Sir Harry Poland has an excellent letter on the dangers
of a wholesale creation of Peers in last Saturday's Times. Lord Lyndhurst in the debate on the Wensleydale Peerage case in 1856 had maintained that the Crown might, in strict exercise of its prerogative, confer hereditary peerages on a troop of Guards, though such an act would be a gross violation of the Constitution.—Lord Granville, in referring to this state- ment, declared that the proper course would be for Parliament to impeach and hang the Minister who suggested it.—But Lord Lyndhurst went on to point out that the great barrier in the way of an ad hoc creation of Peers—even of twenty or thirty—was the hereditary character of the Peerage. Furthermore, it was not the duty of the Sovereign to accept without question the advice tendered him by a Minister; indeed, Lord Grey was convinced that the feeling of the country was so sound upon that subject that the Sovereign resisting the advice of the Minister in regard to the creation of a large number of Peers would, in all cases, be supported by the people. Sir Harry Poland also quotes the remarks of the Duke of Argyll on the danger of unduly increasing the number of Peers. "Adopted for a
temporary purpose, it would have a permanent effect No Government could allow itself to be overruled by the nominees of its predecessor, and therefore each Government would resort to a new creation in order to carry its measures."
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