CHAP. II.]

SUMMARY OF PROPOSED REFORM.

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Speaker of the Dominion House of Commons; the Lieutenant-Governors of the Canadian Provinces; the Governors and Executive Councillors of the Australian Colonies, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and the Cape, would give full scope for the introduction into the House of Lords of the Notables of Greater Britain, ere Colonists can be created hereditary Peers in sufficient strength to adequately represent the Colonies, and in anticipation of the Imperial Parliamentary Union of the whole British nation.

The Governors of Colonies without responsible government, the members of the Indian Government, the LieutenantGovernors and Chief Commissioners of Indian Provinces would represent the Imperial interests of Britain in Africa and Asia. The naval and military officers would express the unity of the Empire in matters of defence, and the diplomatists the balance of her policy and the essential oneness of her interests in every quarter of the globe. The representation of science and art, and, if not of literature. itself, at least of literary culture, would give play to an elevating and liberalizing influence as different as possible from the mean and narrow parochialism of a County Council. Art loves to depict the great thoughts and noble ambitions of the founders and champions of Empire, not the sordid and ignoble miscalculations of pedlars whom the irony of Fate may place in power. It is the progress and discoveries of modern science that have alone made the modern Empire possible, and that form the pledge of its perpetual union. In the whole range of English literature there is no such patriot as Shakespeare, nor any Imperialist so fervid and impassioned as, in his own way, was Milton.

The introduction into the House of Lords of Life Peers, of such qualifications as have been briefly outlined, would be a reform altogether different in effect and character from the election of the Second Chamber, in whole or part, by the County Councils of the United Kingdom, or the local Legislatures of the British Empire. Apart from the other evils of the latter system, the election by any local bodies would probably resolve itself in fact into election by the

party wirepullers of the British Isles. The scheme which has been considered, on the other hand, would aim, not at the further representation of party, but at finding a more effectual representation than that now afforded, in some measure, by the House of Lords to those great national and Imperial interests, which in the contests of parties are too often overlooked. Instead of deriving its origin from a misunderstanding of the American Senate, it is the logical development and fulfilment of a tendency already existing in the modern Peerage. The propriety and necessity of a class of life peerages is shown by the established practice of bestowing hereditary peerages on men of Senatorial qualification who are without children. That a Senatorial tenure can be substituted for a Baronial, where there exists a Senatorial qualification, without detriment to the Peerage, or disadvantage to the House of Lords, has been shown by the successful experiment in the case of the Lords of Appeal. To follow the example of the Lords of Appeal too exactly, would be to unnecessarily and unwisely limit the discretion of the Crown, and, unless on a scale too minute to be appreciated, would choke up the House of Lords with members sitting ex officio. To have all the English Judges, or all the Under Secretaries of State, sitting ex officio in the Second Chamber, would be to narrow, not enlarge, the House of Lords. What is needed is a greater variety of representation, a greater degree of elasticity in the Peerage system, not a mere change of limitations. This variety and elasticity is not to be arrived at by pinning a life seat in the House of Lords to a. particular office, an Agency-General, or the permanent headship of a department. A rigidity of this kind would be no improvement on the rigidity that now exists instead of being any better, it would be a great deal worse, for while selection is of the essence of a Senate, heredity is of the essence of a Baronage. An heredity of representation attaching to the office, not the family, is none the less an heredity of representation. It makes a Peerage of succession, though not a Peerage of descent. A new order of the hereditary legislatorship of bureaucrats

CHAP. II.] TRUE MEANING OF A LIFE PEERAGE.

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would meet no want, and would cause just and universal dissatisfaction. The Lords of Appeal now retain their seats after laying down their office. This makes them Life Peers, Peers with a Senatorial qualification and a Senatorial tenure. But before this they were Official Peers, Peers with a Senatorial qualification, but an Official tenure; and, even so, every Lord of Appeal is ex officio created a Life Peer. In the case of the Lords of Appeal, members of the appellate tribunal of the House of Lords, this may be right and necessary; but it is not necessary in the other cases which we have considered, and it would prove extremely mischievous. What is wanted, is not Life Peers ex officio, but Life Peers qualified by office: not life peerages tied up with this or that office, but life peerages bestowed at the discretion of the Crown on persons. qualified by having held such offices. A definite test and fixed qualification is required for Life Peers, so that they may not be perverted into a mere engine of partisan warfare, and a weapon for an arbitrary Minister. This test of fitness is to be secured by attaching it to the tenure of certain offices. Variety and elasticity are to be secured by the number of the offices thus qualifying, the length of tenure required in some cases preventing fraud and trickery; and by making the tenure of such offices to constitute a qualification, but not a title or a claim.

