power in the State, and to rival, if
not conquer, the House of Commons, where the standard of intelligence
is not much above the common English average. But in the present
English world such a House of Lords would soon lose all influence.
People would say, "it was too clever by half," and in an Englishman's
mouth that means a very severe censure. The English people would think
it grossly anomalous if their elected assembly of rich men were
thwarted by a nominated assembly of talkers and writers. Sensible men
of substantial means are what we wish to be ruled by, and a peerage of
genius would not compare with it in power.

It is true, too, that at present some of the cleverest peers are not so
ready as some others to agree with the Commons. But it is not unnatural
that persons of high rank and of great ability should be unwilling to
bend to persons of lower rank, and of certainly not greater ability. A
few of such peers (for they are very few) might say, "We had rather not
have our peerage if we are to buy it at the price of yielding". But a
life peer who had fought his way up to the peers, would never think so.
Young men who are born to rank may risk it, not middle-aged or old men
who have earned their rank. A moderate number of life peers would
almost always counsel moderation to the Lords, and would almost always
be right in counselling it.

Recent discussions have also brought into curious prominence another
part of the Constitution. I said in this book that it would very much
surprise people if they were only told how many things the Queen could
do without consulting Parliament, and it certainly has so proved, for
when the Queen abolished Purchase in the Army by an act of prerogative
(after the Lords had rejected the bill for doing so), there was a great
and general astonishment.

But this is nothing to what the Queen can by law do without consulting
Parliament. Not to mention other things, she could disband the army (by
law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men, but she is not
obliged to engage any men); she could dismiss all the officers, from
the General Commanding-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the
sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our naval
stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin
a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the
United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in
the Un