The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-03 00:00:00

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Lord De Grey and Ripon, in returning thanks for the
toast of " The House of Lords," at a banquet recently
given at Ripon by the mayor of that city, observed that
much had recently been said about the reform of the
House of Lords. He was not surprised that it should
be so, because of the great democratic change which
was made last year in our Constitution. He did
not think the House of Lords exempt from that
course of improvement to which every institution must
necessarily, wisely, and rightly, from time to time
be subject. Various proposals bad been made upon this
matter, though at present they were somewhat vague in
form. One definite in itself had been anticipated by the
House of Lords. At the commencement of the present
session'an order was passed by which the practice of voting
by proxy was suspended. There was another suggestion
which had been made with regard to changes in the House of
Lords upon which he was very much inclined to express a
favourable opinion, and that related to the introduction of
life peerages. He believed that there were many men
whose presence in the House of Lords would be a great
advantage to that House, and a very great advantage to
the public— men on whom it would be very much better,
to whom, personally and individually it would be very
much more convenient, that a life peerage should be
granted. No doubt, if any such change should be made,
it might be necessary to consider whether it should be
made under restrictions at law, and, if so, what those
restrictions should be ; because he was not at all desirous
to see that character of independence which was given
to the House of Lords by its hereditary character impaired
by the introduction of any system which would assimilate
that House to the Senates or Upper Chambers of foreign
countries. But another change had been suggested in the
constituticn of the House of Lords—that instead of the
House being composed, as it is now, of peers of England
and of the United Kingdom, it should be composed of
men to be elected by the body of peers. Now he enter-
tained a strong belief that this would be most injudicious
and undesirable. The representative peers of Ireland
and Scotland were so elected, and what was the result ?
That they were almost exclusively composed of one party.
Now, he did not in the least care of which party they
might be composed, but he said that nothing could be
more fatal to the House of Lords than that by any pro-
cess of election they should have the peers of the House
of Lords returned by the dominant party—the party
which has the majority, and which would consequently
return a House composed exclusively of persons of their
own opinions. He should greatly prefer to see some
much greater change than that they should propose
to make it a House of that description. But
he did not think changes so sweeping as that
were required. He believed that if the House of Lords
had acted from time to time in the capacity of break or
guard, as doubtless it had, it had also always been found
that the House of Lords had the wisdom to know that
there are times when the security of the train is not ensured
by the application of the break, but when, on the contrary,
its security, its real safety, is endangered by such a course,
and that then the House of Lords, when it had clearly
seen in what way the tide of public opinion was setting,
had always had the good judgment to bow to the desire of
the nation.

Offenbach is at present at Vienna. A few nights
back he was present at the performance of one of his
pieces, when a player of the violoncello in the orchestra
was taken suddenly ill. The maestro seized the instru-
ment and replaced the musician. At the close of the
representation the manager came and gravely presented
him with a florin as the price of his labour. He took the
money gaily, in remembrance of his former occupation.
THE NEW CONSTITUENCIES OP LIVERPOOL AND
SOUTH-WEST LANCASIIIRE.—TiIe lists of persons qualified
to vote, both in the borough of Liverpool and in the new
county division of South-west Lancashire, where Mr.
Gladstone is one of the candidates, have just been made
up. In the county the number of voters placed on the
register is 21,221, of whom 10,221 are in the Liverpool
district. As, however, many of the names are on the list
in duplicate—as both owners and £l2 occupiers—it is
expected that when sifted the number will be reduced to
about 18,000. In the boroughs of Liverpool the number of
voters entitled to the franchise is 1,117 freemen, 37,999
householders, and 529 lodgers, making a total. ?I_P,§4s
against 21,851 on the register last par,