THE FURTHER QUESTION OF LIFE PEERAGES.
By the manner of opposing the creation of a Life Peerage, the dis- sident Law Lords have opened the question 'yet wider. They might, in all probability, so have conducted their resistance to the innovation as to have marked it with distput, and so to have limited the utmost exercise of the prerogatite to. the creation of Law Lords. But by altogether denying that mode of further in- fusing the judicial element into the House of Lords—by pointing to the possibility of exercising the prerogative for other purposes= they have rather provoked the question, why other kinds of Life Peerages should not be created as well as Law Life Peerages ? The dissidents appear to say, that no change whatever shall take place in the constitution of the House of Lords ; a very bold as- sertion, counter to all history, to all experience, to all probability; and to all policy. The particular improvement in the introduc- tion of Law Lords has, not been now considered for the first time. But the dissidents say, We will have none of it; there shall be no judicial improvement of the House—nothing to restore us to that degree of judicial strength which the House possessed when it kept to itself the prerogative of the ultimate appeal. The House of Lords has undergone repeated changes, each time to as- similate it to the circumstances of the age. We first find it under one roof with the Commons and the Judges, the Bishops and the Abbots. It assisted in suppressing the Abbots ; it consented to sit separate from the Commons ; it allowed the Judges to depart, though not the judicial power. Its members have been placed in it by various means : the Crown has summoned the feudal Lords of the soil ; the Crown has created new Lords ; at the Scottish Union fresh conditions were imposed upon the consti- tution of the House ; it was the same at the time of the Irish Union ; and in each case the modification came from witholit, although the Peers themselves assisted in it. When the Peers have stood ont; they have, with one remarkable exception, been beaten. The exception was in the celebrated case of Long versus Rem, when they insisted upon delivering judgment ; and when, to use the popular and fittest phrase, they made fools of themselves, for they decided wrong. One of the first creations avowedly for the pur- pose of turning a vote in the House was the creation of the twelve Tory Peers in 1711. The contest which then arose continued for some years ; and in 1719 was introduced that Peerage Bill by which the Lords endeavoured to impose a restriction upon the prerogative. If the bill had been carried, the Crown would have been disabled from creating more than six additional Peers, and Peers afterwards to fill up vacancies. But the Lords were beaten. From time to time they have endeavoured, but without success, to fix limits upon their own numbers, and in fact to constitute themselves an unchangeable institution. Arnold only re- peated Bacon in saying that there is nothing so subversive as the resistance to change ; since that which is sustained. by all the influences of one century becomes, if it remains quite unmodified, impracticable or ridiculous in a succeeding century ; and it is because the Lords, representing generally the wealthiest, the best born, most educated, and most influential class of society, have undergone modifications, that they have preserved to them- selves that character. If it had been possible for them to be agent the Barons of King John's time, they would be brought up at the police-office ; if they were the Lords of Charles the First's thne, we should have all other classes raising a home army to settle the question once more ; if they were the Tory Lords of 1719, Lord
John would have succeeded in carrying his "Parliamentary Re- presentation Bill " by a new Political L nion. The want had long been felt for a particular improvement. Of late years the Peers have been distinguished for aiding Law-
reforms; that they have excelled the Commons ; and if they had pointed out, as some of them were prepared. to do a. few years since, a better method of obtaining the object professed in creating Lord Wensleydale, the whole question would have been superseded. If they had accepted that creation, and taken pains to guard it against becoming a precedent in anything but the particular im- provement, they would probably have been sustained by public opinion. But they suffered their resistance to assume the appear- ance of resisting all improvement, all modification ; and if that is the spirit in which they are prepared to act, people naturally retort by asking whether an infusion of the judicial element is the may improvement required Some suggest that there may also be wanted an infusion of the judicious element. Outside the House we all agree that it would be better to have a recruiting of its legal bench ; and when they deny the necessity, they appear to us to place themselves out of court. If they are in that be- nighted condition, perhaps other changes might improve them.
There is evidently one tendency in the present mode of keeping up the House of Lords. The feudal tenure of the House has dis- a ed. The members are connected with the land, because, if
families have not originally been so connected, they become, on rising in rank, proprietors of land by purchase. But the Lords are not, as they were at the beginning, the local governors. They have abdicated that duty to inferior rulers. Their tenure of their own property, indeed, is so uncertain that there has been grave talk of introducing an " Encumbered Estates Act" into this country ; and perhaps one difficulty in applying to our aristocracy such a measure for the relief of insolvent debtors would lie in the tendency that it must have further to divorce the Peerage from the soil. But commerce, with its great wealth, is more rapidly. presenting its candidates for promotion to the highest ranks in the state.. Those Lords who must preserve their wealth are by degrees becoming more connected with commerce : they are coal-owners, railway-managers, speculators in various branches. The monetary element is decidedly gaining the ascendant in the House of Peers as well as elsewhere;but at no period in the history of a country has the monetary element alone sufficed to indicate the highest qualities for statesmanship. By the condition now nakedly- announced, that no man can be made a Peer unless he has a for- tune to settle upon his progeny, the Peerage is distinctly marked out for the wealthy classes ; but are the wealthy classes those who alone represent the highest judgment, the purest patriotism, and the sternest independence ? It would be very difficult to maintain the assertion in that form. Do the wealthy classes alone supply the notables of this country, even if we speak only of the notables of political life ? Unquestionably they do not. Then why should men who rise in the legal profession alone look to a Life Peerage as the natural termination of their public career—the crowning promotion ? The question for the public is, whom it is desirable to have as- sisting in the legislation and in the highest judicial control of the country ; and the wide opening of the Life Peerage question makes us ask whether it is only the wealthy that supply persons of the requisite character ? On the other hand, can we expect that all whom it is desirable for us to have assisting in the Legis- lature should find their way into the House of Commons ? By no means. That House is necessarily limited to men of such position,. such age, or such temperament, as are prepared " to stand the rack- et" of a public election ; and some of our best public men are by character or age shut out from that kind of admission. To take one of the most obvious instances, Mr. Macaulay has just retired from the House of Commons, because his health precluded him from performing that regular service which is justly expected of the representative of a great constituency. But is he entirely past the power of serving his country as a legislator ? It is true that lip did not speak perhaps oftener than once or twice a year ; but is it notjust about once or twice a year that his assistance in debate would be peculiarly welcomed? Why, then, should the country be precluded from having the service of a Macaulay, be- cause qualifications of inheritance and traditional limitation of honours that were useful in a previous time, but have ceased to be so unquestionable, are the obstruction ? Is it not better in a ease of that kind to put down the formal obstruction, and ob- tain the practical advantage ? There are other distinguished Members still in the House of Commons whose lengthened services might fitly place them in the House of Lords if questions of suc- cession were not the bar; and there may be public men who have never entered either House, whose assistance in particular delibe- rations would be useful, but who have neither the disposition to stand an election nor the fortune to qualify them for an heredi- tax7 Peerage.
By the discussion that has been provoked on the Wensleydale Peerage, the very principle of descent has been called in question; and certainly there are some considerations which do not suggest perfect contentment with the present system. While there are lawyers still on the Bench whose assistance in the High Court of Appeal it would be desirable to have, but with whom the succes- sion point would constitute an obstruction, it is very doubtful whether the creation of hereditary Peerages for the Law Lords has in all cases worked well. On the other hand, if attention is challenged to the rising generation of the Peerage, it is difficult to assert that the number presents the young men of mark. The
rare exceptions rather prove the rule, that the House of Peers in the next .remove will scarcely challenge comparison with the picked men of all other classes in the country.
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