Walter Bagehot

An aristocracy is in its nature better suited to such work; it is trained to the theatrical part of life; it is fit for that if it is fit for anything.

But, with this exception, an aristocracy is necessarily inferior in business to the classes nearer business; and it is not, therefore, a suitable class, if we had our choice of classes, out of which to frame a chamber for revising matters…

It is indeed a singular example how natural business is to the English race, that the House of Lords works as well as it does.

The great majority of the peers do none of their appointed work, and could do none of it; but a minority--a minority never so large and never so earnest as in this age--do it, and do it well.

Still no one, who examines the matter without prejudice, can say that the work is done perfectly.

In a country so rich in mind as England, far more intellectual power can be, and ought to be, applied to the revision of our laws.

And not only does the House of Lords do its work imperfectly, but often, at least, it does it timidly.

Being only a section of the nation, it is afraid of the nation.

Having been used for years and years, on the greatest matters to act contrary to its own judgment, it hardly knows when to act on that judgment.

The difficulty of reforming an old institution like the House of Lords is necessarily great; its possibility rests on continuous caste and ancient deference.

And if you begin to agitate about it, to bawl at meetings about it, that deference is gone, its particular charm lost, its reserved sanctity gone.

But, by an odd fatality, there was in the recesses of the Constitution an old prerogative which would have rendered agitation needless--which would have effected, without agitation, all that agitation could have effected.

Lord Palmerston was--now that he is dead, and his memory can be calmly viewed--as firm a friend to an aristocracy, as thorough an aristocrat, as any in England; yet he proposed to use that power.

At a great crisis, at the crisis of the Corn Laws, what he considered was not what other people were thinking of, the economical issue under discussion, the welfare of the country hanging in the balance, but the Queen's ease.

He thought the Crown so superior a part in the Constitution, that, even on vital occasions, he looked solely--or said he looked solely--to the momentary comfort of the present sovereign.

Lord Lyndhurst had many great qualities: he had a splendid intellect--as great a faculty of finding truth as any one in his generation; but he had no love of truth.

With this great faculty of finding truth, he was a believer in error--in what his own party now admit to be error--all his life through.

He was a great partisan, and he applied a capacity of argument, and a faculty of intellectual argument rarely equalled, to support the tenets of his party.

Not by means of his black-letter authorities, but by means of his recognised authority and his vivid impression, he induced the House of Lords to reject the proposition of the Government.

Thirty or forty such men, added judiciously and sparingly as years went on, would have given to the House of Lords the very element which, as a criticising chamber, it needs so much.

The most accomplished men in each department might then, without irrelevant considerations of family and of fortune, have been added to the Chamber of Review.

The very element which was wanted to the House of Lords was, as it were, by a constitutional providence, offered to the House of Lords, and they refused it.

By what species of effort that error can be repaired I cannot tell; but, unless it is repaired, the intellectual capacity can never be what it would have been, will never be what it ought to be, will never be sufficient for its work.

Some time or other the slack attendance of the House of Lords will destroy the House of Lords.

The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.