it will sweep away the hereditary principle in the Upper Chamber entirely.  Of course one may fancy it to be otherwise; we may conceive of a political storm just going to a life-peerage limit, and then stopping suddenly.  But in politics we must not trouble ourselves with exceedingly exceptional accidents; it is quite difficult enough to count on and provide for the regular and plain probabilities.  To speak mathematically, we may easily miss the permanent course of the political curve if we engross our minds with its cusps and conjugate points.

Nor, on the other hand, can I sympathise with the objection to life peerages which some of the Radical party take and feel.  They think it will strengthen the Lords, and so make them better able to oppose the Commons; they think, if they do not say:  “The House of Lords is our enemy and that of all Liberals; happily the mass of it is not intellectual; a few clever men are born there which we cannot help, but we will not ‘vaccinate’ it with genius; we will not put in a set of clever men for their lives who may as likely as not turn against us”.  This objection assumes that clever peers are just as likely to oppose the Commons as stupid peers.  But this I deny.  Most clever men who are in such a good place as the House of Lords plainly is, will be very unwilling to lose it if they can help it; at the clear call of a great duty they might lose it, but only at such a call.  And it does not take a clever man to see that systematic opposition of the Commons is the only thing which can endanger the Lords, or which will make an individual peer cease to be a peer.  The greater you make the sense of the Lords, the more they will see that their plain interest is to make friends of the plutocracy, and to be the chiefs of it, and not to wish to oppose the Commons where that plutocracy rules.

It is true that a completely new House of Lords, mainly composed of men of ability, selected because they were able, might very likely attempt to make ability the predominant power in the State, and to rival, if not conquer, the House of Commons, where the standard of intelligence is not much above the common English average.  But in the present English world such a House of Lords would soon lose all influence.  People would say, “it was too clever by half,” and in an Englishman’s mouth that means a very severe censure.  The English people would think it grossly anomalous if their elected assembly of rich men were thwarted by a nominated assembly of talkers and writers.  Sensible men of substantial means are what we wish to be ruled by, and a peerage of genius would not compare with it in power.