Mr. Gladstone has made another batch of Peers, half-a-dozen of
them, hoping, we suppose,—almost against hope when he contemplates the course of such very prompt deserters from their Liberal creed as Lord Brabourne,—that those who have been Liberals as Commoners will remain Liberals in the House of Lords. Why he should just now have raised Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks to the Peerage, we can hardly divine. This step vacates a seat for Berwick, where we have already lost one of the Liberal gains of the last general election, and are very likely now to lose the second. The best of the new peerages is that given to Donald James Mackay, Baron Reay, a baronet of Nova Scotia, and a Baron in Holland, who was naturalised by Act of Parliament in 1877. He is a man of first-rate ability, and too much a Liberal in grain to change his colour even in the atmosphere of the House of Lords. Sir Harcourt Johnstone, too, another thorough-going Liberal, is hardly likely to turn Conservative because he becomes a peer.
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