ite tribune of a stormy democracy, the chief spokesman
of a haughty aristocracy. He may do all that declamation and sophistry
can do to inflame the passions or mislead the judgment of a senate. But
it must not be in this room. He must go a hundred and fifty yards hence.
He must sit on a red bench, and not on a green one. He must say, "My
Lords," and not "Mr Speaker." He must say, "Content," and not "Aye."
And then he may, without at all shocking the noble lord, be the most
stirring politician in the kingdom.

But I am understating my case. I am greatly understating it. For, Sir,
this union of the judicial character and the political character, in
Members of the other House of Parliament, is not a merely accidental
union. Not only may judges be made peers; but all the peers are
necessarily judges. Surely when the noble lord told us that the union
of political functions and of judicial functions was the most hateful of
all things, he must have forgotten that, by the fundamental laws of the
realm, a political assembly is the supreme court of appeal, the court
which finally confirms or annuls the judgments of the courts, both of
common law and of equity, at Westminster, of the courts of Scotland, of
the courts of Ireland, of this very Master of the Rolls about whom we
are debating. Surely, if the noble lord's principle be a sound one, it
is not with the Master of the Rolls but with the House of Peers that we
ought to begin. For, beyond all dispute, it is more important that the
court above should be constituted on sound principles than that the
court below should be so constituted. If the Master of the Rolls goes
wrong, the House of Peers may correct his errors. But who is to correct
the errors of the House of Peers? All these considerations the noble
lord overlooks. He is quite willing that the peers shall sit in the
morning as judges, shall determine questions affecting the property, the
liberty, the character of the Queen's subjects, shall determine those
questions in the last resort, shall overrule the decisions of all the
other tribunals in the country; and that then, in the afternoon,
these same noble persons shall meet as politicians, and shall debate,
sometimes rather sharply, sometimes in a style which we dare not imitate
for fear that you, Sir, should call us to order, about the Canadian
Clergy Reserves, the Irish National Schools, the Disabilities of the
Jews, the Government of India. I do not blame the noble lord