We suppose Lord Malmesbury has ability of some kind or
he would not have been Foreign Secretary, but it is never apparent in his speeches. He has been addressing the farmers in the Vale of Avon on the House of Lords, and said that for fifteen years the 'Peers bad remained "silent and obsvant " waiting for the Com- mons to pass a Reform Bill, a dignified but scarcely a useful atti- tude. He asserted that three peers had been created upon "that very soil," one of whom was Lord Canning, the" son of an eminent statesman," but with an ordinary education. He "came forward, having evidently inherited the talent of his father, and was made a peer." The fact is that Lord Canning inherited his peerage from his mother while still a boy. The House of Lords, in fact, "was open to every one whose talents and merit rendered him de- serving of a place in that assembly." That is true in its conventional sense, that is, birth is not indispensable ; but unfortunately the House of Lords is open to Lord Malmesbury too, whether he has merits or talents, or not, and even if he does not know, to use a happy expression of Henry Kingsley, "how to talk peerage."
