Commons come to me.' Well may the historian call this conversation one of the most curious in English history. The Duke had precedent in his favour, for early in the preceding reign, Craggs had led the House of Commons (if it could be called leading) as the docile agent of Sunderland, and was called Sunderland's man. The settled price for a vote in approval of the peace in 1763 was 2007., and it is stated on good authority that not less than 20,000l. was paid to members on a single morning for their votes. The latest of these pecuniary bargains (those which come nearest to our time) were no longer conducted by the leader. They fell within the province of the patronage Secretary of the Treasury or whip;' and although the boldest would now hardly risk the offer of a bank-note, it would be a hypocritical affectation of purity to assert that modern legislators are no longer open to a bribe.' The Secretary of the Treasury in Lord Grey's administration used to boast that he had promised between 250 and 300 peerages, or promotions in the peerage, besides baronetcies, to ensure the passing of the Reform Bill; and it is related to the credit of a successor, that, on a discontented supporter objecting to the ministerial policy in his hearing, he took him aside and bluntly asked, What do you want?' Next to Lord Castlereagh, the person who was most instrumental in bringing undue influence to bear upon the last Irish Parliament, was the Under-Secretary and whip, Cooke; who was thus apostrophised by Flood as he crossed the House on one of his secret missions whilst the orator was on his legs : 'What is it that I see? Shall the temple of Freedom be still haunted by the foul fiend of bribery and corruption? 1 The late Charles Buller used to say that the votes of O'Connell's original 'tail' might have been had for ten pounds a vote, or two hundred pounds the session, provided the money was laid before them in gold. I see personified before me an incarnation of that evil principle which lives by the destruction of public virtue. On Fox's refusal to submit to the Duke of Newcastle's terms in 1754, his Grace conferred the leadership on Sir Thomas Robinson, the Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, whose qualifications may be guessed from the remark of Pitt on hearing of the nomination: 'Sir Thomas Robinson lead us! The Duke might as well send his jack-boot to lead us.' Nothing more strongly illustrates the altered position and character of the House than the immeasurably enhanced importance of the leadership. The conversation at The Grove' (Lord Clarendon's) happening to turn on a probable change of Ministry, Don't trouble yourself about the Prime Minister,' exclaimed the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis; you may always find one amongst the Peers: tell me who is to lead the House of Commons.' Tell us who is to lead on either side in the contingency of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli being superseded or displaced? There arose no such difficulty in 1754. Thanks to the ducal distribution of the secret-service money and the patronage, the equivalent to the jackboot got smoothly through a session, and was prepared to try another, when a European war compelled the avowal of his helplessness. A fresh negotiation was opened with Fox, and ended in the junction made famous by the comparison to the junction of the Rhone and the Saone. At Lyons,' said Pitt, I was taken to see the place where the two rivers meet: the one gentle, feeble, languid and, though languid, yet of no depth; the other a boisterous and impetuous torrent; but different as they are, they meet at last.' From the accession of the House of Hanover till within living memory, the two Houses hardly ever differed about public matters, because they had the same objects in view and were subject to the same influences. The course taken by the House of Lords in 1783, when they threw out the India Bill, can hardly be considered an exception, for this was done by the express desire of the King; and the House of Commons which had passed the Bill was immediately dissolved and replaced by one that agreed with his Majesty. But these august assemblies sometimes quarrelled about minor matters, and on one occasion they proceeded to such extremities in the interchange of rude and coarse language, as to make it a subject of general congratulation that their proceedings were then conducted with closed doors. The scene on December 10, 1770, when the Commons were turned out of the House of Lords with the rest of the 'strangers,' was thus described by Colonel Barré : : 'I also was a witness of the scene; and never shall I forget it. I was listening to a noble duke, who was speaking upon the important subject of Gibraltar and Minorca. I am not aware that he was in possession of any secret. If he was, he certainly did not disclose it. Suddenly the whole. scene became changed. I could not suppose that a single peer remained in the House. It seemed as if the mob had broke in and they certainly acted in a very extraordinary manner. One of the heads of this mob-for there were two-was a Scotchman. I heard him call out several times, "Clear the Hoose! Clear the Hoose!" The face of the other was hardly human; for he had contrived to put on a nose of an enormous size, that disfigured him completely, and his eyes started out of his head in so frightful a way, that he seemed to be undergoing the operation of being strangled. It was altogether the most violent mob I ever beheld. You would imagine that these leaders would have continued so throughout. But no! at the latter end of the day, these two men took their places as door-keepers, and executed the office with as much exactness, as if it had been a well-regulated assembly.' 'Personal allusions, though occasionally met with in books, are not frequent in the debates of this House. In the "Spec tator" we have an account of a club, to which the length of a man's nose gave him a claim to admittance; and a whole volume of "Tristram Shandy" is devoted to the same distorted feature. The noses of the two lords alluded to certainly happen to be remarkably prominent.' The two lords were the Earls of Marchmont and Denbigh. The Commons immediately retaliated; and it so happened that the only peers below the bar on this first resort to reprisals, were those who had vainly resisted the exclusion of the Commons from the Upper House. Two years afterwards, in 1772, Burke complained to the House that he had been kept three hours waiting at the door of the Lords with a Bill sent up from the Commons. The Commons were so indignant that, the next time a Bill was brought down from the Lords, it was rejected by a unanimous vote. The Speaker then tossed it across the table on the floor, and a number of members rushed forward and kicked it out of the House. The constitutional mode of dealing with a refractory House of Commons is by dissolution. When the House of Lords asserts its independence, the only mode of compelling its co-operation with the other branches of the Legislature is by the creation of new peers; as in 1712, when Oxford and Bolingbroke gazetted twelve in one day. On their taking their seats, Wharton inquired if they were to vote like a jury by their foreman; and Bolingbroke, on hearing that the question had been carried by a majority of one, exclaimed: If those twelve had not been enough, we would have given them another dozen.' This is the solitary instance of a creation in mass to carry a measure: the purpose has been commonly effected by a threat, which has gradually become nugatory and impracticable; the Conservative majority in the Upper House being now roughly estimated at more than seventy. The only available mode, in the contingency of a decided split between the two Houses, would be an appeal to the country by a dissolution upon an implied understanding that the Lords would be guided by the result. As regards votes of censure, a vote by the Upper House might be neutralised by the vote of the Lower. This was done in the Pacifico affair; and might be done again; as plainly intimated by the Duke of Argyll and the Lord Chancellor (Lord Hatherley) in the debate on the appointment of Sir Robert Collier. This (said the Lord Chancellor) is as clearly a party manoeuvre as ever came before Parliament.' 'But, my lords, I tell you plainly, I will hold my ground. I will not quail till my profession tell me I ought, or, at all events, till the House of Commons shall censure me for what I have done.' More than one embarrassing collision has been averted by the graceful and judicious leadership of Lord Granville. The true cause of the declining authority of the hereditary assembly is the increasing importance and authority of the Commons. It cannot be attributed to any falling off in personal qualifications, in dignity, patriotism, or ability. When (says Lord Russell) a great question arises which requires a display of more than ordinary knowledge of history, more accurate learning, more constitutional lore, and more practical wisdom than is to be found in the usual debates of Parliament, I know not where "the general debate, The popular harangue, the tart reply, are to be found in greater perfection than among the prelates on the episcopal bench, the peers of three centuries of nobility, and the recent occupants of the woolsack.' It may be doubted whether the peers of three cen |