The peerages conferred on Mr. Goschen and Sir Matthew White
Ridley were gazetted on Wednesday. Mr. Goschen becomes Viscount Goschen of Hawkhurat, and Sir Matthew White Ridley Viscount Ridley and Baron Wensleydale. Sir Matthew White Ridley, it is interesting to note, has com- memorated in his second title his connection with that great lawyer and Judge, Baron Parke, the man who was made a life-Peer, but not allowed to take his seat in respect of a patent so limited owing to the decision of the Peers—a decision of very doubtful validity—that the power of the Crown to grant life-peerages had lapsed from want of use. Mr. Goschen's retirement to the House of Lords cannot be recorded by us without an expression of our sense of his great public services. His record as a statesman stands very high. Especially are all Unionists bound to re- member him with gratitude, for it is not too much to say that without his aid and the courage and devotion which he displayed in resisting the demand for Home-rale, the cause of the Union might have been defeated. He was some- times accused of a lack of grip and decision in regard to ordinary political questions, but there was nothing half hearted in the way in which he threw himself into the great struggle of 1886.
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