causes of the good working of our ancient constitution, and still more of its long duration." He also expatiates with wellfounded enthusiasm on the number of eminent statesmen who owed to the smaller boroughs, now disfranchised, either their introduction into public life or their refuge during some part of it.* But the essential element of a popular assembly was proportionally diminished, and it was no Radical Reformer of our day, but Mr. Pitt, speaking in 1783, who said: "This House is not the representative of the people of Great Britain; it is the representative of nominal boroughs, of ruined and exterminated towns, of noble families, of wealthy individuals, of foreign potentates."

able to ascertain what is the real state of bulwarks against any sudden and overpublic opinion: we shall then have some-whelming tide of popular delusion-apthing firm and trustworthy to proceed pear to me to have been one of the main upon, and the constitution will work better than if, whenever the political horizon is troubled or clouded, we are content to sacrifice our convictions to expediency. By a strange perversity of fortune, according to Lord Russell, the Duke of Wellington was the unconscious instrument of bringing about that increase of popular power which has proved so detrimental to the legitimate influence of the hereditary assembly. "When at the meeting of Parliament, November 3rd, 1830, the Duke of Wellington declared that the constitution of the House of Commons was perfect, and that the wit of man could not à priori have devised anything so good, the general feeling was one of dismay. The House of Lords, usually so calm, showed signs of amazement and perturbation. The Duke whispered to one of his colleagues, 'What can I have said which seems to make so great a disturbance ?' You have announced the fall of your Government, that is all,' replied his more clear-sighted colleague."

The Duke had taken his line deliberately before this Parliament met, and knew very well what he was saying. Moreover, it was the discontented Tories (who agreed with him about the constitution of the House of Commons) that turned the scale. But the fall of the Duke's Government cleared the way for the authors of the Reform Bill, and the Reform Bill destroyed that balance of power between the two branches of the Legislature which so largely contributed to their harmonious action and joint efficiency. It did so by severing the strongest of the connecting links between the two Houses, and by enabling the House of Commons to speak in the name of the people, which prior to 1832 would have been an idle pretension. A list was given in "Notes and Queries of fifty members in 1839, who, so far as could be ascertained, were the direct lineal descendants of those who sat in the Long Parliament of 1640. Lord Stanhope, after enumerating thirty-five instances, remarks: "These hereditary seats, combining in some degree the permanence of peerage with the popularity of elections - these

• "Earl Russell-Introduction to Speeches." The Duke had already taken his line when he gave the forfeited franchise to East Retford. In the division on the Civil List (November, 1830), which caused the Duke's resignation, thirty Tories, headed by Mr. Bankes and Sir Charles Wetheral, voted in the majority which consisted of twenty-nine.

One of these foreign potentates, the Nabob of Arcot, had eight nominees in the House. A well-known story authenticates the fact of a noble family having seven: a Whig Earl had as many when (in 1830) he patriotically bartered his boroughs for a Marquisate, to be followed by a Dukedom.† The counties, says Mr. Massey, were in the hands of the great landowners, who mostly settled the representation by previous concert. When they could not agree, or when there was a rivalry between two great families, the contest, which in former ages would have been decided in the field, was fought at the hustings; and at least as many ancient houses have been ruined in modern times by these conflicts as were formerly destroyed by private war. He adds that the great fend between the houses of Lascelles and Wentworth, when they disputed the county of York for fourteen days, cost one hundred thousand pounds. It cost more than treble that sum. Wellesly Pole spent eighty thousand pounds in contesting Wilts, of which four thousand pounds went in ribbons.

Unfortunately, the inherent corruption or perversity of poor human nature is such, that it has proved as difficult to convince the people at large of the wickedness of selling votes as of killing a pheasant or a hare. In some of the largest constituen

"History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht," &c., vol. i. chap 1.

The Duke of Norfolk had eleven members; Lord Lonsdale nine; Lord Darlington seven; the Duke of Rutland, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord Carrington six each.' May. Three of these numbers include county members.

