he election takes place at Holyrood Palace in the city of
Edinburgh.[141] The act of 1707 made no provision for the creation of
Scottish peers, with the consequence that, through the extinction of
noble families and the occasional conferring of a peerage of the
United Kingdom upon a Scottish peer, the total number of Scottish
peerages has been reduced from 165 to 33.[142] The tenure of a
Scottish representative peer at Westminster expires with the
termination of a parliament. A fourth group of members is the Irish.
By the Act of Union of 1800 it was provided that not all of the peers
of Ireland should be accorded seats in the House of Lords, but only
twenty-eight of them, to be elected for life by the whole number of
Irish peers. The number of Irish peerages was put in the course of
gradual reduction and it is now under the prescribed maximum of one
hundred.[143] Unlike the English and Scottish peers, Irish peers, if
not elected to the House of Lords, may stand for election to the House
of Commons, though they may not represent Irish constituencies.[144]
While members of the Commons, however, they may not be elected to the
Lords, nor may they participate in the choice of representative peers.

[Footnote 141: For a statement of the process of
election see Anson, Law and Custom of the
Constitution (4th ed.), I., 219-229.]

[Footnote 142: In 1909. Lowell, Government of
England, I., 395.]

[Footnote 143: The crown was authorized to create
one Irish peerage only for every three such
peerages that should become extinct. During the
thirty years preceding the conferring of an Irish
peerage upon Mr. Curzon, in 1898, the creation of
Irish peerages was entirely suspended.]

[Footnote 144: Lord Palmerston, for example, was an
Irish peer, but sat in the House of Commons.]

*104. The Lords of Appeal.*--A fifth group of members comprises the
Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who differ from other peers created by
the crown in that their seats are not hereditary. One of the functions
of the House of Lords is to serve as the highest national court of
appeal. It is but logical that there should be included within the
membership of the body a certain number of the most eminent jurists of
the real