to lower--the summit. As
the picturesqueness, the featureliness, of society diminishes,
aristocracy loses the single instrument of its peculiar power.

If we remember the great reverence which used to be paid to nobility as
such, we shall be surprised that the House of Lords as an assembly, has
always been inferior; that it was always just as now, not the first,
but the second of our assemblies. I am not, of course, now speaking of
the middle ages: I am not dealing with the embryo or the infant form of
our Constitution; I am only speaking of its adult form. Take the times
of Sir R. Walpole. He was Prime Minister because he managed the House
of Commons; he was turned out because he was beaten on an election
petition in that House; he ruled England because he ruled that House.
Yet the nobility were then the governing power in England. In many
districts the word of some lord was law. The "wicked Lord Lowther," as
he was called, left a name of terror in Westmoreland during the memory
of men now living. A great part of the borough members and a great part
of the county members were their nominees; an obedient, unquestioning
deference was paid them. As individuals the peers were the greatest
people; as a House the collected peers were but the second House.

Several causes contributed to create this anomaly, but the main cause
was a natural one. The House of Peers has never been a House where the
most important peers were most important. It could not be so. The
qualities which fit a man for marked eminence, in a deliberative
assembly, are not hereditary, and are not coupled with great estates.
In the nation, in the provinces, in his own province, a Duke of
Devonshire, or a Duke of Bedford, was a much greater man than Lord
Thurlow. They had great estates, many boroughs, innumerable retainers,
followings like a Court. Lord Thurlow had no boroughs, no retainers; he
lived on his salary. Till the House of Lords met, the dukes were not
only the greatest, but immeasurably the greatest. But as soon as the
House met, Lord Thurlow became the greatest. He could speak, and the
others could not speak. He could transact business in half an hour
which they could not have transacted in a day, or could not have
transacted at all. When some foolish peer, who disliked his domination,
sneered at his birth, he had words to meet the case: he said it was
better for any one to owe his place to his own exertions than to owe it
to descent, to being th