My main reason is one which has not been much urged.  As a theoretical writer I can venture to say, what no elected member of Parliament, Conservative or Liberal, can venture to say, that I am exceedingly afraid of the ignorant multitude of the new constituencies.  I wish to have as great and as compact a power as possible to resist it.  But a dissension between the Lords and Commons divides that resisting power; as I have explained, the House of Commons still mainly represents the plutocracy, the Lords represent the aristocracy.  The main interest of both these classes is now identical, which is to prevent or to mitigate the rule of uneducated numbers.  But to prevent it effectually, they must not quarrel among themselves; they must not bid one against the other for the aid of their common opponent.  And this is precisely the effect of a division between Lords and Commons.  The two great bodies of the educated rich go to the constituencies to decide between them, and the majority of the constituencies now consist of the uneducated poor.  This cannot be for the advantage of any one.

In doing so besides the aristocracy forfeit their natural position?- -that by which they would gain most power, and in which they would do most good.  They ought to be the heads of the plutocracy.  In all countries new wealth is ready to worship old wealth, if old wealth will only let it, and I need not say that in England new wealth is eager in its worship.  Satirist after satirist has told us how quick, how willing, how anxious are the newly-made rich to associate with the ancient rich.  Rank probably in no country whatever has so much “market” value as it has in England just now.  Of course there have been many countries in which certain old families, whether rich or poor, were worshipped by whole populations with a more intense and poetic homage; but I doubt if there has ever been any in which all old families and all titled families received more ready observance from those who were their equals, perhaps their superiors, in wealth, their equals in culture, and their inferiors only in descent and rank.  The possessors of the “material” distinctions of life, as a political economist would class them, rush to worship those who possess the IMmaterial distinctions.  Nothing can be more politically useful than such homage, if it be skilfully used; no folly can be idler than to repel and reject it.

The worship is the more politically important because it is the worship of the political superior for the political inferior.  At an election the non-titled are much more powerful than the titled.  Certain individual peers have, from their great possessions, great electioneering influence, but, as a whole, the House of Peers is not a principal electioneering force.  It has so many poor men inside it, and so many rich men outside it, that its electioneering value is impaired.  Besides, it is in the nature of the curious influence of rank to work much more on men singly than on men