Lord Granville presided on Thursday at the banquet of the
Manchester Reform Club, but his speech is reported with such elaborate and almost incredible badness in all the London papers that it is by no means easy to guess what he said. He intimated that it would never do to abolish the House of Lords, though admitting that the House of Lords was very fond of delaying indefinitely very useful measures, like the University Test Abolition Act ; and while protesting that he differed from Mr. Fawcett (who wishes to see the representation of minorities as well as majorities in the House of Commons) in thinking that the House of Commons does not adequately repre- sent the country, he availed himself provisionally of Mr. Fawcett's view, to argue that if it does not, that is a great reason for some second Chamber, if not for the House of Lords. But ho seems to have suggested nothing by way of reform. If Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville could persuade the House of Lords to consent to the creation of a hundred Life Peers, and many of them could be such men as Sir Frederick Rogers, lately the " permanent" Under Secretary of the Colonial Office, who is just going to the Upper House, that would be the best rough reform we could have. But where are a hundred or fifty such men to be found ? And how soon will the House of Lords consent to have a hundred able men —without great inheritances—lodged amongst them ?
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