On the expediency of the measure its opponents had urged that it would effect a remodelling of the House of Peers, a total change of its constitution, by the introduction of a second and distinct class of peerages; and Lord Campbell, with a not unbecoming jealousy for what he regarded as the interests of his brother lawyers, argued that it would “henceforth prevent any lawyer, however eminent he might have been as an advocate, whatever services he might have rendered to the state in the House of Commons, whatever fame or fortune he might have acquired, from aspiring to an hereditary peerage, or to becoming the founder of a family, since, to make a distinction between the Chancellor and the Chief-justice, between one Chancellor or Chief-justice and another, when coming into the Upper House, as to the tenure of their honors, would be intolerable; all must be under the same rule, ’no son of theirs succeeding.’” And Lord Lyndhurst closed his argument by drawing a comparison between the House of Lords and the French Senate:  “It was but a few weeks since he had read an official comment in the Moniteur, coming from the highest source, on the inefficiency, the want of patriotism, energy, and the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to which they were called, that characterized that illustrious body, the Senate of France.  He had no disposition to cut down our tribunal to that life interest on which the Senate of France is based, as he believed the hereditary character of the House of Lords to be one from which great and important advantages are derived....  The hereditary principle,” he added, “is intwined in every part of our constitution; we in this House enjoy our hereditary rights in common with the crown; we mutually support and assist each other, and we form a barrier and defence to protect both those branches of the constitution against any by whom they may be assailed.”

As Lord Granville had made the expediency of any measure the quality which, combined with legality, was sufficient to establish its constitutional character, he naturally labored this point with especial diligence.  He dwelt upon the great importance of strengthening the judicial element in the House, since it was the great ultimate court of appeal.  He produced a letter of the great Chancellor, Lord Eldon, which quoted instances in which various administrations had found difficulties in the way of introducing eminent lawyers into the House, because their want of adequate fortune to support the rank had disinclined them to encumber their descendants with an hereditary peerage.  He showed also that that difficulty had made so great an impression on their own Chairman of Committees, Lord Redesdale, that on one occasion he had intimated a feeling in favor of allowing “the Law, in the same way as the Church, to be, to a certain extent, represented in the House by the holders of certain offices, who should be admitted to that House as Peers of Parliament during the continuance of holding such office” (to which argument Earl Grey added another, that the instance of bishops, who were but life peers, proved that the holders of life peerages were not considered inferior to hereditary peers).