nder the advice of
ministers, a sufficient number of new Peers to outvote the opponents of
the measure. No alternative but revolution and civil war would be left
if this were taken away. It is true that the power might be again
abused by the Sovereign, as it was abused in Anne's days on the advice
of the Tories; but we know that, as a matter of fact, it is hardly ever
abused--hardly ever even used. {176} Why is it hardly ever used? For
the good reason that all men know it is existing, and can be used
should the need arise. Even were it to be misused, the misuse would
happen under responsible ministers, who could be challenged to answer
for it, and who would have to make good their defence. But if the
House of Lords were made supreme over the House of Commons in every
instance, by abolishing the unlimited prerogative which alone keeps it
in check, who could then be held responsible for abuse--and before
whom? Who could call the House of Lords to account? Before what
tribunal could it be summoned to answer? The Peers are now independent
of the people, and would then be also independent of the Crown. There
is hardly a great political reform known to modern England which, if
the Peerage Bill had become law, would not have been absolutely
rejected or else carried by a popular revolution.

[Sidenote: 1720--The Irish House of Lords]

Walpole attacked the Bill on every side. Such legislation, he
insisted, "would in time bring back the Commons into the state of
servile dependency they were in when they wore the badges of the
Lords." It would, he contended, take away "one of the most powerful
incentives to virtue, . . . since there would be no coming to honor but
through the winding-sheet of an old decrepit lord and the grave of an
extinct noble family." Walpole knew well his public and his time. He
dwelt most strongly on this last consideration--that the Bill if passed
into law would shut the gates of the Peerage against deserving
Commoners. He asked indignantly how the House of Lords could expect
the Commons to give their concurrence to a measure "by which they and
their posterities are to be excluded from the Peerage." The commoner
who, after this way of putting the matter, assented to the Bill, must
either have been an unambitious bachelor, or have been blessed in a
singularly unambitious wife. Steele, who, as we have seen, had fought
gallantly against the Bill with his pen, now made a very effective
speech