-or the second-best-sense of the word.

In the

used the traditional language of his party in dealing with the House of Lords; it was the language of unfeigned esteem and admiration. "The House of Lords," he said, "stands impregnable, not merely upon its historic past, but upon its present utility." There was no hint here of any flaw whatever in the constitution of our Second Chamber; nor did the leaders of the Unionist party place any check upon its functions in face of the unprecedented Liberal majority in the House of Commons. On the contrary, the Peers were encouraged to throw out the Education Bill-the very first important measure that was presented to them. same way the Licensing Bill was committed to the waste paper basket, and at last, with the concurrence and authority of Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, this impregnable Second Chamber, relying on its historic past and present utility, outstepped the limits of constitutional usage by rejecting Mr. Lloyd George's first Budget. That happened in November, 1909, just a year and a-half ago. When this action was first mooted and proposed by the Daily Telegraph and other Conservative papers we refused to take it seriously, for it seemed to us perfectly clear that in so doing the House of Lords would most likely be committing suicide. It was impossible, in our view, that a hereditary Second Chamber should be able in this democratic age to deprive the House of Commons of its administrative and financial authority. Nevertheless, the attempt was made, and for the first time in modern history the House of Lords broke up a Parliament, and compelled the Government of the day to dissolve. What has happened since then is well within the recollection of our readers. The Government returned with a majority of over a hundred. The majority, it is true, was a composite one, but, unfortunately for the House of Lords, it

was absolutely united in favor of restricting and limiting the powers of the House of Lords. Thus by its own action the Second Chamber had given a fresh lease of life to its opponents, and had ensured their unity by providing a battle-cry. If the House of Lords had been allowed to act moderately and cautiously in the spirit in which it was led by the Duke of Wellington and admonished by Mr. Bagehot, we have little doubt that at this moment the Unionists would have been in office. But things went differently. Ultimately, of course, the Budget was passed; but after the King's death doubts were raised as to whether the country had been clearly consulted in regard to the Veto policy, for unless the mandate was clear the King, it was held, could not be advised to use his prerogative freely in order to carry a Parliament Bill through the House of Lords. This view prevailed; a fresh mandate was sought, and last December, for the second time within twelve months, the country gave Mr. Asquith a majority of over a hundred. The policy of the second Election, which was itself due to the persistent refusal of the leaders of the Unionist party to acquiesce in the limitation of the functions of the House of Lords, dealt a fatal blow at the historic institution. For the Tory Democrats, led by such popular men as Mr. F. E. Smith, refused to face the country with a mere Conservative policy of opposition to the Government proposals. Mr. Balfour was forced to devise some popular and attractive alternative. He invented two: the reform of the House of Lords and the Referendum. The first of these two policies culminated when Lord Lansdowne introduced a Bill which, in his own words, "will beyond doubt be a death blow to the House of Lords as many of us have known it for so long."

Lord Lansdowne's Bill is of a most

sweeping character. In fact, it goes as far almost as it would be possible to go without imperilling the certainty of a sufficient party majority for his own side in the House of Lords. Under his scheme there will be in a small House of 350 a Conservative majority which can hardly be less than 20 or more than 80. But if this scheme stood as a definite and alternative proposal, the position from a Liberal standpoint would be worse than before, since the prerogative of the King on the advice of Ministers to create peers would be abrogated. A moderate but irremovable majority would be substituted for a large but removable one. the standpoint of the peers themselves, however, the Bill is, indeed, a death blow. The principle that when a legislator dies his eldest son immediately becomes a legislator is abrogated, and the very idea of heredity receives a rude constitutional shock. The main body of Lord Lansdowne's Second Chamber as provided in the Bill and lucidly explained by its author, consists of several entirely distinct sections, differently qualified and differently chosen.

From

(1) A hundred members would be elected by the hereditary peers, with minority representation, so that onetenth of this body might be Liberals. Their tenure would be for twelve years, 25 retiring triennially.

(2) Then 120 members, called Lords of Parliament, would be elected by members of the House of Commons grouped according to large electoral districts again by proportional representation. These Lords of Parliament would also have a tenure of 12 years, and 30 would be elected every three years.

(3) A hundred members will be nominated by the Crown in each Par

The Economist.

liament according to the distribution of the parties in the House of Com

mons.

(4) Lastly, the two Archbishops, the 16 Law Lords, and three Princes of the Blood will be ex officio members, and the Bishops will elect five of their number to the Second Chamber. No representation is provided for Nonconformists or Roman Catholics.

The Bill will also limit the creation of new peerages to five a year. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Lord Lansdowne's measure is the docility with which it has been taken in the leading articles of the so-called Conservative Press. The pure spirit of partisanship has never been more conspicuous than in the last two years. The very same writers who in the autumn of 1909 egged on the hereditary peers to their ruin, applauded their action, and exalted their exorbitant claims are now, with hardly an exception, commending Lord Lansdowne's Bill for its wisdom and far-sighted statesmanship. The Pall Mall Gazette has actually published a cartoon after Turner showing the House of Lords being tugged to its last berth, and by a vulgar little paddle-steamer, manned, we suppose, by the up-to-date Conservatives, who conserve nothing which appears to be at all unpopular. We do not think Lord Lansdowne's Bill could possibly become law in its present form. Perhaps it is a pity that after going so far he did not go a little further, and provide for a Second Chamber which would offer the probability of a fair balance of parties and opinions, with at least a sprinkling of independent men. Nevertheless, he has certainly taken a portentous step, which may possibly, as Lord Morley intimated, smooth the path of constitutional progress.