The accommodation for visitors is provided in the gallery at the other end of the house, and in the ladies' gallery, above the reporters. In the gallery opposite the Speaker, the two front rows of seats on one side of the clock are reserved for peers, and those on the other side for distinguished strangers. They are known as the peers' gallery and the special gallery. The other rows of seats for visitors are known as the members' gallery. There is also room for a few visitors under the special gallery. During the sitting of the house orders for admission to vacant seats in the members' gallery may be obtained from the admission order office in St. Stephen's Hall. If, however, a visitor wishes to secure a place in advance he must obtain what is called an order in advance through a member, and when there is a competition for seats, as often happens when an interesting debate is expected, members draw lots with each other for the privilege of giving these envied orders. Admission to the special gallery and under the gallery can only be obtained through a member. Under existing regulations only the relations of members are admitted to the ladies' gallery, and orders in advance are obtained through members. The accommodation in the ladies' gallery is scanty, but when there is space available “supplemental orders" of admission can be obtained during the sitting of the house from the serjeant-at-arms.

The history of the struggle between the

house of commons on the one hand and the public and the press on the other, is a history of the survival of outworn forms and obsolete claims. Parliaments of the seventeenth century claimed against Stuart kings the right of private deliberation. Parliaments of later date maintained the tradition of privacy long after the reason for secrecy had disappeared, and in the eighteenth century used against the press and the public the weapon of privilege which their predecessors had used against an interfering king. Even in the nineteenth century, when it had been generally recognized that publicity of debate is an essential feature of parliamentary government, that without it the elector cannot be enlightened and informed as to the course of public affairs and the responsibility of the representative to those whom he represents cannot be enforced, even then the house of commons, whilst relaxing and indeed reversing its practice, declined to alter its rules, so that the sittings of the house were, and indeed still are, in theory private though in practice public. Until 1875 a single member of the house of commons could insist on the withdrawal of strangers, including reporters, and until 1909 there was no official report of its debates.

CHAPTER IX

THE HOUSE OF LORDS

PARLIAMENT, as has been seen, consists of two houses or chambers, the house of lords and the house of commons, and it is the house of lords that is usually referred to as the second chamber.

The house of lords is, unless an exception be made for Hungary, the oldest second chamber in the world. Of all second chambers it is the most numerous and the most hereditary in its character. And it has suffered less change in its constitution than any legislative chamber with an approximate tenure of life. It is the lineal descendant of the great council of the Plantagenet kings, before that council was reinforced by the addition of elected members. But, though its constitution has not been materially altered since those days, its numbers and composition have greatly changed.

There are now over 620 members of the house of lords, including royal princes, archbishops, dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, bishops, barons, and five judicial life peers. To the model parliament of 1295 were sum

moned two archbishops, eighteen bishops, about seventy abbots and other heads of religious houses, seven earls, and forty-one barons, less than 140 in all. At first there was room for doubt and for the exercise of discretion as to who should be summoned individually as greater barons, and who should be left to be represented with other lesser barons. But the line was gradually drawn, and the fact that an individual writ of summons had been sent to a particular baron gave an hereditary right to his descendants. Dukes first made their appearance under Edward III, marquesses under his successor, and viscounts in the fifteenth century. The practice grew up of creating a peerage by the more formal method of granting letters patent, and this practice superseded the earlier system under which the right to attend as a peer depended on a writ of summons having been issued to an ancestor. The number of abbots who were summoned rapidly dwindled, and they disappeared altogether after the Reformation. The number of bishops was increased at that time, but remained stationary for centuries afterwards. When it was again increased in the nineteenth century a provision was made that not all the bishops should have seats in the house of lords. Only twenty-four bishops now sit there, besides the archbishops; a junior bishop has to wait unless he holds the see of Durham, Winchester or London.

Two points may be specially noticed about the early house of lords.

In the first place it was a small body, very small in comparison with the present house of lords, small in comparison with the contemporary house of commons. Before the Tudors the number of temporal peers never exceeded fifty-five, rarely reached that number, and once fell as low as twenty-three. During the Tudor reigns the number of temporal peers seems to have fluctuated round fifty. The number was increased under the Stuarts, but it was not until the eighteenth century that the lavish creation of peers began. Of the existing peerages only a very small proportion are really ancient.

In the second place the proportion of hereditary members of the house was formerly much smaller than it is at present. Before the Reformation the spiritual peers, whose rights were not hereditary, could usually command a majority.

The union with Scotland in 1707, and the union with Ireland in 1801, gave rise to another classification of peerages. There are peerages of England created before 1707, peerages of Great Britain created between 1707 and 1801, and peerages of the United Kingdom created since 1801. All these confer on their holders an hereditary right to sit in the house of lords. But, besides these, there are peerages of Scotland and peerages of Ireland, and the holders of these peerages