have gained this great step, that whereas the former leader of the
Tory party in the Lords--Lord Lyndhurst--defeated the last proposal
to make life peers, Lord Derby, when leader of that party, desired
to create them. As I have given in this book what seemed to me good
reasons for making them, I need not repeat those reasons here; I
need only say how the notion stands in my judgment now.

I cannot look on life peerages in the way in which some of their
strongest advocates regard them; I cannot think of them as a mode in
which a permanent opposition or a contrast between the Houses of
Lords and Commons is to be remedied. To be effectual in that way,
life peerages must be very numerous. Now the House of Lords will
never consent to a very numerous life peerage without a storm; they
must be in terror to do it, or they will not do it. And if the storm
blows strongly enough to do so much, in all likelihood it will blow
strongly enough to do much more. If the revolution is powerful
enough and eager enough to make an immense number of life peers,
probably 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