TOPICS OF TH I: DAY.
POSITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE PEERS. WHEN Sir ROBERT WALPOLE was asked why he bad quarrelled with Lord TOWNSEND, his friend and coadjutor in the Ministry of the day, he replied, " Oh, as long, as the style of the firm was Townsend and Walpole,' all was mighty pleasant, but as soon it was changed to Walpole and Townsend,' my Lord became uncomfortable." Lord TOWNSEND was the prototype of the Peers of 1835. As long as they were first in the firm-all-powerful in the government of the country, free to job and pillage te their heart's content,-as long as they could pack the House of Com- mons with a subservient majority, pass Gagging-bills, suspend the Habeas Corpus, dragoon the masses of Lancashire, persecute the Catholics of Ireland, banish the Reformers of Scotland, and bully the King,-then the Peers were optimists in polities, and thought every thing was "mighty pleasant." Now, however, that the times are changed, and an independent majority of the Com- mons nominates the Ministry, and sets the Tory Lords at defi- ance, refusing to sanction jobs, and threatening the overthrow of abuses in Church and State, " my Lords are uncomfortable." Lord TOWNSEND bad the discretion to retire from the Admi- nistration which had become WALPOLE'S. He knew that there must be some one predominant influence in the Cabinet, and had the grace to ield to it. However theorists might prate about a system of checks and balances, lie knew that in the actual conduct of affairs it would not work. The Peers of 1835 have not yet learned this truth; and it is more than probable that a severe lesson will be required to drive it into their dense understandings. The result of the experiment of November last might have convinced men with ordinary powers of intellect and means of observation, that the Peers were engaged in an unequal contest with the People. The Liberal Ministry was turned adrift without having had the opportunity of acquiring the popularity which Earl GREY had lost ; the blow was struck suddenly and silently from the interior of the Palace; the registration of votes had been sedulously at- tended to by the Tory plotters, and neglected by the Liberals; large sums were promptly raised and unsparingly expended for the corruption of electors; intimidation was carried to a greater extent than was ever attempted before ; the faction was led by an experienced man of office and expert debater, who seemed to stick at nothing to mystify the People,;-yet with all these advantages, the simultaneeus concurrence of which they can never hope to see again, the Tories were defeated, and their plausible Premier beaten from place by repeated majorities in the House of Commons be had himself summoned.
The Oligarchy have tried their strength in a contest with the Commons, and been found wanting. It is plain that submission is all that is left to them. Had they acted wisely, honourable terms of capitulation might have been secured; but, with the iiifatua- lion common to baffled factions, they have chosen to exasperate their victors-to use the power they hold on sufferance, for the obstruction of ameliorating measures, and the perpetuation of abuses which the Nation will not suffer to exist. Their uniform mode of proceeding since the opening of the present session jus- tifies these remarks : we in vain look for one vote of a Liberal tendency.
Such being the insane course of the majority, despite the warnings of the more rational members of their order, men are irresistibly led to consider the history and scrutinize the value of' the Peers as a branch of the Legislature. And here we find that they have, with the exception perhaps of periods brief and "far between," been the tools of the King for the oppression of the People, or that they have used the King as their instrument for the same purpose. From the accession of GEORGE the First to the present day, the Monarch has been really in the hands of the Peers ; and they have continued. by the exercise of his privilege of unlimited crea- tion, to multiply the number of needy and subservient Tories in the Upper House, until it has become little better than a packed club of selfish exclusives. During the reigns of GEORGE the Third and his successor, no fewer than 188 Peers were created -almost without exception Tories. In this way the Liberal minority was effectually swamped ; and when Earl GREY came into contact with his " order," he was terrified at the extent to which creations of Liberal Peers bad become necessary to restore harmony between the two Houses, the Commons having become an Anti-Tory and Reforming assembly. Unhappily for the Peer- age, (though not perhaps tbr the Country, which we hope wilt yet gain by the error,) Earl GREY wanted the wisdom and firm- ness to insist on the requisite addition to their numbers. He managed by the underhand, and we now fear treacherous aid of the King, to carry his Reform Bill in a damaged state. But the evil day was only put off. The Tory phalanx was still unbroken, and more resolutely hostile than ever. This Lord GREY dis- covered to his cost. He found it impossible to work the legisla- tive machine. It was only the Tory measures of the first Re- formed Parliament-such as the Coercion Bill-that the Peers would consent to. Instead of acting in the spirit of the Reform Bill, Earl GREY truckled to the Anti-Reformers; and thus lost his popularity, and with it the power to obtain from the King the necessary creation of Peers. He let slip the golden opportunity and to him it never more returned. Lord MELBOURNE is rapidly acquiring that influence with the Nation which made Earl GREY irresistible in 1832. It would give us no surprise if, as the means of preventing more sweeping
