Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/488

The 1719. 466 decisions and resolutions. This was the change in the theory of peerage which followed on the union of England and Scotland in 1 707. By the treaty of union the peerage peers of o f Scotland was to be represented by sixteen of its number )tlan(J - chosen for each parliament by the Scottish peers them selves. This amounted, as has been already set forth, to the creation of a class of men who are peers as concerns their personal privileges, but who are lords of parliament only in posse and not in esse. The Scottish peers were made incapable of sitting in the House of Commons, and the Scottish peerage was doomed to gradual extinction, as no new peers of Scotland were to be created. And further, by a resolution of the lords in 1711, it was held during the greater part of the last century that a patent of peerage of the United Kingdom granted to a Scottish peer did not give him a seat in parliament. Presently an attempt at legislation with regard to the peerage was made which, if carried, would have altogether changed its character. Peerage This was the Peerage Bill of 1719. That bill was not Bill of carried, but its proposals are worth notice, not only because they would, if they had become law, have altogether changed the nature of the peerage as a political institution, but also because they illustrate the way in which, like everything else in English constitutional history, the peer age and everything belonging to it had grown up gradually by force of precedent. The right of the crown to create peers at pleasure, and to entail their peerages on any line of succession that it thought good, had never been disputed, but neither had it ever been the subject of any legislative enactment. The proposed bill, in limiting both powers, would have given them their first being by formal legisla tion. The proposal was that the peerage of the United Kingdom should, after a creation of six peers, be confined to its existing number, with an exception in favour of members of the royal family. For the future, with that exception, no peerage could be created, except when one had become extinct. Instead of the sixteen elective peers of Scotland, the king was to bestow hereditary seats on twenty-five members of the Scottish peerage, and the number was to be kept up by a new promotion whenever any of the twenty-five peerages became extinct. It Avas forcibly remarked at the time that this would place the re mainder of the Scottish peerage in a condition politically inferior to that of all other British subjects, as they would have been incapable both of sitting in either house of parlia ment and of choosing those who should sit in either. But the general effect of the bill on the constitution of the country would have been far more important. The crown would have lost one of its chief powers, and the relations between the peers and the rest of the nation would have been altogether changed. They would not have come any nearer to the strict notion of a nobility, for it was not pro posed to confer direct privilege on any but the peers them selves. But the bill would have placed both the peers and their families in a wholly new position. They would have become a body into which no one could be raised, except in the occasional case of a peerage becoming extinct. It would have been impossible to move a statesman from the Commons to the Lords at any moment when it might be for the public good that he should be moved. Even the lord chancellor, the speaker of the House of Lords, could not have received a peerage unless one chanced to be extinct at the needful time. It is plain that the peers, if they did not become a nobility, would have become an oli garchy, a close body, cut off both from the crown and from the mass of the people in a way in which they had never been cut off before. The next change in the peerage was that which followed the union with Ireland in 1800. The terms of that union, as regarded the peerage, differed a good deal from those of the union with Scotland. The twenty-eight representative Thi peers of Ireland are chosen for life, and the other Irish P peers are capable of sitting in the House of Commons for Ire constituencies in Great Britain ; only by so doing they lose the privileges of peerage (other than mere titles and pre cedence) so long as they are members of that body. The Irish peerage is not doomed to extinction as well as the Scottish ; one Irish peerage may always be created when ever three have become extinct, and the Irish peerage is always to be kept up to the number of one hundred, not counting those who hold peerages of the United Kingdom. The changes with regard to the lords spiritual intro- Iris duced by the union with Ireland, by the disestablishment En of the Irish Church, and by the increase in the number * of English bishoprics have affected the character of the House of Lords, but not that of the hereditary temporal peerage. By the Act of Union one Irish archbishop and four bishops afterwards only three were entitled to seats in rotation, changing, not from parliament to parliament, but from session to session. This arrangement was probably practically more convenient ; but it seems contrary to the nature of a summons, which must surely be a summons for the whole life of a parliament. Each Irish bishop was thus an in posse lord of parliament, like the Scottish and Irish temporal peers, only with the certainty of a seat some time, if he lived long enough. By the Act of Disestablishment in 1869 the Irish bishops lost their seats altogether. And by two Acts of the present reign the English prelates, except the holders of the two archiepiscopal sees and those of London, Durham, and Winchester, have their position completely changed. The number of bishops has been in creased, but not the number of spiritual lords. The bishop therefore who holds any see but one of those five waits for his summons to parliament till he reaches it by seniority. Till then he too is a lord of parliament in posse. In our own clay too we come, in 1856, to the case of Lif the Wensleydale peerage, which has been already referred p to (see May, Constitutional History, i. 291-298). Sir James Parke was by letters -patent created a peer for lifecai only, and a summons to parliament was issued to him accord- L ingly. This was a return to the ancient practice of the 14th w< and 15th centuries ; but the power does not appear to have been exercised in later times except in the case of peeresses (see Nicolas, Historic Peerage, xlvi. ; May, i. 292). One hardly knows what to make of such creations as those of Lord Hay in 1606 and Lord Reede in 1644, the accounts of which in the Historic Peerage (xlvi. 243, 394) seem some what contradictory. But, if the creation of Lord Hay was a real creation of a peer for life, but without the right to a seat in parliament, it was so defined by a clause in the patent itself, which would seem to imply that, without such a clause, the creation would have given a right to a seat in parliament. The right of the crown to create life-peers, though not exercised, was constantly asserted by the best lawyers, and it is admitted even in the Lords 1 Report (ii. 37; see May, i. 294). Yet in 1856 the House of Lord.-, took upon itself, in defiance of the whole history of their order, to refuse admission to a baron lawfully created, law fully summoned, merely because the crown had not bound itself, in the 19th century any more than in the 13th or 1 4th, to summon the representatives of the baron so created for ever and ever. This decision seems to be now accepted as law; yet it is hard to see how, except when they have been taken away by Act of Parliament, any powers which were exercised by Edward I. can be refused to Queen Victoria. In short, the rights of the crown, the reason and expediency of the case, were all sacrificed to the supersti tion about "ennobling of blood." And Sir T. E. May, re cording the resolution with admiration (i. 296), tells us that " by constitutional usage, having the force of law, the House