Very curious indeed was the result.  It is useless to consider the preliminaries, the pronouncements, the meetings, the campaign which raged for a fortnight in the Press both by letter and leading article.  It is even useless to try and discover who, if anybody, was in favor of the Bill which was the original bone of contention.  Its merits and defects were hardly debated.  On that fateful 10th of August the House of Lords split into three groups on quite a different point.  The King’s Government had seized on the King’s Prerogative and uttered threats.  Should they or should they not be constrained to make good their threats, and use it?

The first group said:  “Yes.  They have betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position.  Let their crime be brought home to them and to the world.  All is lost for us except honor.  Shall we lose that also?  To the last gasp we will insist on our amendments.”

The second group said:  “No.  They have indeed betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position, but why add to this disaster the destruction of what remains to safeguard the Empire?  We protest and withdraw, washing our hands of the whole business for the moment.  But our time will come.”

The third group said:  “No.  We do not desire the King’s Prerogative to be used.  We will prevent any need for its exercise.  The Bill shall go through without it.”

And, the second group abstaining, by seventeen votes the last prevailed against the first.  But whether ever before a victory was won by so divided a host, or ever a measure carried by men who so profoundly disapproved of it, let those judge who read the scathing Protest, inscribed in due form in the journals of the House of Lords by one who went into that lobby, Lord Rosebery, the only living Peer who has been Prime Minister of England.

It is unnecessary to print here more than the tenth and last paragraph of this tremendous indictment.  It runs—­“Because the whole transaction tends to bring discredit on our country and its institutions.”

How under these extraordinary circumstances did the Peerage take sides, old blood and new blood, the governing families and the so-called “backwoodsmen,” they who were carving their own names, and they who relied upon the inheritance of names carved by others?

The first group, the “No-Surrender Peers,” mustered 114 in the division.  Two Bishops were among them, Bangor and Worcester, and a distinguished list of peers, first of their line, including Earl Roberts and Viscount Milner.  When the story of our times is written it will be seen that there are few walks of life in which some one of these has not borne an honorable part.

Then at a bound we are transported to the Middle Ages.  At the Coronation, when the Abbey Church of Westminster rang to the shouts, “God Save King George!” five Lords of Parliament knelt on the steps of the throne, kissed the King’s cheek, and did homage, each as the chief of his rank and representing every noble of it.  They are all here:—­