standpoint, has been that its veto was only used when a Liberal government
was in power. There is not even a pretence by the Upper House of revising
the measures sent from the Commons by a Conservative ministry; yet over and
over again, and especially in the last five years, Liberal measures have
been rejected, or "amended" against the will of the Commons, by the Lords
after the electors have returned the Liberals to power. The permanent and
overwhelming Conservative majority in the Lords acts on the assumption that
a Liberal ministry does not represent the will of the people, an assumption
at variance with the present theory of democratic government, and in
contradiction to the constitutional practice of the Crown. The great size
of the House of Lords makes the difficulty of dealing with this majority so
acute. In 1831 the creation of forty peerages would have been sufficient to
meet the Tory opposition to the Reform Bill; to-day it is said that about
four hundred are required to give the Liberals a working majority in the
Lords. The rapid making of peers began under George III., but from 1830 to
the present day Prime Minister after Prime Minister has added to the
membership of the House of Lords with generous hand. Satire, savage and
contemptuous, has been directed against the new peers by critics of various
opinions, but still the work of adding to the House of hereditary
legislators goes gaily on, and Liberal Prime Ministers have been as active
as their Tory opponents in adding to the permanent Conservative majority in
the Lords; for only a small minority of Liberal peers retain their
allegiance to the Liberal Party.

Thackeray gave us his view of the making of peers in the years when Lord
Melbourne and his Whig successors were steadily adding to the Upper House.
(Between 1835 and 1841 Melbourne made forty-four new peers, and
twenty-eight more were added by 1856.)

"A man becomes enormously rich, or he jobs successfully in the aid of a
Minister, or he wins a great battle, or executes a treaty, or is a clever
lawyer who makes a multitude of fees and ascends the bench; and the country
rewards him for ever with a gold coronet (with more or less balls or
leaves) and a title, and a rank as legislator. 'Your merits are so great,'
says the nation, 'that your children shall be allowed to reign over us, in
a manner. It does not in the least matter that your eldest son is a fool;
we think your services so remarkable that he sh