Lord Malmesbury, who spoke last week at Christchurch for the
House of 'Lords, was content to take a very humble line in its praise. He said the few Lords who do work, work very hard at the revision of the very roughly-shaped and often half-intelligible House of Commons' Bills, which could seldom, he said, be acted upon at all, so hastily were- they drawn, but for the careful Committees of the Peers. This is rather like the teleological justification of winter,—that it is quite necessary for the purpose of providing ices for the sum- mer entertainments. The House of Lords is certainly a most redundant sort of machinery for the purpose of getting a good revision of our statutes at the hands of practised draughtsmen. Is not such an apology for the House of Lords more dangerous than any sort of attack on it ? But Lord Malmesbury always did love to blunder.
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