Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant, and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every inherited absurdity of the family.  Their favorite field of operations is the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because they can be sure of a “fit audience found, though few,”—­an audience of equals, whom it is no condescension to address.  In the House of Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of human life.  There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation.  That such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.

But we will allow his lordship to tell his own story.  Here is his set speech, only slightly modified from evening to evening, as may be demanded by the difference in the questions under debate.

“My lords, the noble lord who has just taken his seat, although, I am bound to say, presenting his view of the case with that candor which my noble friend (if the noble lord will allow me to call him so) always displays, yet, my lords, I cannot but add, omitted one important feature of the subject.  Now, my lords, I am exceedingly reluctant to take up the time of your lordships with my views upon the subject-matter of this debate; yet, my lords, as the noble and learned lord who spoke last but one, as well as the noble earl at the head of Her Majesty’s Government, and the noble marquis who addressed your lordships early in the evening, have all fallen into the same mistake, (if these noble lords will permit me to presume that they could be mistaken,) I must beg leave to call your lordships’ attention to the significant fact, that each and all of these noble lords have failed to point out to your lordships, that, important and even conclusive as the arguments and statistics of their lordships may at first sight appear, yet they have not directed your lordships to the very suspicious circumstance that our noble ancestors have never discovered the necessity of resorting to this singular expedient.