im just then? What will be the use of the monarch
whom the accidents of inheritance, such as we know them to be, must
upon an average bring us just then?

The answer to these questions is not satisfactory, if we take it from
the little experience we have had in this rare matter. There have been
but two cases at all approaching to a catastrophic creation of
peers--to a creation which would suddenly change the majority of the
Lords--in English history. One was in Queen Anne's time. The majority
of peers in Queen Anne's time were Whig, and by profuse and quick
creations Harley's Ministry changed it to a Tory majority. So great was
the popular effect, that in the next reign one of the most contested
Ministerial proposals was a proposal to take the power of indefinite
peer creation from the Crown, and to make the number of Lords fixed, as
that of the Commons is fixed. But the sovereign had little to do with
the matter. Queen Anne was one of the smallest people ever set in a
great place. Swift bitterly and justly said "she had not a store of
amity by her for more than one friend at a time," and just then her
affection was concentrated on a waiting-maid. Her waiting-maid told her
to make peers, and she made them. But of large thought and
comprehensive statesmanship she was as destitute as Mrs. Masham. She
supported a bad Ministry by the most extreme of measures, and she did
it on caprice. The case of William IV. is still more instructive. He
was a very conscientious king, but at the same time an exceedingly weak
king. His correspondence with Lord Grey on this subject fills more than
half a large volume, or rather his secretary's correspondence, for he
kept a very clever man to write what he thought, or at least what those
about him thought. It is a strange instance of high-placed weakness and
conscientious vacillation. After endless letters the king consents to
make a REASONABLE number of peers if required to pass the second
reading of the Reform Bill, but owing to desertion of the "Waverers"
from the Tories, the second reading is carried without it by nine, and
then the king refuses to make peers, or at least enough peers when a
vital amendment is carried by Lord Lyndhurst, which would have
destroyed, and was meant to destroy the Bill. In consequence, there was
a tremendous crisis and nearly a revolution. A more striking example of
well-meaning imbecility is scarcely to be found in history. No one who
reads it carefully will