inconveniences fall on the people; and it is the people which is the judge, and not the House of Commons, which is only one of the parties in the quarrel: it is the people that will always decide. In all cases of collision between the Commons and either of their coequals, the Crown and the Lords, as to form and prerogative, the pretensions on both sides are absolutely on a level; the force of public opinion alone awards the victory in the struggle. The House of Commons is too apt to assume that it represents the popular feeling and the public interest: but like all other assemblies of human beings, it has its esprit de corps, its narrowness of view, its bigotry, and its passions. In quite recent days, even though guided by a great statesman, it has been compelled to submit to the humiliation of learning that there are other forces in the State which are sometimes stronger and more popular than its own.

But, it is replied, the acquiescence of the Lords in the resolution of 1678, and their practical abstinence from interference in finance, whilst they leave the abstract right of rejection untouched, are substantial admissions that that resolution embodied the genuine spirit of the Constitution, and rightfully, from the very nature of the subject itself, claimed for ever the monopoly of fiscal legislation for the House of Commons. Hence, it is contended, the House of Lords, in throwing out the Paper Bill, have perpetrated an act of folly and political ignorance, have run counter to the superior intelligence and wisdom of a long line of predecessors, have revoked a decision sanctioned by the practice of several centuries, and have abused their technical rights by the usurpation of a power denied to them by the inmost principles of the Constitution.

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This argument brings us directly to the great question, What is the House of Lords? It pleads a usage, binding for ever, cause founded on sound and permanent principle, resting on the nature itself of the House of Lords and its inherent incapacity to render to the country any just and useful service in finance. Is it so? Is its nature such, are its composition and its relations to the people submitted to its government of such a kind, that absolute and eternal exclusion from the domain of finance is the logical, the constitutional, the inevitable deduction from their position and character? As resolute Liberals, as a portion of the people who are obliged to pay the taxes, we peremptorily repudiate this conclusion. Even if the usage were as unbroken as is alleged, we still maintain that it might be most necessary to abolish it, or even to create a new one in its place.

For what is the House of Lords? It is no longer what it once was, an assembly of barons, territorial potentates, who held

the land in possession by castles and retainers, who treated with the sovereign as joint owners of the country, and levied for their own personal benefit grievous feudal dues and taxes on the people. It took a long time for the nation to grow entirely out of this bondage; the emancipation was gradual, and much chequered by varied fortune, but it was at last accomplished in 1688. Neither is the House of Lords any longer the body which it became immediately after the Revolution,-a society of peers in actual possession of one branch of the Legislature, and by means of court-favour, local influence over elections, rotten boroughs, and close connection with a gentry as yet little balanced by great trades, virtually masters of the House of Commons, and thus of the whole State. These were the days when the Lords and their dependents revelled in patents, sinecures, reversions, pensions, and grants of national property. This unjust usurpation and selfish abuse of power were the chief causes of the crisis of 1832. The people were roused to sweep away this classgovernment, and the obstruction to just legislation which was its consequence; and by enacting the Reform Bill created one of the most memorable eras in English history. Neither is the peerage a caste of nobles, as formerly in France and Spain, and now in Russia, enjoying large privileges and immunities, rivalling the power of the State on their own domains, and exempt from of the heaviest burdens of taxation. It is none of these things now. In any one of these phases, it occupied, more or less, a position antagonistic to the people; its interests were different, in many points adverse; it had objects to pursue and privileges to maintain in which the people had no concern; and there was little political guarantee that its opinions and aims in legislation would be such as would most effectually promote the welfare of the whole people. To some extent it could be truly said that the people were their property.

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What, then, is the House of Lords? It is a part of the people itself, a second House or Chamber, composed of wealthy men selected on the principle of hereditary descent, and instituted for the purpose of performing certain most important functions in the State, which their territorial wealth, and the independence and security of their position, peculiarly qualify them to discharge. The peers no more cease to belong to the people because they fill a high office than ministers, generals, judges, or magistrates. They possess no privileges distinct from their functions. They pay the same taxes, and are bound by the same laws, as the rest of their fellow-subjects. They receive no salary or profit from their office; in our day they have no advantage at least it is a very trifling one-over wealthy commoners or

members of Parliament in obtaining lucrative employment in the State. They enjoy the distinctions of title; but so do many others, both in England and in foreign countries, who are not peers and legislators. The hereditary lord is fully rivalled in his own county in political influence by the country-gentleman of great estate; not seldom also by the plebeian trader of gigantic profits. The great depositary of public opinion, the mass of the thinkers, writers, and professional men of the middle classes, are far more than a match for the concentrated force of the House of Lords. The peers are distinguished in society; but many persons of various classes who are not peers are still more distinguished, and wield a still more powerful inflence in directing the course of public affairs. They are high officers, public functionaries of a special kind; acting in behalf of the people, performing popular duties, and exercising powers derived from the people and useful to the people, as truly as members of the House of Commons, mayors, or policemen. The basis of the House of Lords is function, and function only. Every thing else is accessory public duty is now the sole principle of the peerage.

