Sir Henry James also made a speech of the old
constitutional eloquence,—a speech of the kind of eloquence which Macaulay commemorates as the eloquence of Charles, Earl Grey,—against the recent action of the Peers. He told Lord Salisbury that he was trying to change the House of Lords "into an additional wing of the Carlton Club." Material, he said, which refuses to be bent, always runs the risk of being broken ; and " are we not acting even with very loyalty to the institution which Lord Salis- bury is endangering, if we endeavour to bend it, lest he should break it ?" Perhaps Lord Salisbury, who has a lurking desire to return to his old place in the Commons, will mutter to himself that, on the contrary, if he can have his way, he will break it, lest the Liberals should bend it, and, by bending it, save it.
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