very particular about principle, or even about
seeming consistency; but still, when opposing a measure which he might
have been expected to support, he would have probably found it more
expedient, as well as more agreeable, to confine himself chiefly to the
task of attacking some "great man in the present administration."

It ought to be said of Stanhope that he was distinctly in advance of
his age as regarded the recognition of the principle of religious
equality. He was not only anxious to put the Protestant Dissenters as
much as possible on a level with Churchmen in all the privileges of
citizenship, but he was even strongly in favor of mitigating the
severity of the laws against the Roman Catholics. In his "History of
England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," Lord
Stanhope, the descendant of the minister whose career and character
have done so much honor to a name and a family, claims for him the
credit of having put on paper a scheme "not undeserving of attention as
the earliest germ of Roman Catholic emancipation." Stanhope's life was
too soon and too {174} suddenly cut short to allow him to push forward
his scheme to anything like a practical position, and it is not
probable that he could in any case have done much with it at such a
time. Still, though fate cut short the life, it ought not to cut short
the praise.

[Sidenote: 1719--The Peerage Bill]

The Peerage Bill raised a question of some constitutional importance.
The principal object of this measure, which was introduced on February
28, 1719, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Somerset, and was
believed to have Lord Sunderland for its actual author, was to limit
the prerogative of the Crown in the creation of English peerages to a
number not exceeding six, in addition to those already existing.
According to the provisions of the Bill, the Crown might still create
new Peers on the extinction of old titles for want of male heirs; but
with this exception the power of adding new peerages would be limited
to the number of six. It was also proposed that, instead of the
sixteen elective Peers from Scotland, twenty-five hereditary Peers
should be created. This part of the Bill was that which at the time
gave rise to most of the debate, in the House of Lords at least; but
the really important constitutional question was that which involved
the limitation of the privilege of the Sovereign. The Sovereign
himself sent a special messag