all else as it is. It will not destroy the House of
Peers and leave the rich young peers, with their wealth and their
titles, to sit in the Commons. It would probably sweep all titles
before it--at least all legal titles--and somehow or other it would
break up the curious system by which the estates of great families all
go to the eldest son. That system is a very artificial one; you may
make a fine argument for it, but you cannot make a loud argument, an
argument which would reach and rule the multitude. The thing looks like
injustice, and in a time of popular passion it would not stand. Much
short of the compulsory equal division of the Code Napoleon, stringent
clauses might be provided to obstruct and prevent these great
aggregations of property. Few things certainly are less likely than a
violent tempest like this to destroy large and hereditary estates. But
then, too, few things are less likely than an outbreak to destroy the
House of Lords--my point is, that a catastrophe which levels one will
not spare the other.

I conceive, therefore, that the great power of the House of Lords
should be exercised very timidly and very cautiously. For the sake of
keeping the headship of the plutocracy, and through that of the nation,
they should not offend the plutocracy; the points upon which they have
to yield are mostly very minor ones, and they should yield many great
points rather than risk the bottom of their power. They should give
large donations out of income, if by so doing they keep, as they would
keep, their capital intact. The Duke of Wellington guided the House of
Lords in this manner for years, and nothing could prosper better for
them or for the country, and the Lords have only to go back to the good
path in which he directed them.

The events of 1870 caused much discussion upon life peerages, and we
have gained this great step, that whereas the former leader of the Tory
party in the Lords--Lord Lyndhurst--defeated the last proposal to make
life peers, Lord Derby, when leader of that party, desired to create
them. As I have given in this book what seemed to me good reasons for
making them, I need not repeat those reasons here; I need only say how
the notion stands in my judgment now.

I cannot look on life peerages in the way in which some of their
strongest advocates regard them; I cannot think of them as a mode in
which a permanent opposition or a contrast between the Houses of Lords
and Commons is to be re