COLONIAL STATISTICS. RETURN from each COLONY or FOREIGN POSSESSION of the BRITISH CROWN; stating the Number of the POPULATION, distinguishing White from Coloured, and Free from Slaves; also, the Value of ExPORTS and IMPORTS into each of those Colonies, for each of the past Three Years. N.B.-Those with a affixed have a Legislative Assembly; those without are governed by the Orders of the King in Council. HOUSE OF LORDS. "There must be a period and an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of De Vere? For where is Bohun? Where's Mortimer? Nay, which is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet?"-Speech of Lord Chief Justice Crewe, 1662. We have taken some pains to view the House of Lords under its various aspects. It presents itself in the way of the Nation's wish; and it is natural that the Nation should seek to understand the character of the obstacle which impedes its progress. We have looked into the history of the Peerage, and what is the result? Who are they that, generally speaking, have been made peers-and why? Is a peerage the reward of virtue, of talent, of disinterestedness, of grand patriotic efforts, of a long course of noble doings? No one who has looked with any care to the family annals of the British peers will venture to say that, even in the selection of a virtuous man for a peer, his virtue has been the cause of his ennoblement; or if a man of talent, that he has been chosen because his talent has been patriotically directed. No-the peerage has been one of the means employed for several ages to carry on the great JOB of government. If a patriot was troublesome, he was bought off by a peerage; if a powerful individual was importunate, he was quieted by a peerage; if votes were in demand, the possessor or manager was paid by a peerage; if a minister's place was desired, he vacated it for a peerage. The lawyer, who proved the ablest instrument of government, was rewarded by a peerage. In short, the honour of the peerage has mostly been the Treasury of Corruption. If the House of Lords, by the natural progression of things, is hastening to an euthanasia because of its want of correspondence and sympathy with public opinion, what is so well calculated to postpone that inevitable hour, as the adoption of that for the want of which they must wither and decay? A large and copious addition of popular peers would revivify the antique and mouldering mass, and cause it to rise up with much of the ardour and beauty of a veritable rejuvenescence. Unless this plan be acceded to, the days of the peerage, as at present constituted, are numbered; and yet it is against this very measure that the greatest number of prejudices are arrayed. The peers are jealous of NEW MEN. What are they themselves? Take even the oldest of them, they are but of a few centuries; and the majority are the merest novi homines-mushrooms, whom a shower of wealth, or an accidental fall of borough rottenness, has caused to spring from the earth within the last few years. The peerage of England is the most modern in Europe: it is a contemptible upstart, compared with that either of Germany or of France. Where are the true ancestors of Englishmen, the men of Saxon blood? where even the descendants of the butchers and bakers that came over with the Norman Conqueror ? Not all the lies of all the heralds can give us a creation six hundred years old; and such as go even two hundred years back are very thinly scattered indeed. Some of the most ancient blood of England is repre sented by men of private station, or by baronets, whose ancestors did not happen to receive the king's summons to parliament in former reigns, and whose descendants, if they were to receive it now, would carry into the House of Peers all that depends upon Norman blood, or whatever else it is they are so proud of." But the day is gone past when a legislator is to be chosen on such grounds. 66 It would be a curious phenomenon, if the obstacle which the peers have thrown in the way of the people's measure, should lead to an immediate change in their own body. It was a reform in the Commons that was demanded; we may come to see that a virtual reform in the House of Lords is a necessary preliminary. The House of Commons has confessed its corruption: are the Lords immaculate? They debate as if their House stood upon the foundations of the earth, and as if angels guarded its keystone. It would seem they deemed it the very sun of our political constellation: they are mistaken-it is but a lamp, and may want trimming-may be worn out, and renewed-may have grown useless, and be removed: a more cynical illustrator of its nature might even term it a will-o'-the-wisp, which, when the bog of corruption in the other House comes to be dried up by Reform, may die out of itself. What then are our conclusions? They are these I. The history of the origin and progress of the House of Peers indicates that it was calculated for another order of things; and that it is only by its having been used as an instrument in the hands of ministers and their masters, that it has been made tolerable, under the increased wealth and intelligence of the people. II. The House of Peers has maintained its existence by usurping an influence over the representation of the people, which it has turned to its sole advantage. III. The history of the peerage is a series of JOBS. It is a coinage; and represents place, pension, commission, civil employment, go. vernment contract--in one word, public money. The actual peerage is chiefly an efflorescence of taxation. IV. Whenever the minister has wanted votes, he has created peers; whenever he has wished to get quit of votes, he has created peers. A peerage is the grave of the patriot--the throne of the placeman. V. The antiquity of the families of the existing peerage is a farce; the Herald's College and the Alienation Office are the managers of this noble melodrama. When a line becomes extinct, by some trick of marriage, or by some interpretation of a patent, a trap-door is struck, and out comes a representative of the Mortimers or the Mowbrays. To such an extent is this carried, that the same family name is changed almost every other year in the peerage; and some peers do not know their own name. For instance, lord Oriel wished to vote against the Reform Bill; his real name is Foster-he signed his proxy Ferrard, he ought to have written something else. The proxy was useless-there was one vote less against the people. VI. The most numerous and the most active of the existing peers are the creations of the long reign of George the Third: they may be considered as a body of unconscious conspirators, bound together by the minister, for the secret purpose of swelling the national debt. With the exception of the military and naval chiefs, they are titled contractors for a loan, who have received their per centage in peerage. VII. When the personal characteristics of the descendants of this motley society of born legislators are looked to-this assemblage of "accidents of an accident,”—we are not led to believe that station and fortune have redeemed them from the stain of their original creation, but that, on the contrary, it would be difficult to select from any class the same number of men less competent to create laws or propagate legislation. If there be any truth in these conclusions-and we have come to them not by rhetoric, but rather by arithmetic-can any thing be more absurd, more drivelling, than the affected hesitation which has been shown in creating at once a due number of King and People's Peers,— a class which, when the object of their ennoblement is considered, and the character of the parties who instal them in their elevated niche, may be assuredly maintained as the most honourable and distinguished division of the House to which they will belong? We have proved, in every possible way, that the peers as a body may derive honour from such a creation, but can lose none. Is not all the world convinced, that this is a course which may save the House, not only from contempt, but destruction; and that though the people may by it gain the immediate passing of "the Bill," the Lords will gain much more-they will snatch their political existence out of the flames of discord and civil war.-Abridged from the Spectator newspaper. BOROUGH LORDS AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVES. Should there be found in some not distant year [Oh, how I wish to be no PROPHET here!] Amongst our British Lords should there be found Who look on Freedom with an evil eye, In whom the springs of loyalty are dry, Who wish to soar on wild Ambition's wings, Who hate the Commons, and who love not Kings- May HEAVEN, in mercy to our grievous crimes, And to their rage this wretched land condemn.-CHURCHILL. The Names printed with R, were in favour of the Bill in 1831; those with A Names of Patrons. against it. Places. Members returned. |