30 JANUARY 1959, Page 16

The Spectator

FEBRUARY 1, 1834

THE existence of the hereditary Peerage was seriously endangered by their rejection of the Reform Bill. Should they play the same game in reference to an equally efficient plan of Ecclesiastical or Corporation Reform, the imminent danger to their body would return. But we have no such apprehension of Earl GRIM' and his colleagues, as to induce us to think with the Chronicle, that the problem of the duration of the Rouse of Lords will be solved in the ensuing session of Parliament : we are not afraid that the measures to be brought forward will be of so decisive a nature as to make it suicidal in the Peers to throw them out!