The cavils which are so plentifully flung against the hereditary character and wealth of the peerage betray a singular and profound ignorance of the conditions required for the existence and efficiency of a second Chamber. It is an institution of vital necessity for the duration of a popular government. How to give weight, stability, and a permanent, because popular, authority to a second House, is the greatest and most difficult problem of a mixed constitution. No republic has been able to last without a similar institution. Athens strove to find one in her Council; it possessed no inherent strength, was undermined, and brought down the commonwealth in its ruin. Rome long flourished by means of two Houses. The popular body at last became sole master, with only a senate of great officials to control it a Cæsar soon terminated a power to which nature had given no durability. The Long Parliament, by force of circumstances, became supreme lord in England: a great man quickly mastered it as if it had been a child. A single Assembly, the National Convention, regenerated a powerful nation amidst the applause of the most fervent popular enthusiasm, and imposed, by astounding military successes, new principles on the whole world in a few years it sank, contemned and unregretted, under the blow of a military despot. The Chamber of Peers in France was destitute of weight. England alone, in Europe at least, has solved this most arduous of political problems, because she alone has reared up by slow growth a second Chamber, strong by inherent force, and pledged by the source from which

that force is derived, and its constitutional position, to identify itself in all substantial points with the cause of the people. That House has thus been able to perform public services without which no popular government can long exist; and to no other cause can the greatness and abiding prosperity of England be so truly ascribed.

But what are these functions, and how is the House of Lords peculiarly fitted to discharge them? It is the distinctive office of a second House to be the fly-wheel of the Constitution; to balance and regulate the political movement of the nation; to guard against the haste, the passionate impulses, and the corruption of the Lower House; to secure a calm and careful examination of new measures; to procure revision and reconsideration when popular excitement, or false hopes, or dazzling but shallow rhetoric, has for the moment misled the Commons; to test by temporary resistance the sincerity and strength of the will which demands a change; to make legislation take its stand on the good sense and ultimate judgment, instead of the momentary desire of the country; and to give continuity and stability to the general policy of the nation. Often, but for the interposition of the Lords, the true voice of the country could not have been distinguished from the noisy clamours of popular orators, or the more insidious demands of selfish constituencies.

Like the Roman Senate, the House of Lords has often given dignity and steadiness to the conduct of public affairs; it has sustained the nation's courage under disaster, cheered it under suffering, made it willing to bear the burden of protracted efforts, and taught it to keep its eyes steadily fixed on the great end of the struggle. These are indeed great functions; and prejudiced and ignorant must be the politician who can esteem them to be less popular, less valuable, less essential to the welfare and happiness of the people, than any which are performed by the House of Commons. They are not the whole of the public duties which the State requires, far otherwise; but they are as indispensable to the health and existence of popular government as any that are contributed by the direct action of the people. They deserve as much to be defended from encroachment, and to be maintained in unimpaired vigour and efficiency. An uncontrolled and despotical House of Commons would rush into ruin as speedily and as irretrievably as the Athenian Demos or the French Convention.

But what are the special qualifications of British peers for these duties? The very qualities against which invective is most indignantly levelled their hereditary descent, and their territorial wealth. These two great attributes are the best

possible guarantees for independence and calmness of deliberation. Rich peers, whose position is established, can think of the general interest, and explore the intrinsic merits of political measures, in a manner impossible for men dependent on constituencies. We have heard the remark made by a man sprung from the people, but of large experience and distinguished success in life, that if a Parliamentary investigation of any difficult question in social science were desired, it ought always to be sent to a committee of the House of Lords. Who does not know how thoughtful a member of Parliament is about his seat, how he shapes his speeches and his votes so as not to endanger his re-election? This sympathy with the people is his excellence, we are told: it renders him alive to their wants and their feelings; it teaches him to study the improvement of their condition, to remove obstacles by useful reforms, to consider their purses and their sentiments. True, we reply; but it is also his weakness. He is an admirable security for progress; but he is slow to perceive the dangers by which it may be beset. He needs a corrective, which can only be supplied by men of opposite qualities-men naturally content with the world as it is, more apprehensive of loss than hopeful of improvement, profoundly averse to change without good cause shown.

But these men are not the people, exclaim the democrats; they do not feel with the people; they are indifferent to their welfare; things are too pleasant with them to make them willing to care for and promote the good of others. It is not so. Men of this kind exist in every class of society: they are found in the House of Commons in large numbers, for they form the Conservative party in it. But so great is the force of the progressive element in human character, so incessant, so multiform, and so powerful is its action, that, to avoid excess, the concentration of the Conservative sentiment in an independent Chamber becomes necessary in order to impart the requisite energy and effect to its resistance. The larger the engine, the greater and the more needed is the fly-wheel. It is not as a privileged caste, but as men conservative by position, that the peers are gathered into a House of Lords; and however loudly advanced Liberals may remonstrate, Conservatism in its due measure is as essentially popular, is as useful for the safety and well-being of the people, as any form of Liberalism which can be named; and it may be added with truth, that as landowners and employers of labour, as magistrates, as neighbours to both poor and rich, as the guardians of refinement and civilisation, and guarantees against the domination of merely material interests,-the peers of England may safely challenge