24. Of Second Chambers

A Second Chamber acts as a drag. Progress is always uphill work. So we
are at pains to provide a drag beforehand--for an uphill journey.

There, in one word, you have the whole philosophy of Second Chambers.

How, then, did the nations of Europe come to hamper their legislative
systems with such a useless, such an illogical adjunct? In sackcloth and
ashes, let us confess the truth--we English led them astray: on us the
shame; to us the dishonour. Theorists, indeed (wise after the fact, as
is the wont of theorists), have discovered or invented an imaginary
function for Second Chambers. They are to preserve the people, it seems,
from the fatal consequences of their own precipitancy. As though the
people--you and I--the vast body of citizens, were a sort of foolish
children, to be classed with infants, women, criminals, and imbeciles (I
adopt the chivalrous phraseology of an Act of Parliament), incapable of
knowing their own minds for two minutes together, and requiring to be
kept straight by the fatherly intervention of Dukes of Marlborough or
Marquises of Ailesbury. The ideal picture of the level-headed peers
restraining the youthful impetuosity of the representatives of the
people from committing to-day some rash act which they would gladly
repent and repeal to-morrow, is both touching and edifying. But it
exists only in the minds of the philosophers, who find a reason for
everything just because it is there. Members of Parliament, I have
observed, seem to know their own minds every inch as well as earls--nay,
even as marquises.

The plain fact of the matter is, all the Second Chambers in the world
are directly modelled upon the House of Lords, that Old Man of the Sea
whom England, the weary Titan, is now striving so hard to shake off her
shoulders. The mother of Parliaments is responsible for every one of
them. Senates and Upper Houses are just the result of irrational
Anglomania. When constitutional government began to exist, men turned
unanimously to the English Constitution as their model and pattern. That
was perfectly natural. Evolutionists know that evolution never proceeds
on any other plan than by reproduction, with modification, of existing
structures. America led the way. She said, "England has a House of
Commons; therefore we must have a House of Representatives. England has
also a House of Lords; nature has not dowered us with those exalted
products, but we will do what we can; we will imitate it by a Senate."
Monarchical France followed her lead; so did Belgium, Italy,
civilisation in general. I believe even Japan rejoices to-day in the
august dignity of a Second Chamber. But mark now the irony of it. They
all of them did this thing to be entirely English. And just about the