"History of England during the Reign of George IJI.," vol i. chap. 9.

served some of my particular friends; and when my wife was last at Court, the King was very gracious to her, which must have happened at your instance. I should therefore think myself very ungrateful (putting the bank-note into his pocket) if

pleased to ask me." The difference in amount may possibly account for the dif ference of conduct in the commoner and the peer.

cies (Liverpool, for one), at the last general election, independent electors might have been bought by the hundred at five shillings a head. In one of his powerful speeches against Parliamentary Reform, Mr. Lowe, after reading a list of sums allowed as legitimate expenses (ranging I were to refuse the favour you are now from eight thousand pounds up to twentyseven thousand), said: "Now, I ask the House how it is possible that the institutions of this country can endure, if this kind of thing is to go on and increase?" The arrangement for the management We do not see how this kind of thing is to of the House of Commons in 1754 between be stopped by legislation. The only hope the Duke of Newcastle and Fox, having is that it may be checked and die out, like been broken off, the Duke conferred the another kind of thing which grew out of leadership on Sir Thomas Robinson, the it. When, towards the commencement of Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, whose the last century, Henley, member for qualifications may be guessed from the Southampton, was called to account by remark of Pitt on hearing of the nominahis constituents for voting against their tion: "Sir Thomas Robinson lead us! interests for the promotion of his own, he The Duke might as well send his jack-boot replied, "I bought you, and, by G-d, I to lead us." Nothing more strongly ilwill sell you." This was the practice if lustrates the altered position and characnot the language, of his time. Mr. Mas-ter of the House than the immeasurably sey has found no trace of the practice after enhanced importance of the leadership. the Grenville Administration. Up to that period, he says, money was received and expected by members from the Minister whose measure they supported, apparently without any consciousness of infamy, very much in the same manner as the voters in certain boroughs receive head-money from the candidate as a matter of right and custom. There is a letter in the Grenville Correspondence showing that the practice

extended to the Peers:-
:-

"London, November 26, 1763.

"Honoured Sir, I am very much obliged to you for that freedom of converse yon this morning indulged me in, which I prize more than the lucrative advantage I then received. To show the sincerity of my words, (pardon, sir, the, perhaps, over-niceness of my disposition) I return endorsed the bill for 3001. you favoured me with, as good manners would not permit my refusal of it when tendered by you.

"Your most obliged and most obedient servant,

SAY and SELE.

"As a free horse wants no spur, so I stand in need of no inducement or douceur to lend my small assistance to the King or his friends in the present administration.”

The conversation at "The Grove" happened to turn on a probable change of Ministry, "Don't trouble yourself about the Prime Minister," exclaimed the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis; "you may always find one amongst the Peers: tell me who is to lead the House of Commons." Tell us who is to lead on either side in the contingency of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli being superseded or displaced. There arose no such difficulty in 1754. Thanks to the ducal distribution of the secret service money and the patronage, the equivalent to the jack-boot got smoothly through a session, and was prepared to try another when a European war compelled the avowal of his helplessness. A fresh negotiation was opened with Fox, and ended in the junction made famous by the comparison to the junction of the Rhone and the Saone. "At Lyons," said Pitt, "I was taken to see the place where the two rivers meet: the one gentle, feeble, languid and, though languid, yet of 10 depth; the other a boisterous and impetuous torrent, but different as they are, they meet at last."

From the accession of the House of Fancy the state of morals when good Hanover till within living memory, the manners would not permit the direct oral two Houses hardly ever differed about refusal of a bribe. A parallel story is told public matters, because they had the by Dr. King. Sir Robert Walpole, meet- same objects in view, and were subject to ing a member of the opposition in the the same influences. The course taken by Court of Requests, took him aside and of the House of Lords in 1783, when they fered him a bank bill of 2000., which he threw out the India Bill, can hardly be put into his hands, for his vote. The mem- considered an exception, for this was done ber replied: " Sir Robert, you have lately 'by the express desire of the King; and the

House of Commons which had passed the Bill was immediately dissolved and replaced by one that agreed with his Majesty. But these august assemblies sometimes quarrelled about minor matters, and on one occasion they proceeded to such extremities in the interchange of rude and coarse language, as to make it a subject of mutual congratulation that their proceedings were then conducted with closed doors. The scene on December 11, 1770, when the Commons were turned out of the House of Lords with the rest of the "strangers," was thus described by Colonel Barré :

tossed it across the table on the floor, and a number of members rushed forward and kicked it out of the House.

