roper applications. Peel was perhaps a little over fond of
talking of the sacrifices of office. A man has no business to lay himself
out for being prime minister, or to place himself in the way of it, unless
he is prepared to take all the incidents of the post whether disagreeable
or not. I've no sympathy with talk of that kind." He was far from the mind
of Carteret. "What is it to me," cried that glittering minister, "who is a
judge or who is a bishop? It is my business to make kings and emperors,
and to maintain the balance of Europe."

(M141) To the bestowal of honours he brought the same diligent care as to
branches of public business that to men of Peel's type seemed worthier of
care. He treated honours on fixed considerations. Especially in the
altitudes of the peerage, he tried hard to find solid political ground to
go upon. He noted the remarkable fact that though a very large majority of
the peerages granted since 1835 had been made on the advice of liberal
ministers, yet such is the influence of wealth and privileged station that
the liberal minority in the Lords had decreased. In 1869 the conservative
majority was between sixty and seventy, without counting bishops or
nominal liberals. Yet household suffrage at this very time had immensely
increased the moral strength of the House of Commons. The crisis upon the
Irish church had been borne with impatience, and Mr. Gladstone discerned a
combustible temper at the action of the Lords that might easily have burst
into flame. Still he saw no signal plan for improving the upper House. The
appointment of life peers might be desirable, he said, but it was not easy
to arrange, nor could its effect be great. The means of action therefore
for bringing the Lords into more conformity or better proportions to the
Commons, were very moderate. But that made it all the more important that
they should not be overlooked. The governing idea in respect of both
classes of hereditary honours was in his judgment the maintenance of a due
relation between the members in those elevated ranks, and the number of
persons offering the proper conditions for promotion of this kind, in a
country so rapidly growing in wealth and population.

With characteristic love of making knowledge quantitative--one definition,
I rather think, of science--Mr. Gladstone caused returns to be prepared for
him, which showed that in 1840 there were about seventeen peers for every
million of the population, while