Our whole Parliamentary history since the Reform Act abounds with illustrations of these principles. No greater error was ever made in political prophecy than the prediction in 1832 of the virtual annihilation of the House of Lords by the events of that year. The true position of the House of Lords was no more weakened by the acceptance of the Reform Bill in the time of William IV. under the pressure of the prerogative, than it was weakened by the acceptance of the Irish Forfeitures Bill in the time of William III. under the more degrading pressure of a tack. The influence of the Peers in legislation was speedily felt in the reformed Parliament. Lord Melbourne's Administration came into office on the express vote of the House of Commons that the appropriation to educational purposes of the surplus revenues of the Irish Church was essential to the settlement of the question of Irish tithes. Yet the Lords compelled the settlement of the tithe question without the aid of these principles thus deemed to be essential. They succeeded in carrying the amendments* which they desired in the English Municipal Reform Bill. For four successive years they virtually rejected the bills for the reform of Irish corporations; and at length the Commons were obliged to accept amendments quite inconsistent with the principles of legislation which they had asserted. The Irish Electoral Act, although after a less severe struggle, experienced a similar fate. Still more remarkable was the contest respecting the admission of the Jews to Parliament. Seven times successively the Commons sent to the Lords. a bill enabling Jews to sit in Parliament, and seven times the Lords rejected the proposal. On the question of church rates a still greater number of attempts at legislation failed than in the case of the Jews. Ultimately in *May, Const. Hist., i. 264. both cases a compromise was arranged; and these longstanding and irritating disputes were brought to a successful conclusion. Creation of but a bill. § 5. There is, however, another method by which it is said that a refractory House of Lords may be brought to reason. When that House persists in its oppoPeers to carry sition to any important measure, a sufficient number of Peers may be created to secure a majority for the favoured project. For some time this method of solution has been usually recognized as the proper mode of dealing with the problem. It has become a sort of tradition among what is called the Liberal party. The "swamping of the Peers" is a process of which the thoughtless and the ignorant speak and write with great complacency. Wiser men regard it as a very dangerous very useful instrument. No one, however, now seems to dispute the existence of the power. Sir T. E. May* asserts that "a creation of Peers by the Crown on extraordinary occasions is the only equivalent which the Constitution has provided for the change and renovation of the House of Commons by a dissolution ;" and, after observing that this power should be used only in cases of "grave and perilous necessity," he adds that such a measure, “should the emergency be such as to demand it, cannot be pronounced unconstitutional." I may, perhaps, appear to many persons to support an idle paradox, and to deny a fundamental principle of our Constitution; but even with this risk I venture entirely to dissent from Sir Thomas May's proposition. So far from thinking that the sudden creation of Peers for a special emergency is the only equivalent in the House of Lords for a dissolution—or, *Const. Hist., i. 262. in other words, that it is the only legitimate means of securing harmony between the different parts of our Government-I think that our Constitution does not afford this assumed means for obtaining the desired object, and that it does afford different means. In discussing this question it must be observed that the material point is the object with which the Peers are created, and not their number or the simultaneity of their creation. Mr. Pitt created a very large number of Peers. Sometimes these creations were in batches; sometimes they were separate. Other ministers have followed his example. Sometimes ten, sometimes sixteen, peerages, sometimes even a greater number, have been conferred at the same time. Although important political consequences have followed from these creations, and although it may have been thought that there was occasionally an improvident exercise of the prerogative, no person ever questioned their legality or considered them as dangerous to the independence of the House of Lords. But that exercise of the prerogative which is reserved for "cases of grave and perilous necessity" is obviously a very different thing. It is one thing to extend the influence of the Crown and to strengthen the general position of a ministry; and it is quite another thing, when one branch of the Legislature has pronounced its deliberate opinion, wilfully to falsify that opinion. The objections to the creation of the twelve Peers to vote for the Peace of Utrecht by the advice of Lord Oxford and Lord Bolingbroke rested upon grounds entirely distinct from the objections, if any had been taken, to the creation or promotion of three times that number under the advice of Mr. Pitt within the years 1795 and 1796. There are, so far as I am aware, three occasions only in our history on which the creation of Peers, for the purpose of securing a majority in the House of Lords on a specific question, was seriously contemplated. The first was the proposed repeal of the Test Act in 1688 by James the Second; the second was the Peace of Utrecht in 1711; the third was the Reform Bill of 1832. As to the first of these cases little needs be said. The proclamation for the Parliament in which it was intended to propose the repeal of the obnoxious Act† was revoked a few days after it had been issued, and James the Second and his Parliament never again met. But if the King had carried out his project, if before the Revolution the Peers had been created and the Test Act repealed, it is not unreasonable to suppose that this exercise of the prerogative would have found its place in the black catalogue of Royal enormities contained in the Declaration of Rights; and that its abolition would have been one of the glories of Whigism, just as its revival has in our own days been so regarded. In the session of Parliament held in December, 1711, Queen Anne announced that arrangements were made for the negotiation of a Treaty of Peace. In the House of Lords an amendment to the Address was carried, representing to Her Majesty the opinion and advice of their Lordships that no peace could be safe or honourable to Great Britain or Europe if Spain and the West Indies were allotted to any branch of the House of Bourbon. Some days afterwards their Lordships passed other resolutions on the same subject, which were hostile to the policy of the Government, and adjourned for the Christmas recess to an unusual day-the second of January. On the last day of the year twelve Peers were created; and no secret was made of the intention, if it were required, to double the number. Subsequently Her Majesty communicated to Hallam, Const. Hist., iii. 73. * both Houses the terms of the proposed treaty, which were not in accordance with the previous advice of the Lords. Both Houses approved of the terms; and the treaty was in due course concluded accordingly. But on the accession of George the First, the leaders of the Tory party, the Duke of Ormond Lord Bolingbroke and the Earl of Oxford, were impeached. The two former noblemen escaped to France; Lord Oxford awaited his trial. One of the charges against him was, that he, "contrary to his duty and his oath, and in violation of the great trust reposed in him, and with the immediate purpose to render ineffectual the many earnest representations of Her Majesty's allies against the said negotiations of peace, as well as to prevent the good effects of the said advice of the House of Lords, and in order to obtain such further resolutions of that House of Parliament on the important subject of the said negotiations of peace as might shelter and promote his secret and unwarrantable proceedings, together with other false and evil councillors, did advise Her Majesty to make and create twelve Peers of this realm and Lords of Parliament. By which desperate advice he did not only as far as in him lay deprive Her Majesty of the continuance of those seasonable and wholesome counsels in that critical juncture, but wickedly perverted the true and only end of that great and useful prerogative to the dishonour of the Crown and the irreparable mischief to the constitution of Parliaments." To this Article Lord Oxford answered "that grants of peerage are the spontaneous acts of the Royal bounty, without any advice from the Privy Council or reports from the Attorney-General or other officers; that from the usual mode of making such grants he, either as Lord Treasurer or Privy Councillor, could |