The constitutional mode of dealing with a refractory House of Commons is by dissolution. When the House of Lords asserts its independence, the only mode of compelling its co-operation with the other branches of the Legislature is by the creation of new peers; as in 1712, when Oxford and Bolingbroke gazetted twelve in one day; when, on their taking their seats Wharton inquired if they were to vote (like a jury) by their foreman; and Boingbroke, on hearing that they had carried claimed: "If those twelve had not been the question by a majority of one, exenough, we would have given them another dozen." This is the solitary instance of a creation in mass to carry a measure:

"I also was a witness of the scene; and never shall I forget it. I was listening to a noble duke, who was speaking upon the important subject of Gibraltar and Minorca. I am not aware that he was in possession of any secret. If he was, he certainly did not disclose it. Sud- the purpose has been commonly effected denly the whole scene became changed. I could by a threat, which has gradually become not suppose that a single peer remained in the nugatory and impracticable; the ConserHouse. It seemed as if the mob had broke in: vative majority in the Upper House being and they certainly acted in a very extraordinary now roughly estimated at more than manner. One of the heads of this mob-for seventy. The only available mode, in the there were two-was a Scotchman. I heard contingency of a decided split between the him call out several times Clear the Hoose! two Honses, would be an appeal to the Clear the Hoose! The face of the other was country by a dissolution upon an implied hardly human; for he had contrived to put on understanding that the Lords would be a nose of an enormous size, that disfigured him guided by the result. As regards votes of completely, and his eyes started out of his head censure, a vote by the Upper House might in so frightful a way, that he seemed to be un-be neutralized by the vote of the Lower; dergoing the operation of being strangled. It was altogether the most violent mob I ever be held. You would imagine that these leaders would have continued so throughout. But no! at the latter end of the day, these two men took their places as doorkeepers, and executed the office with as much exactness, as if it had been a well-regulated assembly."

Sir Gilbert Elliot replied:

"Personal allusions, though occasionally met with in books, are not frequent in the debates of this House. In the Spectator' we have an account of a club, to which the length of a man's nose gave him a claim to admittance; and a whole volume of Tristram Shandy' is devoted to the same distorted feature. The

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as plainly intimated, with questionable prudence, by the Duke of Argyll and the Lord Chancellor, in the debate on the appointment of Sir Robert Collier. "This (said the Lord Chancellor) is as clearly a party manoeuvre as ever came before Parliament."

"But, my Lords, I tell you plainly I will hold my ground. I will not quail till my profession tell me I ought or, at all events, till the House of Commons shall censure me for what I have done." More than one embarrassing collision has been averted by the graceful and judicious leadership of Lord Gran

ville.

noses of the two lords alluded to certainly hap-ty of the hereditary assembly is what we The true cause of the declining authoripen to be remarkably prominent."? have indicated the increasing importThe two lords were the Earls of March-ance and authority of the Commons. It mont and Denbigh. cannot be attributed to any falling off in Two years afterwards, in 1772, Burke personal qualifications, in dignity, patriotcomplained to the House that he had been ism, or ability. "When (says Lord Ruskept three hours waiting at the door of sell a great question arises which requires the Lords with a Bill sent up from the a display of more than ordinary knowl Commons. The Commons were so indig-edge of history, more accurate learning, nant that, the next time a Bill was brought more constitutional lore, and more practidown from the Lords, it was rejected by cal wisdom than is to be found in the dea unanimous vote. The Speaker then bates of Parliament, I know not where

