The First Lord of the Treasury expressed himself as quite
ready to strengthen the Home of Lords, bat declared that the initiation of reform must be left to the House of Lords itself, and he quoted Mr. Gladstone's strongly expressed opinion that in a reformed House of Lords the hereditary principle ought still to have considerable weight. Mr. Morley immediately rose to reproach the Government with its dilatory attitude towards this question, and seriously maintained that with all the other issues before the country, the time had arrived for considering the whole question of the relation of the hereditary peerage to the Legislature. He regarded the House of Lords as a rioketty parapet on the edge of a precipice, which is more dangerous than no parapet at all; and he declared that the House of Lords is so indolent, that even in discussing such a Bill as the County Courts Consolidation Bill, it made no effort to revise and amend it. We believe that that was a merit, not a demerit. The consolidation of a number of existing statutes is a highly technical matter which must be trusted to experts, and is sure to be wrecked by general discussions even amongst a number of professional lawyers, unless they have all devoted months to the study of the con- solidation in question.
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