It is very remarkable that at the moment chosen for insistin on the incapacity of the House of Lords, and the superior expe rience and competency of the House of Commons, there shoul be actually sitting in the Upper House no less than 175 peer who have themselves, and 119 others whose fathers have bee members of the House of Commons. We should like to know supposing the school to be so good a one as we are told, wha other process would have introduced into the Lords a greate proportion of political education. We know there are and must be, from the diversity and in firmity of human nature, numerous exceptions to the genera approbation which we bestow on the House of Lords. We know that some men neglect, and that some abuse the great advan tages of birth, wealth, and station-but we are talking not o individuals, but of a system, and we hesitate not to assert, that the result of that system is, that the House of Lords, taken collectively contains, and has always contained, not mere hereditary legislators but legislators the best educated, trained, and fashioned to thei high duties, of any assembly that the world has ever produced. But this is not all-the duties of that assembly are more grave more deliberative, more judicial, than the House of Commonsthey are in the Constitution a kind of Conservative senatecourt of revision-a balancing and adjusting power.* Now it happens again, by a happy accident of its constitution that men commonly arrive there at a mature period of life-when after having perhaps expended some of their vanity and vivacity in the House of Commons, (which seems even more than ever favourite mart for those articles,) they are sobered, as it were, to the graver and more consultative dignity of the House of Peers. The Abbé Sieyes and other constitution-mongers felt the importance o such a difference, and provided a council of ancients, or some such *The great Lord Hardwicke in his time drew a distinction between the legislativ duties, or at least the practice of the two Houses, which modern circumstances have rendered still wider. In his speech on the Militia Bill, in 1756, we find the fol lowing remarkable pasaage :-- The method of law-making most agreeable to the nature of our constitution must appear from the very words of the writs of summons to parliament; for the writs of summons to the members of the House of Lords are "ad consulendum," whereas the writs for the other House are only "ad consentiendum.' But this method seems now to be quite altered; every member of the other House takes upon him to be a legislator, and almost every new law is first drawn up and passed in the other House; so we have little else to do, especially towards the end of the session, but to read over and consent to the new laws they have made; nay, some of them are sent up so late in the session, that we have hardly time to read them over and consider whether we shall consent or no, which is remarkably the case with respect to the bill now under consideration. My Lords, by this new method of law. making, the business of the two Houses seems to be so much altered, that I really think the writs of summons ought to be altered: those of the other House ought now to be ad consulendum, and those to the members of this, ad consentiendum.' Lord John Russell it seems is of this opinion, and thinks that if the House of Lords will not con sent to be summoned ad consentiendum tantùm-they must be reformed! assembly assembly, from which inconsiderate youth should be excluded. This, like all such à priori schemes, utterly failed-these ancients were generally found to be of middling understandings and acquirements, as well as of middle age; and being all of this mature time of life, without that infusion of youthful blood which invigorates, by a constant succession, our House of Lords, and having no personal advantage over the antagonist assembly but the disadvantage of age, they inevitably became the objects of ridicule and contempt, and could not, even for a session, maintain the imaginary superiority which their theoretic constitution had assigned to them. And they hastened accordingly to the tomb of all the Capulets.' There is still another important consideration. The peers are, generally speaking, men of large fortune and corresponding influence; the vulgar may think wealth and influence are nothing but lazy enjoyment: they are mistaken-they are grave matters of business, often sharp stimulants of anxiety, and require from and necessarily impart to their possessors caution, shrewdness, dexterity, knowledge of mankind, and a practical acquaintance with the pecuniary and territorial interests of the country. When to these considerations it is added that all professional superiority and every other kind of personal eminence has a tendency to gravitate towards that house-witness the Wellingtons-the Hillsthe Howes-the Nelsons-the Eldons-the Lyndhursts-the Broughams-the Barings-we boldly assert that no assembly could, by any system we have heard or read of, be collected which should contain so much practical information on the general interests of the kingdom, and so little temptation to misapply that information, as our House of hereditary legislators. But the duties and peculiar utility of the House of Lords are not confined to general legislation--we shall say nothing about it as the supreme court of justice, though we are confident we could show-in answer to cavils almost as hasty and short-sighted as those which attack its legislative powers-that it affords, by a concurrence of circumstances incident to its station and composition, the best supreme tribunal that has ever yet been suggested for this country. But we have not time to pursue this branch of the subject: we mention it that we may not be supposed to have forgotten it. But there is another quasi judicial character in which the House of Lords, because they are hereditary legislators, confer the most extensive and important advantages on the country: we mean in guarding private interests from being unjustlyand public interests from being corruptly, dealt with by legisJative acts. The system of estate bills, road bills, inclosure bills, and other private bills, has grown of late years into great import ance; ance; and if it were not for the vigilant superintendence of the House of Lords, this system, so advantageous, under good control, to the development of modern prosperity, would have become an enormous and intolerable grievance. It is an additional example of the happy way that our ancient institutions assimilate themselves to new circumstances and connect the wisdom of antiquity with the vigour of improvement, that this modern system of legislation on local and private matters should have found in the most ancient of all our constituted authorities at once the most judicious encouragement, and the most effectual control. We will say nothing of the mode in which the committees of the elective House are said to do private business. To the scandalous stories which we hear now-a-days in the purlieus of the House of Commons on this subject we give little credit. It is impossible that anything so monstrous as some of these stories are can be true; but there can be no doubt-because it is the subject of frequent complaint in the House itself that there is a great deal of haste and irregularity in the mode of transacting private business, and that individual members are not always so entirely unprejudiced and disinterested in the matters on which they may be called upon to decide as might be desired. Of the integrity of the House of Lords, no such scandalous rumours have ever been circulated. Of culpable haste or corrupt bias on their part no complaint has ever been made; on the contrary, every man who is either the mover or the subject of any private legislation looks up to the House of Lords as his counsel and guardian. A recent writer who complains of the hurry and injustice of modern legislation, shows that, without the vigilance of the House of Lords, it would be intolerable The House of Lords has been careful to throw protection around private rights and private property, so far as they may be affected by private bills, or by public bills, when for certain specified objects.' * Why is the House of Lords thus honoured in a peculiar and superior degree by the confidence of the country? Because they are hereditary legislators. Just as some of the abuses alleged against committees of the House of Commons are chargeable, not so much on the misconduct of individuals, as on their position and duties as representatives. Putting aside all imputation or suspicion of what might be called corrupt motives, it is undeniable, nay, perhaps it may be thought laudable, that in discussing the interests of contending parties a representative can hardly avoid some kind of bias in favour of his own constituents: in some cases he may even think himself entitled to look on his constituents as his clients, and of his constituents it is only natural that his bias should *West, On the Present Mode of Legislation, p. 12. be be somewhat stronger for his friends than for his enemies. More- Thus, then, not only is the House of Lords venerable by its We have thus offered in a very hasty and imperfect form a few We shall conclude with recalling to our readers' serious reflection II. The House of Lords was first reformed, and then abolished. IV. Cromwell burst into the House of Commons, and ordered INDEX TO THE FIFTY-SIXTH VOLUME OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. Back, Captain, his Journal of the Arctic dennes, 82-Annette et le Criminel, Barrow, John, jun., Esq., his Tour Bridgewater Treatise, the Rev. Dr. liam Stewart Rose, 402-Sonnet on, Brutus, character of, 365. Buckland, Rev. William, D.D., his Geo- C. Cæsar and the Duke of Wellington, pa- Canova, saying of, during his visit to Chaucer, Geoffrey, his deposition in the Scrope and Grosvenor cause, 28. 142. Cheynel, Dr. Francis, some account of China, a General Description of the |