'the general debate,

run by (so to speak) leavening the popular assembly than they can ever hope to exercise in their hereditary one.*

Forms long outlive realities. The Standing Order of the Lords for the regulation of Conferences between the Houses runs thus:

"The place of our meeting with the Lower House upon conference is usually the Painted Chamber, where they are commonly before we thither in a whole body, and not some lords come, and expect our leisure. We are to come scattering before the rest, which both takes from the gravity of the lords, and besides may hinder the lords from taking their proper places. We are to sit there, and be covered; but they are at nc committee or conference ever either to be covered or sit down in our presence, unless it be some infirm person, and that by connivance in a corner out of sight, to sit, but not to be covered."

The popular harangue, the tart reply, The logic and the wisdom and the wit,' are to be found in greater perfection than among the prelates on the episcopal bench, the peers of three centuries of nobility, and the recent occupants of the woolsack." It may be doubted whether the peers of three centuries of nobility, a small minority, are endowed, in proportion to their pedigrees, with the logic, the wisdom, or the wit, although this limit includes the house of Russell, ennobled in 1539. Peers of meaner blood are quite on a par with them in this respect. Nor should it be forgotten how many of those who reflect, or have reflected, most honour on their House, received their training, their baptism of debate, in the House of Commons, and left that assembly with foreboding or regret. "When I have turned out Walpole," said Pulteney, "I will retire into that hosThe Personal Anecdotes," comprising pital for invalids, the House of Lords." three-fourths of the book before us, are On entering it as Earl of Bath, he was thus addressed by his old adversary, who arranged alphabetically and biographicalhad recently become Earl of Orford: "My Lord Bath, you and I are now two as insignificant men as any in England.” When (in 1766) the citizens of London learned that the great commoner was to be First Minister, they were in transports of joy, and prepared for a general illumination. The lamps had actually been placed round the Monument, when the "Gazette" announced that he had become an Earl. The lamps were taken down. The contemplated entertainments were countermanded, and (according to Macaulay) the clamour against him appears to have had a serious effect on the foreign relations of the country.

"The name of Pitt had been a charmed name. Our envoys tried in vain to conjure with the name of Chatham." Brougham in the Lords, after three or four exciting years, was like Samson with his hair cut. There is a letter from Charles Fox to the first Earl Grey, earnestly condoling with him on the acceptance of a peerage by his father; and who would not condole with a man of energy, laudable ambition, capacity, and debating power, like Lord Salisbury, on his being excluded in the prime of life from the arena in which all the decisive battles of the Constitution must be fought?

We regard the House of Lords as a main pillar of the social edifice; but one of the finest and deepest of living writers and thinkers has plausibly maintained that the peerage would gain instead of losing by a fusion; that the eminent members would exercise more influence in the long

ly; beginning Addington, Addison, Agnew, &c., and ending Wilberforce, Wilkes, Windham. This arrangement is fatal to generalization of any kind. Epochs and subjects are thrown together without coherence or analogy, and a confused mass of desultory impressions is the result. To utilize the materials, we must classify them: and, adding to them what we have procured from other sources, we will endeavor to illustrate a few more of the distinctive features of the British Parliament.

Prominent amongst them must be ranked the proneness to be swayed by eloquence, and the abundant supply of it, of the best quality, at all times. In England, the oratorical ages, instead of being separated by long intervals, like the literary ages, follow in unbroken succession. To the going and coming man we may again and again apply then before this splendid orb was entirely the noble imagery of Burke: -"Even

"England and the English." By Lord Lytton. The noble author, who delivered more than one fine and effective speech in the House of Commons has never addressed the Lords. Lord Macaulay, also, never spoke as a peer. Yet surely the House of Lords offers the most congenial audience for speak ers who shine by intellectual richness and brilliancy, and owe little or nothing to the exciting current of debate. It is unfortunate that a tacit convention or understanding excludes the episcopal bench from secular topics of debate; for it is rich in eloquence of a high order. The late Lord Fitzwilliam, meeting the Bishop of Oxford (now Winchester) soon after his celebrated speech on the Corn Laws, told him that such a display of episcopal eloquence in the House of Lords was altogether contrary to rule. The Bishop of Winchester is a born orator, and deThe Bishop of Peterborough has more than once laid himself open to a similar reproof.

