With Lord Salisbury's defence of the hereditary principle, partly on
the ground that it would be unsafe to abolish hereditary legislators and leave the Crown as the only hereditary office, the Lord Chancellor professed himself in full agreement. "It is as certain as night follows the day that the dissolution of the British Monarchy would mean the dissolution of the British Empire as we know it." The Lord Chancellor declared that he "disliked any infiltration of the elective principle " ; the 'House might be either hereditary or elective, but not both. His remedy, he confessed, was to reduce the numbers, so that the two hundred peers who now did the work might not be occasionally disturbed by the influx of the five hundred others who did not trouble to attend regularly. In discussing the possible action of a 'Labour Ministry, he said, with an obvious allusion to Lord Haldane's flirtations with Socialism, that whatever happened the Woolsack would not go vacant. The Lord Chancellor's speech was amusing, but it did not impart any substance to the resolutions, which are not, indeed, meant to be taken very seriously.
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