The Press.
London, England, 1856-01-19 00:00:00

LIFE PEERAGES.

WE must beg at the outset of this article to
disclaim any personal allusion whatsoever to
Lord WENSLEYDALE. That Sir JAMES PARKE
has well earned the honour which has been
awarded him we most gladly admit, while we
view with equal pleasure the accession of legal
knowledge thereby accruing to the House of
Lords. But the question which has been
raised by the Learned Judge's elevation must
be decided upon broader grounds than either
personal merits or legal exigencies.
It is of comparatively little consequence to
investigate the number of precedents which
exist for the creation of life peerages. The
Queen has undoubtedly the power and the
right to create as many as she chooses.
Nevertheless, a reference to cases of the same
description does not tell very well for the ad-
vocates of the revival. They are few in num-
ber and bad in character. There are only
three altogether, of whom two were women, one
of them the mistress, and the other the ille-
gitimate child, of an ignorant foreigner. The
system seems to us to be objectionable on
three distinct grounds—constitutional, poli-
tical, and social.

'The main guarantees for the integrity
of the House of Peers are to be found
in their great wealth and their hereditary
nobility. A tainted character will not only
disgrace the past, but the future also ; and
many a man who would not hesitate to degrade
his own name would hesitate at degrading his
eon's. Unqualified corruption is as rare,perhaps,
as unqualified virtue. But that middle state of
mind in which a man contrives to reconcile
his conscience to his interest, without doing
anything which the world could pronounce
villainous, is the state of the majority.
We would not be understood to insinuate

SATURDAY,

that no poor man is incorruptible; but
we appeal to the common sense of
our readers, and those universal laws of
human nature which it is foolish to ignore,
and we confidently ask how far it is advisable
to foist upon a class which already possesses
two such powerful incentives to the mainte-
nance of patriotism, as ample revenue and
hereditary rank, an entirely new order of
men who will possess neither. What the bar-
rister now is to the judge—what the judge
holding office during the pleasure of the Crown
was to the judge who held it for life—that is a
peerage like Wensleydale to a peerage like
Derby or Shrewsbury. One form of inference,
to which all these observations converge, is
simply this : that by the creation of life peels
ages a dangerous and double-edged instrument
is placed in the hands of a reckless Ministei—
dangerous, because such noblemen will always
be more or less pliable—double-edged, because
fewer scruples will exist about creating new
peers, should they not be pliable enough. On
the ground, also, of the feudalism of the
English aristocracy, we most decidedly
object to the present innovation. A
peer without an estate is just as great an
anomaly as a bishop without a diocese. He
would have privileges without duties. His
only dependants would be his groom and his
valet. In that softening intercourse between
landlord and tenant he would have no part.
We should have a set of Cockney lordlings
who would make the title contemptible from
their manner, and perhaps odious from their
vices. The great old theory of an earl or
baron as a leader of the people would be most
vital.y impugned.
We pass, by an easy transition, from the
constitutional to the political aspects of the
question before us. It would go tar to inter-
rupt that link between the titled and untitled
gentry, the existence of which is at present
one of the strongest bulwarks of the English
system. A broad gulf would be created between
peers and senators without estates and
commoners with them. We need do
no more than point out the serious charac-
ter of this danger. It is one which threatens
a national peculiarity which has long favor-
ably distinguished us from continental coati:
tries, and which has been the theme of admi-
ration to reflective foreigners for centuries.
Viewed in its social aspect, however, a life
peerage loses the dignity of being dangerous,
and becomes ridiculous. He whose family
would be too poor to support the title, would
also be too poor himself. Can anything be
conceived more pitiful than my Lord Ready-
pen, the eminent author, taking his chop at
a sixpenny tavern, while an unshorn bailiff
scowls savagely from the opposite box at the
victim who has escaped his clutches? Fancy
a community of peers, with whitey-brown
linen, and hair down to the small of their
backs, jabbering science, and congratulating
one another on having substituted ermine for
whitewash? Joking apart, what literary
man of real genius but would scorn to
change the name he has made so noble for a
title the t could not ennoble him—the highest
place in literature for the lowest place in the
peerage—the laurels of wit and poetry for
a dubious rank, and a tawdry coronet?
As to the necessity of larger resources for
recruiting the legal element in the House of
Lords, we feel quite confident that this could
be managed without the creation of a new
order of Peers. At all events, we would
rather see things go on as they are, than a
pernicious precedent established for intro-
ducing a disturbing element into the working
of the Constitution, for impairing the political
efficacy of the aristocratic order, and for lower-
ing the character of science and literature, by
holding out the allurements of unsuitable
rewards.

THE Comm' OF NAPLES has been seized with one
of its periodical fits of modesty. The story of tie
danseuses and the green tights is fresh in the minds.
of most readers, "it n'y a (fun pas," &c.; and so, rci
versing the apothegm, the Court of Naples darts at
once from the flesh to the marble, and covers up in
canvas breeches Europa, Proserpine, and the Si,
bines—the three groups so well remembered in the
gardens of the Villa Reale. After resting for near a
century in these gardens, these "improper " grout of
are to be placed under lock and key, out of the sigh
of Bombe's sensitive police.

THE NEW RUSSIAN FRONTIER.

As attention is directed to the new frontier for Russia on the site of the Danubian Principalities, proposed
by Austria in the Conditions of Peace, we give a sketch above to indicate the line which will be drawn.
The existing frontier of Russia is limited by the Pruth, while Russia exercises a right of Protectorate over
Moldavia and Wallachia. The proposals of Austria abolish this Protectorate, and submit a complete
rectification of the frontier.

This proposed frontier is to commence at the fortress of Chotym, on the Dniester, and follow a line of
mountains running south-east to Lake Sisak. The territory lying between the range of mountains on the
east, and the Pruth on the west, bounded on one point by Chotym, and on the other by Lake Sleek, is to be
restored to the Principalities and placed under the sovereignty of the Porte.

By this range of mountains Bessarabia is divided into Eastern and Western portions. The object of
Austria and the Allies is, it is said, to secure the Principalities from easy invasion, by confining Russia
behind this range to the Eastern portion of Bessarabia, while the freedom of the mouths of the Danube is
assured at the same time.
As this mountain range is not marked on any map to which we have access, we imagine it cannot be o
a very bold character. The territory to be ceded is stated to be in itself of no great value. The words of
the Proposition are : .

In exchange for the strong places and territories occupied by the allied armies, Russia consents to a rectiqcation
of her frontier with Turkey in Europe. Itwould commence in the vicinity of Chotym, follow the line of the mountains
which extend in a south-easterly direction and terminate at Lake Sasik. The line (trace) shall he definitively
regulated by the general treaty; and the ceded territory would return to the Principalities, and to the suzerainty of
the Porte.

To secure the navigation of the Danube from Russian control it would only have been necessary to
draw a line from the junction of the Pruth with the Danube at Reny, (say) to near Lake Sisak, and it is
supposed that some proposal of this kind was contained in the Russian terms sent by Count Stackelberg.
It became evident, however, when it was known that Russia had accepted the other Propositions really
essential to the settlement of the Eastern Question, that the war could never be continued for so insigni-
ficant an object as a strip of territory on the eastern side of the Pruth. By the unconditional acceptance by
Russia of the Propositions, the difficulty is solved, and both shores of the Pruth will now belong to the
Danubian State which is forthwith to be constituted.

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