ELECTED SENATORS. (Hansard, 6 December 1920)

LORD ORA NAI ORE AND BROWNE
Thirty to twenty-two are the numbers calculated.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
The noble Lord is more sanguine than we are. Is a Second Chamber wanted in the North of Ireland when the figures are so evenly balanced? In the House of Commons a minority which is of the same numerical strength could take good care of itself. I doubt whether the noble Lord has the support of any one for his scheme. Does any noble Lord from Ulster, or any representative of Ulster in the House of Commons, make himself responsible for the proposal? I should be glad if the noble Lord would say how far he is hunting in couples with Lord Shandon. The noble Lord put forward a proposal, very intelligible on its merits, that there should be a Senate in Southern Ireland and, growing more and more interested in his constitution making, undertook the work of framing a Second Chamber for Northern Ireland. Now we have the complete scheme, but in the middle of it Lord Shandon intervened with an Amendment to substitute a Joint 1131 Senate for the Council. We are now face to face with this position. Whereas the functions of the Council were railways and Private Bill legislation, and fundamentally the task of attempting to secure union, it was a body which drew fresh representative strength from the Parliaments. Owing to the joint effect of Lord Shandon's Amendment and Lord Oranmore and Browne's Amendment the two Senates, ninety in number, Bishops, Archbishops, scientific men, literary men, are immediately to address themselves to the question of the railways, employment, hours of labour— the Irish railways will be refreshed by a fertility of advice such as they have never enjoyed before.
I am not going to divide against these proposals. It was the Abbé Sieyé who wrote many volumes on Second Chambers and spent many years trying to find a constitution which could not be criticised His ultimate conclusion was that they were all either useless or mischievious, and he gave his reasons in an epigram which noble Lords will remember. More happily than the Abbé and infinitely more expeditious, the noble Lord has evolved in a few days and enunciated in a few minutes a scheme giving two Second Chambers to the two Parliaments neither of which would take either if they were consulted at this moment.

THE DUKE OF ABERCORN
Lord Oranmore and Browne has kindly drawn up two Second Chambers— one for Southern and one for Northern Ireland. He can speak for Southern Ireland; I wish to say a word with regard to Northern Ireland. We are most indebted to the noble Lord for the trouble he has taken; we thoroughly appreciate his efforts, but we do not pay the slightest attention to them

§ THE EARL OF MIDLETON
The Lord Chancellor knows that in this matter we are in the direst difficulty. The Government have been unable to find a way out, and he is now cold watering the way we have found and on which the whole of Ireland would have agreed two years ago in circumstances which he is pleased to say have wholly altered. They have not altered. Sinn Fein was then taking a dominant position in large parts of Ireland because the Government had abandoned the attempt to restrain them.
1132 The point which we have to decide is this, Is there a better Second Chamber to be found, or one more consonant with the feelings of the people of Ireland? The noble and learned Lord laughed at two sections at which no man in Ireland will laugh. The first was the inclusion of the Roman Catholic Bishops, a most important item in the Assembly and one which is consonant with the practice of this House, where illustrious Prelates have always sat, and with the feelings and sentiments of the people of Ireland. Not only do I stand to that, but I repudiate the hilarity of tile noble and learned Lord at the inclusion of members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. In the second place he laughed at the learned professions. If there is one subject in Ireland on which it is most necessary to have representation in the Upper House it is that of health and problems connected with it, on which the Government are spending many millions of pounds, and we desire the Lord-Lieutenant to have the opportunity to put in some of the eminent men who will have no chance of being elected under the franchise put forward by the Government. This Schedule, which he considers so fantastic, was thrashed out by a Committee. It was taken before the whole Convention and it obtained the assent of every class of representative. I think it is eminently calculated to carry out the purpose for which it is intended.
I have only one other remark to make. It will be recollected that Parliamentary a (lairs are not always carried by votes; they are carried to a large extent by argument, and as those for whom I speak, who are so largely represented here to-day and who have done so much by argument in these debates to obtain concessions, will not have the opportunity of putting forward their opinions in any way in the Lower House, it is more important that they should be represented in the Senate. As regards what has been said from Ulster my noble friend put down an Ulster Second Chamber in a form which he believed would be most agreeable to the Ulster representatives and I have every reason to believe that even at this moment they are consulting as to whether they can find a better alternative. If they can I am sure my noble friend will be ready to accept it on Report. I hope your Lordships will accept the Senate as proposed.