serves so much the more credit for his abstinence.

set, and while the western horizon was in many contemporaries only just second to a blaze with his descending glory, on the him in the same walk: Atterbury, Bishop opposite quarter of the heavens arose of Rochester, for one; the same who, on another luminary, and, for the time, be- the death of Queen Anne, offered to head came lord of the ascendant." Whenever a troop of horse in his lawn sleeves, and speaking was possible, there were able, proclaim James III. at Charing Cross. In forcible, and fine speakers: although the the debate on the Occasional Conformity fame of many has been preserved only by and Schism Bills in the House of Lords, in description or tradition, no rational doubt! December, 1718, they were very warmly can be entertained of their excellence. opposed by Atterbury, who said, “he had Ben Jonson writes thus of Bacon:- prophesied last winter this bill would be attempted in the present session, and he was sorry to find he had proved a true prophet." Lord Coningsby, who always spoke in a passion, rose immediately after the bishop, and remarked, that "one of the right reverends had set himself forth as a prophet; but, for his part, he did not know what prophet to liken him to, unless to that famous prophet Balaam, who was reproved by his own ass." The bishop, in reply: "Since the noble lord hath discovered in our manners such a similitude, I am well content to be compared to the prophet Balaam; but, my lords, I am at a loss how to make out the other part of the parallel. I am sure that I have been reproved by nobody but his lordship."

"There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, when he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should

made an end."

Clarendon's pages teem with proof that the period included in his history was marked by debating ability of the highest order. The occasion was grand: Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Digby, Capel, Hyde, Falkland, rose to it. Strafford's defence is a model of dignified pathos, and the chasteness of his imagery (that of the buoy, for example) is no less admirable than its felicitous application. The Royal Martyr spoke with ease, force, and simplicity.

The oratorical claims of the Restoration cycle are amply sustained by Shaftesbury and Halifax. At the meeting of the Convention in 1688, we hear of Sir Thomas Littleton, "gifted with a vehement and piercing logic, which had often, when, after a long sitting, the candles had been lighted, roused the languishing House, and decided the event of the debate." There, too, was William Sacheverell, an orator whose great parliamentary abilities were many years later a favourite theme of old men who lived to see the conflicts of Walpole and Pulteney. There too were other veterans, but all were speedily to be thrown into the shade by two young Whigs, who, on this momentous day, took their seats for the first time,- Charles Montague and John Somers.*

The palm of eloquence in the next generation is, by universal consent, awarded to Bolingbroke, of whom not one spoken sentence has been preserved. He had

The famous Lord Peterborough was as ready for an encounter in the senate as in the field. Speaking in opposition to the Septennial Bill in 1716 he said "that if this present Parliament continued beyond the time for which they were chosen, he knew not how to express the manner of their existence, unless, begging leave of that venerable bench (turning to the bishops) they had recourse to the distinction used in the Athanasian Creed; for they would be neither made nor created, but proceeding."

After Bolingbroke, or rather after his sudden fall which he survived for thirtyseven years, we arrive at Walpole and the phalanx of assailants he had provoked, as if for the express purpose of encountering them single-handed and taking all their points upon his shield. During the first fourteen years of his administration the most formidable was Pulteney, whom Macaulay calls the greatest leader of Opposition that the House of Commons had ever seen. Once, in answering a charge, Walpole laid his hand upon his breast, and said:

his writings. "Lord Bolingbroke's productions, with all their defects in argument, method, and precision, contain a force and energy which our orators rarely aim at, though it is evident that such an elevated style has much better grace in an orator, and is assured of more prompt and astonishing success." + The tradition of his eloquence is confirmed by (Hume, Essay on Eloquence.)

Macaulay's "History," chap. x.