Private property of the sovereign. II. The Number of peers. afford very little towards the support of her government," prohibited absolute grants entirely, and prescribed stringent conditions as to the length of term and rentals of all future leases. Thus the small remnant of the land which had once been the land of the people was saved from utter dissipation, and since its restoration to the nation by George III. " the Terra Regis of the Norman has once more become the folkland of the days of our earliest freedom.' 2 "1 This change has been accompanied by the restoration to the Crown of a right which it had lost during its uncontrolled tenure of the hereditary estates. During the days when the Folkland was really the land of the people, the king, equally with the subject, had enjoyed the right of inheriting, purchasing, devising, and otherwise disposing of lands which were his own private property. But when the kingship had become more strictly hereditary, and the lands of the nation came to be regarded as the property of the king, the person and the office of the king were held to be so thoroughly identified that his private estates were merged in the Royal demesne and made incapable of alienation by will. After the restoration of the Crown lands to the nation, it was felt to be reasonable that a restriction which belonged to a past state of things should be swept away, and that sovereigns who had surrendered an usurped power which they ought never to have held should be restored to the enjoyment of a natural right which ought never to have been taken from them."3 Accordingly the sovereign has again been invested with the right of acquiring and disposing of private property in the same manner as any other member of the nation.* II. The House of Lords. 5 Since the Revolution, the House of Peers-the lineal representative of the old Great Councils and the older Witenagemots -has undergone changes in its numbers, composition, and political weight and influence, greater even than the changes which, during the same period, have so materially affected the practical exercise of the authority of the Crown in government and legislation. In the Parliament of 1454, the last held before the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, the number of lay peers who attended was fifty-three. In 1485, only twenty-nine received writs of summons to the first Parliament of Henry VII. The greatest number summoned by Henry VIII. was fifty-one, 1 Freeman, Growth of Eng. Const., p. 134. 2 Supra, p. 12, ib., n. 1. 3 Freeman, Growth of Eng. Const., p. 136; and see Allen, Royal Prerogative, p. 154. 4 See 39 & 40 Geo. III. c. 88; 4 Geo. IV. c. 18; 25 & 26 Vict. c. 37. 5 Supra, pp. 182, 183. [Cf. L. O. Pike, Const. Hist. House of Lords, pp. 23-26.-ED.] 6 Supra, p. 292. which had increased at the death of Elizabeth to fifty-nine. In the meantime, by the suppression of the monasteries and the consequent removal from the Upper House of about thirty-six abbots and priors, the Spiritual Peerage (including five of the new sees created by Henry VIII.1) had been reduced to the number of twenty-six, at which it has ever since remained. the Stuart tative peers limit the The four Stuart kings created 193 new peers, but as during Rapid intheir reigns 99 peerages became `extinct, the number of the crease under Peerage at the Revolution of 1688 actually stood at about 150, kings. which was raised by William III. and Queen Anne to 168. The House of Lords was further increased in 1707, on the passing of Addition of the Act of Union with Scotland, by the addition of sixteen 16 represenrepresentative peers from that Kingdom, elected at the com- of Scotland mencement of every Parliament. This rapid augmentation in 1707. of the Peerage, but more especially the realisation of the power of the Crown to swamp the majority in the Upper House (manifested in 1711 by Queen Anne's creation of twelve peers in one batch), excited the jealousy of the Lords; and this feeling— acting in conjunction with the fear lest the Prince of Wales, who was in opposition to his father, should on coming to the throne make use of his prerogative to overthrow the Whig majority in the Upper House by the creation of Tory peers- Attempts to induced the Whig Ministry of Sunderland and Stanhope in 1719 prerogative and 1720 to support proposals for the limitation of the Royal by creating prerogative of creating peers. With the concurrence of George I., and 1720. peers in 1719 Bills were introduced, in the former year by the Duke of Somerset, and in the latter by the Duke of Buckingham, providing that, with an exception in favour of princes of the blood, the Crown should be restrained from augmenting the then existing number of 178 peerages by more than six, although new peerages might be created in the place of any which should become extinct; and that twenty-five hereditary peers should be substituted for the sixteen elective peers of Scotland. This unconstitutional scheme was strongly opposed in the House of Commons by Sir Robert Walpole and others, and finally rejected by a large majority (269 to 177). Its passing would have transformed the House of Lords into a close aristocratic body, independent alike of the Crown and of the people. It would have eliminated from the complex mechanism of the Constitution what has been termed its "safety-valve," that peer-creative power by which the sovereign, on the advice of his responsible Ministers, is enabled, in cases of great emergency, to force the peers to bow to the will of the people, expressed by their representatives in the House of Commons, and thus to render possible the smooth 1 Supra, p. 304, n. 3. 