Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885 — John Shaqi
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885Various
General
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
But there is more. Everybody who watches the working of our
institutions perceives what strain and friction is caused in it at
present, by our having a Second Chamber composed almost entirely of
great landowners, and representing the feelings and interests of the
class of landowners almost exclusively. No one, certainly, under the
condition of a modern age and our actual life, would ever think of
devising such a Chamber. But we will allow ourselves to do more than
merely state this truism, we will allow ourselves to ask what sort
of Second Chamber people who thought straight and saw clear would,
under the conditions of a modern age and of our actual life, naturally
make. And we find, from the experience of the United States, that such
provincial legislatures as we have just now seen to be the natural
remedy for the confusion in the House of Commons, the natural remedy
for the confusion in Ireland, have the further great merit besides
of giving us the best basis possible for a modern Second Chamber.
The United States Senate is perhaps, of all the institutions of that
country, the most happily devised, the most successful in its working.
The legislature of each State of the Union elects two senators to the
Second Chamber of the national Congress at Washington. The senators
are the Lords—if we like to keep, as it is surely best to keep, for
designating the members of the Second Chamber, the title to which
we have been for so many ages habituated. Each of the provincial
legislatures of Great Britain and Ireland would elect members to the
House of Lords. The colonial legislatures also would elect members to
it; and thus we should be complying in the most simple and yet the most
signal way possible with the present desire of both this country and
the colonies for a closer union together, for some representation of
the colonies in the Imperial Parliament. Probably it would be found
expedient to transfer to the Second Chamber the representatives of the
Universities. But no scheme for a Second Chamber will at the present
day be found solid unless it stands on a genuine basis of election
and representation. All schemes for forming a Second Chamber through
nomination, whether by the Crown or by any other voice, of picked
noblemen, great officials, leading merchants and bankers, eminent men
of letters and science, are fantastic. Probably they would not give
us by any means a good Second Chamber. But certainly they would not
satisfy the country or possess its confidence, and therefore they would
be found futile and unworkable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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