he had been persuaded to apprehend, but the danger of which can hardly
be said to have been proved beyond all question; so that even those who
think the result of his action fortunate for the nation cannot defend
the action as one that on any constitutional principle can be justified.
The son, at a far more critical moment, adopted the course which he did
adopt as the only means which he saw of extricating the state and the
nation from an alternative of great calamities: the extinction of, or at
least a deep wound to, the legislative independence of the House of
Lords, by the following of a single precedent[218] which had ever since
been universally condemned; or, on the other hand, a continuance of
outrages and tumults which had already disgraced the nation in the eyes
of the world, and which, if renewed and continued, could not fail to
imperil the safety of the state. Such a motive may certainly be allowed
to excuse the irregularity of the act.

When, however, we come to consider the proposal to create peers, which
drove the King to take such a step, that is a question on which, while
it is still more important, it is also more difficult to form a
satisfactory judgment. It was denounced by the Duke of Wellington and
other peers as utterly unconstitutional and revolutionary; as a
destruction of the great principle of the equality of the two Houses; as
a denial to the peers of their right to form and act upon their own
deliberate judgment; and as a reduction of their position to that of a
body existing merely to register the decrees of the other House. Indeed,
that it had this character was admitted by Lord Grey himself, with no
abatement beyond such mitigation as might be found in the idea that it
was only intended to affect their decision on a single question. So far
it may be said that even while defending it he condemned it; _Habemus
confitentem reum_. But the task of a ruler or legislator is often but a
choice between difficulties, or even between manifest evils. And, even
if an act or course be admitted to be intrinsically evil, taken by
itself, yet, if the evil which it is calculated or designed to avert be
a greater evil still, the defence is complete, or, at all events,
sufficient. And this, in fact, is the principle of the justification
which Lord Grey alleged. He was, perhaps, unconsciously referring to a
passage in Mr. Hallam's great work on "Constitutional History" (then
very recently published), in which,