to create any Peerage of any rank, or to raise any Peer to any higher degree of the Peerage to which it thinks proper; but it has not the power to give a precedence above any Peer previously created of the same degree. I have already said that the Crown cannot in ordinary circumstances refuse to any Peer his writ of summons. It has however been held* that, if a Peer want possessions to maintain his estate, he cannot press the King in justice to grant him a writ to call him to the Parliament. But apart from such an accidental and partial suspension of his rights, a Peer who has not been attainted cannot lose his Peerage in any other manner than by an Act of Parliament.† One case only, that of Nevill, Duke of Bedford, in the reign of Edward the Fourth, is recorded in which a Peer was degraded by Parliament. The reason assigned for this measure was the Duke's want of means to support his dignity, and the many inconveniences to which such a position gave rise. But this, as Blackstone observes, is "a singular instance which serves at the same time by having happened to show the power of Parliament, and by having happened but once to show how tender the Parliament hath been in exerting so high a power." At the present time, therefore, as it has been for many generations, the Peerage is nominated by the Crown without any restriction as to number or time or rank or person. But the conditions under which nomination may be made are precise. The grant must be for an estate of inheritance, and cannot be revoked, or abridged, or surrendered, or transferred. Thus the independence of the Peers is secured by the same means as the independence of the judges, but in a still higher degree. The Crown has no power to silence + Cruise, On Dignities, 112. 12 Reports, 107. 3 Stephen, Com., II. a refractory Peer. It cannot in any way affect the honours that he already possesses. In the great majority of cases there is not even the obligation which arises from the sense that the title was conferred by the King whose wishes are in question. Comparatively few of the Peers can derive their Peerages from the gift to themselves of the reigning Sovereign. Thus, although the grantee may be himself the servant of the Crown, he becomes both personally independent of the Royal control, and at the same time "the root of that hereditary principle which, uninfluenced either by the Crown or the people, was destined to support the rights of both, and form a barrier to withstand the encroachments of either."* Privileges of Peerage § 7. The conjoint operation of both these principles, Barony by tenure and Barony regarded as an office, seems to have produced, or rather to have assisted in producing, the most characteristic feature of the British Peerage. Its privileges are strictly personal. personal to its possessor. While in other countries every member of a noble family is ennobled, none but the head of the family for the time being enjoys with us any legal recognition. A barren precedency is all that the heir-apparent of the most ancient Earldom or the wealthiest Dukedom can claim. Until his ancestor's death he remains, and the younger members of his family always will remain, in the rank of Commoners. I may notice some early examples of this rule, although it must have previously been well understood. In the reign of Henry the Eighth the Earl of Surrey, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, was attainted of treason by a Common Jury, and not by Peers or Barons, because "he was in law as one of the meaner or See Nicolas, Hist. Peerage, 42. less nobility." In the following reign it was resolved by the House of Commons, after a debate, that "Sir Francis Russell, being by the death of his elder brother heirapparent to the Lord Russell,† shall still abide in the House as he was before." Some twenty-five years afterwards the Commons' journals record that the Lord Russell, son and heir to the Earl of Bedford, burgess for Bridport, is ordered to continue a member of that House, notwithstanding the newly-acquired Earldom of his father. The ground on which this doctrine rested may readily be conjectured. The Baron held undivided authority over the lands to which the barony was attached. He and he alone during his life had any control over these estates. In like manner he and he alone could exercise his office in the King's council. An office implies personal aptitude; and neither its duties nor its privileges could be extended to a crowd of sons or of more remote descendents. This hereditary office was therefore regarded as being in the nature of real estate. It went, as the family estate went, to the eldest son; and the younger children were entirely excluded. Nor could the eldest son during his father's life claim to share in the privileges of his father's dignity, any more than he could then claim to share in the administration and the enjoyment of his father's estate. These influences, however, cannot have been the causes of that isonomia for which England has been so often and so justly praised. They were coincident with the tendencies which produced that state, and must have strengthened their operation. But their actual effect was rather to prevent the growth of new inequalities than to correct the old. From the time of Henry the Third,§ if not from an earlier date, the legal equality of all freemen was in all essential Selden, Titles of Honour, 285. + Parry, Parliaments, 208. § See Hallam, Middle Ages, ii. 343. + Ib., 223. points complete. The old Saxon distinctions had died out. The weregild no longer marked and perpetuated the division of classes. All offences had become violations of the King's peace. The nobility and the middle classes followed the same business, embraced the same professions, and even intermarried with each other.* In such circumstances there was no longer any room for the difference between the Eorl and the Ceorl. But there might have arisen a body with new and more formidable privileges. The great nobles who formed the council of the King might have claimed much larger immunities, and might have given a much wider extension to the privileges of their order. That they did not do either of these things is owing partly to the general feeling of justice which seems to belong to the national character, and partly to those peculiar influences that I have attempted to indicate. Yet there seems to have been even at an early period a tendency in the English towards the limitation of nobility to its actual possessor. Among the Anglo-Saxons† the Athelings included only the sons of a King, or in default of sons the relations next entitled to the succession. With them, as with our own nobility, the third generation ceased to show by any external signs its noble descent. * See De Tocqueville, France before the Revolution, 151. + Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxons, ii. 308. 466 CHAPTER XVII. POLITICAL REPRESENTATION. § 1. One of the principal difficulties in historical study is the necessity of dealing with social and political questions Representa that arise out of circumstances essentially differtion: why unknown in ent from those with which we are familiar. We antiquity. have not only the painful effort of endeavouring, often with very imperfect materials, to shadow to ourselves some form of the society whose history we are studying, but also the still more arduous task of guarding against the extension of our own modes of thought and our own associations to remote times and unlike institutions. Not the least important example of this historical difficulty is found in the different objects to which in ancient and in modern times the sentiment of patriotism has been attached. We of the nineteenth century are familiar with large political aggregations, with extensive territories and millions of men forming an organized polity, with each distinct centre of population having its own life and yet contributing to compose the national life, and with numerous and efficient securities for good government and for the proper control within its due limits of the Executive. It requires, therefore, a strong mental effort both to free ourselves from the misleading analogies of our own day, and to transport ourselves to a time when each borough or township was an independent sovereign state. Yet such |