LETTERS FROM OUR YOUNG FRIENDS.

Editor GREAT ROUND WORLD.

DEAR SIR:  Can you tell me more about the map-holder
mentioned in No. 47?  W.J.B.

DEAR SIR: 

If you refer to the map-holder for bicycles, we would suggest that you apply to A.G.  Spalding & Co., Broadway, New York.  EDITOR.

DEAR EDITOR: 

Will you please explain in the next issue of THE GREAT ROUND WORLD who are eligible to seats in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons?  By thus doing you will greatly oblige one who is very much interested in your paper.

Respectfully yours,
N.R. 
MORRISTOWN, N.J.

DEAR FRIEND: 

The House of Peers (or House of Lords) is composed of all the peers of the United Kingdom, the representative Scottish peers, the Irish representative peers, and the lords spiritual.

A peer is the holder of one of the five degrees of nobility,—­duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron.  These men have their seats in the House of Lords by right of birth, and take possession of them when they come of age.

The House of Peers takes its origin from the body of lords and barons who were summoned to the king’s councils in olden times.  Besides the peers who sit in the House of Lords by right, and who are distinguished as the lords temporal, there are twenty-six other lords who also form a part of this body, and who are known as the lords spiritual.  These are the two English archbishops and twenty-four bishops.

The House of Commons is composed entirely of men who are elected by the vote of the people.

There are no restrictions whatever of birth, education, or religion.  Any freeman who is elected can sit in the House.  At one time an endeavor was made to exclude a man who had been elected because he refused to take the oath which is administered to all members of Parliament before they can take their seats.  This was Charles Bradlaugh.  He said he did not believe in an oath, but offered to affirm, or give his word instead.  The House of Commons refused to accept this, and Mr. Bradlaugh was not allowed to take his seat.  He afterward stated that he was willing to take the oath as a matter of form, but this was again objected to.  For six years he struggled for his seat, and at last was allowed to take it, after going through the form of the oath.

A cobbler has sat in the House of Commons and helped make laws for the people, and the members of Parliament are of all ranks and ages.

In England, however, men of fortune and family take more interest in the affairs of the nation than they do with us, and the majority of the members of the House of Commons are wealthy land-owners, baronets, and knights, who have large interests at stake, and young men of good family who have been educated with the express idea of going into Parliament as soon as they were able to find an opening.