no means ascertained), it may be
doubted whether it was founded on any sufficient reason. It is not easy
to see why, when there is no limit to the augmentation of the number of
lay peers, it should be judged impolitic or unjust to make even so small
an addition to the number of spiritual peers. At the Restoration the
spiritual peers were, probably, more than a fifth of the entire House.
From the great number of subsequent creations of lay peers they were now
less than a sixteenth, so that there could be no ground for apprehending
that a slight re-enforcement of the Episcopal bench would disturb the
balance, or give the Church an undue preponderating weight in the
decisions of the House. The difficulty, however, such as it appeared to
the Duke then, has had such weight with subsequent administrations, that
a new principle has been established of creating bishoprics which shall
not at first confer seats in the Upper House till their holders become
entitled to them by seniority. As they are peers from the moment of
their consecration, it may be doubted whether this creation of peers,
without seats in Parliament, does not deserve the name of "an organic
change in the constitution," far more than the addition of one or two
ecclesiastical peers to the Episcopal bench; and also whether it has not
established a dangerous principle and precedent; the disconnection of
bishoprics from seats in Parliament, in even a single instance, seeming
to furnish an argument in favor of the exclusion of the whole order, a
measure which, if unjust and injurious to the Church, would be at least
equally injurious to Parliament itself, and to the whole state.

But all questions of this kind were presently lost sight of in the
excitement produced by the measure which more than any other has stamped
Sir Robert Peel's administration with a lasting character, the repeal of
the Corn-laws. Many statesmen, even of those who were most in favor of
free-trade in other articles of commerce, made an exception in the case
of corn, partly from a feeling of the necessity of encouraging
agriculture, and partly from a conviction of the danger of in any way
contributing to create or increase a dependence on foreign countries for
the food of the people. Both Whigs and Tories were generally thus agreed
on the necessity of maintaining the principle of protection; the dispute
between the two parties being whether it were best achieved by a fixed
duty on imported corn, o