When, however, we come to consider the proposal to create peers, which drove the King to take such a step, that is a question on which, while it is still more important, it is also more difficult to form a satisfactory judgment.  It was denounced by the Duke of Wellington and other peers as utterly unconstitutional and revolutionary; as a destruction of the great principle of the equality of the two Houses; as a denial to the peers of their right to form and act upon their own deliberate judgment; and as a reduction of their position to that of a body existing merely to register the decrees of the other House.  Indeed, that it had this character was admitted by Lord Grey himself, with no abatement beyond such mitigation as might be found in the idea that it was only intended to affect their decision on a single question.  So far it may be said that even while defending it he condemned it; Habemus confitentem reum.  But the task of a ruler or legislator is often but a choice between difficulties, or even between manifest evils.  And, even if an act or course be admitted to be intrinsically evil, taken by itself, yet, if the evil which it is calculated or designed to avert be a greater evil still, the defence is complete, or, at all events, sufficient.  And this, in fact, is the principle of the justification which Lord Grey alleged.  He was, perhaps, unconsciously referring to a passage in Mr. Hallam’s great work on “Constitutional History” (then very recently published), in which, while discussing Sunderland’s Peerage Bill, and admitting that “the unlimited prerogative of augmenting the peerage is liable to such abuses, at least in theory, as might overthrow our form of government,” he proceeds to point out that in the exercise of this, as of every other power, “the crown has been carefully restrained by statutes, and by the responsibility of its advisers;” but that, while “the Commons, if they transgress their boundaries, are annihilated by a proclamation” (that is, by a dissolution) “against the ambition, or, what is much more likely, the perverse haughtiness of the aristocracy, the constitution has not furnished such direct securities....  The resource of subduing an aristocratical faction by the creation of new peers could never be constitutionally employed, except in the case of a nearly equal balance; but it might usefully hang over the heads of the whole body, and deter them from any gross excesses of faction or oligarchical spirit.  The nature of our government requires a general harmony between the two Houses of Parliament."[219] In the present case no one could impute the difference between the two Houses to any “perverse haughtiness” on the part of the peers.  But the difference existed, and was too deeply founded on the cautious principles of the Tory party to be surmountable by ordinary means.  It was certain also that the Commons would not give way; that, without danger to the public peace, they could not give way.  And this was,