Read it through once

So far as one writer can estimate the end of such a crisis it will probably be one of compromise. Almost everything in the British constitution is in the nature of a compromise. Constitutional monarchy in its essence is a half-way house between Autocracy and Republicanism and its great advantage to the minds of its supporters is that the system has the extremes of neither, the best qualities of each, and all the advantages of that strength and permanence which moderation and toleration always afford. In Britain the system certainly has the affection and devotion of the great mass of the people. Mr. Asquith is not an extremist, Mr. Haldane and Sir Edward Grey are moderate forces in the Cabinet, and though Messrs. Lloyd-George and Winston Churchill are more heard of it does not follow, and it certainly is not the fact, that they are more influential. They hold the same place in Liberalism that Mr. Chamberlain with his republican tendencies (which they do not profess) and his "three acres and a cow" held to Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal leaders of thirty or forty years ago. The Conservatives, also, are not desirous of pushing the issue too far. They believe in and have tested the affection of rural England for the aristocracy and the preference of nearly all England for a second Chamber of some kind. But they do not intend to fight the issue on the hereditary principle. The acceptance, by a very large majority, of Lord Rosebery's motion in the Lords declaring that "the possession of a peerage should no longer, of itself, give the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords," removes this point from the actual conflict and leaves the Conservatives as urging a strong, reformed and democratised Upper House against the Liberal policy of a weakened, emasculated echo of the House of Commons.