“sense” of the House, and no one who knows anything of it can despise it. A very shrewd man of the world went so far as to say that “the House of Commons has more sense than anyone in it.” But there is no such “sense” in the House of Lords, because there is no life. The Lower Chamber is a chamber of eager politicians; the Upper (to say the least) of not eager ones.
This apathy is not, indeed, as great as the outside show would indicate. The committees of the Lords (as is well known) do a great deal of work and do it very well. And such as it is, the apathy is very natural. A House composed of rich men who can vote by proxy without coming will not come very much. But after every abatement the real indifference to their duties of most peers is a great defect, and the apparent indifference is a dangerous defect. As far as politics go there is profound truth in Lord Chesterfield’s axiom, that “the world must judge of you by what you seem, not by what you are.” The world knows what you seem; it does not know what you are. An assembly—a revising assembly especially—which does not assemble, which looks as if it does not care how it revises, is defective in a main political ingredient. It may be of use, but it will hardly convince mankind that it is so.