QUEEN VICTORIA AND MR. GLADSTONE [To the Editor of THE
SPECTATOR.]
-SIa,—The issue between Mr. H. M. Wallis and myself is a very simple one of fact. Did, or did not, Queen Victoria refuse a request by Mr. Gladstone to create peers in order to secure the passage of the 1893 Home Rule Bill through the House of Lords ? Mr. Wallis says she did, I say she did not. It is difficult to prove a negative; I therefore challenged Mr. Wallis to produce some evidence of this alleged important constitu- tional event which has escaped the notice not only of Mr. Gladstone's biographer, Lord Morley, but also, so far as I know, of every other writer of history.
As I suspected, Mr. Wallis is unable to produce a shred of evidence to support his statement. He says " I well remem- ber hearing or reading . . . I cannot now recall where or when I heard . . . &c." We can, I think, leave it at this.
It is charitable to suppose that Mr. Wallis is confusing the Home Rule Bill of 1893 with the Reform Bill of 1832, when a constitutional crisis involving the possibility of creating peers arose.—Your obedient servant,
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