3 2 Lord Mahon, Hist. of Eng., i. 530-546. Profuse creation of peers under George III. Pitt and the Addition of 28 representative peers of Ireland, 1801. The Peerages of Scotland and Ireland. and continuous working of our present system of parliamentarythe government. ed At the accession of George III. the number of peerages dis amounted to only 174, but throughout his long reign new creap tions were multiplied with unprecedented profusion. In the earlier part of his reign the peer-creative power was mainly me wielded by the king himself, as one means of carrying out his s determination to break up the system of party government but the younger William Pitt, on acceding to office, employed it for another and a far nobler purpose. The consolidation of his own authority as Minister was naturally one of the objects which he had in view, but his great aim was to reform the House of Lords by changing it from a narrow and exclusive caste into a large representation of the intellect, the achievements, and more especially of the wealth of England. He wished, he said in effect, "to reward eminent merit, to recruit the peerage from the great landowners and other opulent classes, and to render the Crown independent of factious combinations among the existing peers." With this object, while himself disdaining honours, he dispensed them to others with the greatest profusion. In the first five years of his administration he created forty-eight new peers; at the end of eight years he had created between sixty and seventy; and later, in the two years 1796-1797, he created no less than thirty-five. In 1801, at the end of his seventeen years' administration, his creations had reached the total of 141. The example set by Pitt was followed by succeeding Ministers, and at the end of George III.'s long reign of sixty years the actual number of peerages conferred by that king (including some promotions of existing peers to a higher rank) amounted to the enormous number of 388. The House of Lords was further augmented on the Union with Ireland in 1801, by the addition of twenty-eight Irish representative peers, elected, not for each Parliament only like the Scotch representative peers, but for life.2 At the same time four Irish bishops were admitted to seats 1 Speech on January 16, 1789, Cobbett's Parl. Hist., xxvii. 942, 943; May, Const. Hist., i. 278. 2 There were other differences in the mode of treating the Scotch and Irish peerages. From the date of the Union with Scotland the Crown has been debarred from creating any new Scottish peers, but the then existing Peerage of Scotland was perpetuated in its integrity. On the Union with Ireland, however, it was determined to gradually diminish the excessive numbers of the Irish nobility, and it was therefore provided by the Act of Union that only one Irish peerage should be created for every three which should become extinct, until the reduction of the number to 100, at which figure it should be maintained by the creation of one Irish peerage as often as a peerage became extinct, or as often as an Irish peer should become entitled, by descent or creation, to a peerage of the United Kingdom. At the same time the privilege was granted to all Irish peers (except the representative twenty-eight for the time being) of sitting in the House of Commons if elected by any constituency in Great the Upper House of the United Kingdom, sitting by rotation sessions as representatives of the Irish Episcopate. But on e disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, the Irish shops lost their seats in Parliament.1 the character and compo House of The vast increase in the Peerage under George III. affected Changes in ot merely the numbers but the whole character of the House of ords. "Up to this time," observes a recent historian," "it sition of the Britain but not in Ireland. The peerage of both Scotland and Ireland has Lords. een undergoing a process of gradual absorption into the peerage of the nited Kingdom. "The inadequacy of the representation of the Scottish eerage (which at the date of the Union was only less numerous by twelve han that of England) has since been rectified to a great extent by the dmission of Scottish peers to hereditary seats in the House of Lords of the nited Kingdom. There are now no less than 51 peers of Scotland with uch hereditary seats, and by this process of absorption, as well as by xtinctions and dormancies, the number of peers of Scotland who have not ereditary seats in the House of Lords has been diminished from 154 in 707, to 33 in 1904. Out of these 33 Scottish peers 16 have seats as epresentative peers, leaving only 17 without seats in the House of Lords. Of 45 absorptions, 39 took place since the beginning of last century. At that rate, and without taking into account possible extinction, these 7 peers may be absorbed in about thirty-five years' time. Whenever that event takes place the 16 remaining Scottish peers, although still technically not embraced in the peerage of the United Kingdom, would to all intents and purposes be included therein; and, instead of going