affecting each of them personally, could not be denied as affecting the proprietors of land in general. I am aware of the difficulty, but I don’t despair of carrying the Bill through. You must be the best judge of the course which you ought to take, and of the course most likely to conciliate the confidence of the House of Lords. My opinion is, that you should advise the House to vote that which would tend most to public order, and would be most beneficial to the immediate interests of the country.”
This is the mode in which the House of Lords came to be what it now is, a chamber with (in most cases) a veto of delay with (in most cases) a power of revision, but with no other rights or powers. The question we have to answer is, “The House of Lords being such, what is the use of the Lords?”
The common notion evidently fails, that it is a bulwark against imminent revolution. As the Duke’s letter in every line evinces, the wisest members, the guiding members of the House, know that the House must yield to the people if the people is determined. The two cases—that of the Reform Act and the Corn Laws—were decisive cases. The great majority of the Lords thought Reform revolution, Free-trade confiscation, and the two together ruin. If they could ever have been trusted to resist the people, they would then have resisted it. But in truth it is idle to expect a second chamber—a chamber of notables—ever to resist a popular chamber, a nation’s chamber, when that chamber is vehement and the nation vehement too. There is no strength in it for that purpose. Every class chamber,