The other needful restraint on the power of creating Life Peers is to be found in affixing a limit to their numbers. It would be necessary to provide that a maximum should not be exceeded, nor more than a certain number created in each year. In the first instance, it might be wise to fix the maximum at fifty, and to ordain that not more than five should be created in one year, including those, if any, created to fill vacancies. Later on, when the system had been in operation for some time, it is possible that the Peers would be willing to consent to an increase of the total to one hundred, and to allow vacancies to be filled as they occurred. But the number of a hundred must be regarded as the extreme and final limit, beyond which it would never be advisable to go.

CHAPTER III.

HEREDITARY PEERS.

THE enlargement of the class of Life Peers, at present limited to the Lords and ex-Lords of Appeal, though on another and less rigid basis, would be a reform of the House of Lords, but it would be a reform of addition, not a reform in the structure of the normal Lords Temporal. A new class of life members would be established, or the existing class would be extended; but the Peers of England and the Union would be unaffected, and so, too, would the Representative Peers of Scotland and Ireland. Yet here again, as we have seen, there is great need for reform. The whole five Peerages of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland, and Great Britain and Ireland, ought to be amalgamated in one Imperial Peerage of the United Kingdom of the British nation. And to some extent this has been taking place. As the tendency towards life peerages may be traced in the peerages of the Lords of Appeal, and the increasing number of normal Union peerages bestowed on men without heirs, so a tendency towards amalgamation has been shown in the increasing number of Union peerages bestowed on Peers of Scotland and Ireland. Two only of the Scottish Peers, the Dukes of Lennox and Buccleuch, have English peerages that were united with their Scottish dignities before the Union; though the Earldom of Loudoun was united with the ancient Barony of Botreaux in 1871, the latter being then called out of abeyance. Eleven Peers of Scotland are entitled to sit in person in the House of Lords in virtue of Great British Peerages dating from 1711

CHAP. III.] SCOTTISH AND ENGLISH PEERAGES.

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to 1796. But thirty-six Peers of Scotland have, partly by inheritance, but chiefly by creation, been absorbed into the House of Lords from 1808 to 1887. So, of the eighty-seven Irish Peers in the Second Chamber, independently of the Representative Peers system, fifty-eight received the peerages which give them seats during the present century. Still there are eighty-nine Peers of Ireland dependent on representation; and thirty-seven Peers of Scotland, including three Peeresses, in the same predicament. Sir Erskine May, in his "Constitutional History," expresses the opinion, that “at no distant date the Scottish Peerage will probably become absorbed in that of the United Kingdom." But this belief was far too sanguine. Many Scottish peerages, as we saw in the first chapter, come into families through heiresses and pass out of them again in the same manner, while United Kingdom peerages almost invariably pass through males exclusively. A Union peerage is necessarily of much later creation than a Scottish peerage, and there are consequently a far greater number of persons in remainder to the latter than in remainder to the former. Scottish peerages are often for a time united with an English or a Union peerage, and afterwards again disunited. Some examples of this process were given before, and more may be added. Thus the ninth Earl of Dalhousie was created a Baron of the United Kingdom in 1815, and the second Baron was created a Marquis in 1849, but on the death of the latter in 1862, both Barony and Marquisate became extinct. The twelfth Earl of Dalhousie was created Baron Ramsay in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1875. The second Duke of Argyll was created Duke of Greenwich in 1719, and before that had been created Earl of Greenwich and Lord Chatham, but these peerages died with him in 1743. The present Duke of Argyll took his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Sundridge of 1766. The second Duke of Athole took his seat in the House of Lords in 1737 in virtue of the English Barony of Strange, but on his death in 1764 this Barony passed to his daughter who had previously married the third Duke of Athole. The fourth Duke was created Earl Strange in 1786,

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