alterations—as the miunnum of change—a large creation of Liberal Peers should shortly be conceded by those who have hitherto resisted such a compromise. But would that now answer the purpose of staving off, for another generation, a thorough re- form of their Lordships' House? We do not believe it. Look at the minority by which Lord MELBOURNE is supported—a mi- serable remnant of thirty-seven Peers I Where are the men who have received coronets, in reliance on their supposed Liberalism in politics, since the accession of WILLIAM the Fourth ? Some of them, such as Lords SEGRAVE and WESTMEATH, are to be found in the Tory list; others are shooting grouse in the North, or
playing cards with roues and dowagers at the watering places—
not where they ought to be, attending to their duties in Parlia- ment. More reputed Whigs have been raised to the Peerage since 1830 than the whole force Lord MELBOURNE could muster on Thursday night. But no abiding reliance can be placed on mere professions, let them be what they may. Men abandon their politics; or, professing the some politics, they change their line of action, according to their individual i iterests, connexions, likings, dislikings, caprices, crotchets. There is no effectual safeguard for the public, but in the power of removing proved incapacity, dishonesty, or neglect, froth the opportunity of con- tinuing to work mischief. The majority of active, as well as speculative persons, are begin- ning to examine every institution by the test of utility. It is to no purpose that you talk to them of its venerable antiquity, of histori- cal associations, of its being part and parcel of our "glorious con- stitution :" they ask in reply. whether it is useful, adapted to the times we live in and the spirit of the people? Unless an affirma- tive answer can be given to these questions, they inexorably de- mand its removal and the substitution of something really ser- viceable in its place.
Now the constitution of the Hereditary branch of the Legislature will not stand this test. So far from being useful, most people see it in the light only of an obstruction to good government : in- stead of being in harmony with the spirit of the times and the people, it obstinately stands out in opposition to all that the people most earnestly desire, and derides the very notion of con. formity to the spirit of the age. To pretend, with the Times, that exalted rank renders Lords peculiarly amenable to public opinion, and therefore renders them in point of fact a responsible body, is a poor joke : the Peers consider themselves as set above public opinion. This very week, that prince of patricians, that model of an Oligarch, the Duke of NEWCASTLE, has declared in Parliament that their Lordships have been going astray ever since they paid regard to what passed in the Commons, and left off trusting to their own wits. Representing only themselves- - accountable to none,—in this respect superior even to the Mo- narch, whose real accountability to the People WILLIAM the Fourth has confessed on three several occasions in his five years' reign,—the Peers repudiate public opinion, though they may be compelled by their fears to act now and then in compliance with it, after matters have been pushed to an extremity most perilous in any state.
There is nothing in the actual conduct of the Lords to put as a set-off against the manifest absurdity of the principle of hereditary legislation. If they were discreet, cautious, and popular in their actions, it would be allowed that the system, though indefensible in theory, worked well; and that would be enough to insure it support from a practical people like the British. But it is not only absurd in theory, this system of hereditary legislation—it works exceed- ingly ill; and is productive of all manner of extravagance, abuse, and obstruction to the ameliorations found to be necessary, and which the mass of the nation resolve to have. It has there- fore no redeeming quality in the eyes of intelligent persons; and were it not for the love of quiet, and the aversion to violent change, and for the regard perhaps in which the Liberal Minority is held, we should very speedily witness the abolition of the herMite in England as in France.
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