Upper House Quotes
Originally published as The Cynic’s Word Book
The Prime Minister and his Tory Party was calling for Senate Reform
For a conservative this is an amazing position to take because the House of Lords was and is the most conservative institution in Great Britain. However, what makes Salisbury such an effective conservative political thinker is that the mere advantage of having a House of Lords to further the conservative agenda and protect its positions does not offset the principle of having a hereditary group of people—many without merit--with no checks on them by the rest of the body politic. Conservatism ought not support aristocracy but those who have achieved by merit.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield. The “Second Chamber referred to the House of Lords—the upper house of the British Parliament. The notion in both England and the United States was that the upper house—the Senate in the US case—should be independent and not easily pressured or influenced by the passions and forces of the time. One believe has been that only the wealthy could be independent since people who were not wealthy would be more easily bribed or pressured by forces in the system like a political party. In England at the time, wealth and property were synonymous. In some notable cases in American politics, wealth leaders were very independent and served the society as a whole. Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy were very wealthy men. So was Abraham Lincoln who had made a great deal of money as a lawyer. Senators and Presidents in America and Members of the House of Lords in England have tended to be much more wealthy than average. Unfortunately, although there were great examples of wealthy independent politicians, many of the upper class have an insensitivity to average people and the poor. Further, they tend to have values and beliefs that are different from most people.
