We must never forget that it is by no means
true to say that the very last thingthe Liberals want to do is to create 300 or 400 peers. No doubt it is the last thing which Mr. Asquith and a portion of his colleagues desire to do, but we are certain that there is a very considerable body of Liberals, not unrepresented in the Government, who would like nothing better than a wholesale creation of peers, and who would be deeply disappointed if the opportunity, as they regard it, were missed. For various reasons they ardently, desire the degradation and destruction of the peerage as well as of the House of Lords, and they recognize, what apparently many Unionists have not sufficient imagination to recognize, that the peerage could never survive the creation. If that revolutionary act takes place the peerage as an asset in our national life will have disappeared. After that we shall possess no doubt a titular nobility with pride of birth and place, but it will run to waste as it does in foreign countries, and not as now be harnessed to do State service of a very useful kind.
