esumptuous things he said. He was never more in earnest. A
cut-and-dried plan had been arranged between him and Mr. Asquith with
regard to the Lords. The plan was no less than this--to take away from
the peers their constitutional rights to do more than to hold up for
three successive sessions any legislation passed by the House of
Commons. They were not to have the power of killing bills, though they
might retard them a little. And so far as money bills were concerned
they were not to be allowed to delay them at all. The Commons were to
be given power to pass any money bill over the head of the Lords if the
latter did not agree to it immediately it was sent up to them. In
these cases the King and Commons between them were to be the lawmaking
power, and as the King's assent is always automatically given to the
proposals of Ministers in power the net result would be the complete
supremacy of the Commons in Government.

But how were these changes to be made effective? They could, of
course, only be brought into force by legal enactment, and it was
impossible to expect the Lords to sign their own death warrant. It was
settled between Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith to take the House of Lords
by the throat. Lloyd George was prepared for extreme measures, and Mr.
Asquith, a student of English history, found out a way by means of
ancient precedent. Twice before in the story of the British Parliament
there had been similar episodes. In the reign of Queen Anne and in the
reign of William IV. the Prime Minister of the day, encountering
opposition from the House of Lords, had gone to the reigning sovereign
and secured the promise of the creation of enough new peers to turn the
minority in the House of Lords into a preponderance of votes. This was
the plan now agreed upon, only the audacity of it was far greater than
on previous occasions, because Queen Anne's new peers numbered but
twelve and the number of new peers proposed to be created in 1832 to
pass the Reform bill under William IV. was limited to eighty. Mr.
Asquith and Lloyd George faced the fact that on this occasion it would
be necessary to create something like five hundred new peers.

I pass over some of the intervening stages--the howls that came from
the Lords, who saw their prestige departing with this wholesale
dilution of their order; the choking attempts which the peer leaders
made to be civil of tongue and to arrange a compromise. Merciless was
the