The result would certainly be a very great shock to
the influ, once of the House of Peers in this country,—indeed, we may say, a nail in the coffin of the Constitution, as it was understood and worked by the Duke of Wellington. Dear as the House of Lords is to Englishmen,—and there is no one of the " ornamen- tal" parts of our Constitution which is dearer,—Lord Salisbury is the very man to wean their affeations'from it. What with his undignified and morbid hatred of Mr. Gladstone, to whom in every speech, and without paying the slightest attention to Lord Gran- ville's protests, he refers individually in-the most unprecedented and even unconstitutional manner,—as if the Prime Minister's will confessedly overrode the will of his colleagues,—and what with the complete indifference with which he appears to regard the largest majorities in the House of Commons, he will con- vince the country in a very short time that it is not Well to provide in the House of Lords a mere condensing chamber for the high-prese are steam of the House of Commons ; or rather, let us say, that it is not well to have a Revising Assembly whose chief pleasure it is, whenever a Liberal Government is in power, to try to throw the political engine off the line, by planting obstacles in its track.
