It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates.  As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the average attendance is less than fifty.  The right to vote by proxy is a peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious voting to a great extent is common on all important issues.  Macaulay, many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords “a small and torpid audience”; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there has been no increase of average attendance.  A considerable proportion of the absentees will be found among the “fast noblemen” of the kingdom,—­the men who prostitute their exalted social position to the basest purposes, squandering their substance and wasting their time in degrading dissipation, the easy prey of accomplished sharpers, and a burning disgrace to their order.  Sometimes, indeed, they pause on the brink of utter ruin, only to become in their turn apostles of iniquity, and to lure others to a like destruction.  The unblushing and successful audacity of these titled roues is beginning to attract the attention and awaken the fears of the better part of the English people.  Their pernicious example is bearing most abundant and bitter fruit in the depraved morals of what are called the “lower classes” of society, and their misdeeds are repeated in less fashionable quarters, with less brilliant surroundings.  Against this swelling tide of corrupting influence the press of England is now raising its warning voice, and the statements which are publicly and unreservedly made, and the predictions which are confidently given, are very far from being welcome to English eyes or grateful to English ears.

Another class of the House of Lords, and it is a large one, is most happily characterized by Sydney Smith in his review of “Granby.”  “Lord Chesterton we have often met with, and suffered a good deal from his lordship:  a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of the conversation, saying things in ten words which required only two, and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large man, with a large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit.  It is easy to talk of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or ear-ache to his conversation?  Does he consider the great uneasiness which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?”