through the farce of self-election, would, doubtless, be created hereditary peers of Parliament. The peerage of Ireland, which in 1801 numbered 234, has been reduced by extinctions, and notwithstanding the creation of 19 post-Union peers, to 176. Of these, no less than 85 are now peers of the United Kingdom. Of the remaining 91, who are solely peers of Ireland, 28 are representative peers, thus leaving 63 without seats in the House of Lords. If the average rates of extinction and absorption should continue, the 63 peerages now without seats may be expected to be extinguished or absorbed in about thirty-nine years. . . . It is as a means of perfecting the national and representative character of the House of Lords, and of consummating the parliamentary incorporation of the three United Kingdoms, that a measure for accelerating the gradual absorption of the Scotch and Irish peerages into the peerage of the United Kingdom, deserves the support of the National Parliament. But the point of greatest urgency at the present time is to put a stop to the creation of any fresh Irish peerages, so as to allow the normal operation of extinctions and absorptions to continue to produce its natural effect." Law Magazine and Review, No. ccxx., May 1876, art. “The Representative Peerages of Scotland and Ireland.' By T. P. Taswell-Langmead. [The Spiritual Lords of Ireland were excluded from the House of Lords on the passing of the Irish Church Act (1869); which, however, did not apply to the Temporal Lords. On this point, also as to the status of the Scotch peers, cf. L. O. Pike, Const. Hist. House of Lords, pp. 366, seq.—ED.| " 1 Attempts were made in 1834, 1836, and 1837 to exclude the episcopal element altogether from the House of Lords, but unsuccessfully. [Vide L. O. Pike, Const. Hist. House of Lords, p. 369.-ED.] It was, however, determined by the Legislature in 1847, when a new bishopric was created for Manchester, that no increase in the existing number of twenty-six bishops in the Upper House should take place (10 & 11 Vict. c. 108). The two archbishops, and the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester have always a right to sit in Parliament, but the bishop last elected to any other see (except Sodor and Man, whose bishop is in no case a lord of Parliament), cannot claim a seat until another vacancy has occurred. May, Const. Hist., i. 301; Stephen, Comm. (5th ed.), iii. 10. 2 J. R. Green, Short Hist. of Eng. People, p. 792. Political position of the House of Lords. had been a small assembly of great nobles, bound together by family or party ties into a distinct power in the State. By pouring into it members of the middle and commercial class, who formed the basis of his political power, small landowners, bankers, merchants, nabobs, army contractors, lawyers, soldiers, and seamen, Pitt revolutionised the Upper House. It became the stronghold, not of blood, but of property, the representative of the great estates and great fortunes which the vast increase of English wealth was building up. For the first time, too, in our history, it became the distinctly conservative element in our Constitution. The full import of Pitt's changes has still to be revealed, but in some ways their results have been very different from the end at which he aimed. The larger number of the peerage, though due to the will of the Crown, has practically freed the House from any influence which the Crown can exert by the distribution of honours. This change, since the power of the Crown has been practically wielded by the House of Commons, has rendered it far harder to reconcile the free action of the Lords with the regular working of Constitutional government. On the other hand, the larger number of its members has rendered the House more responsive to public opinion, when public opinion is strongly pronounced; and the political tact which is inherent in great aristocratic assemblies has hitherto prevented any collision with the Lower House from being pushed to an irreconcilable quarrel. Perhaps the most direct result of the change is seen in the undoubted popularity of the House of Lords with the mass of the people. The large number of its members, and the constant additions to them from almost every class of the community, has secured it as yet from the suspicion and ill-will which in almost every other Constitutional country has hampered the effective working of a second legislative chamber." The largely increased numbers of the House of Lords, and the more representative character which it has acquired through the changes in its composition here briefly sketched, have enabled * it to preserve very much of its ancient authority and political influence. But it has nevertheless tended-especially since the Reform Act of 1832-to decline more and more from the position which it still theoretically occupies, of a co-ordinate Legislative power, and to become simply a revising and suspending House-, altering and modifying Bills sent up from the Commons, rejecting them sometimes when the mind of the nation is not thoroughly made up in their favour, but yielding to the National will whenever unequivocally expressed.1 1 The late Earl of Derby, in speaking against the second reading of the 1 Corn Importation Bill, in 1846, said: My lords, if I know anything of the Constitutional importance of this House, it is to impose a salutary |