ment, was conformable to the most legitimate
view of the constitution. It was, indeed, matter of history that in the
Middle Ages the crown had exercised its prerogative in many ways which
it had since abandoned. Boroughs had been enfranchised, and again
disfranchised, apparently from no motive but pure caprice; writs of
summons had been withheld from peers.[293] But no one would have
justified the repetition of such acts now. And common-sense, as well as
recognized usage, favored the doctrine that long disuse was a sufficient
and lawful barrier against their revival. That the power of conferring
life peerages with a seat in Parliament--of which, perhaps, the only
undeniable instances were the cases of the brothers of Henry V., whose
royal blood would in those days, probably, have been held to warrant an
exception in their favor--had not been exercised for full four hundred
years, was admitted; and the assumption that so long a disuse of a power
was tantamount to a tacit renunciation of it, is quite compatible with a
loyal and due zeal for the maintenance of other parts of the prerogative
which have suffered no such abatement.

If, however, we consider the expediency of the measure, or, in other
words, the possible advantage that might ensue from the existence of a
power to create life peerages with a seat in Parliament, opinions will
probably be more divided. We have seen that Lord Derby allowed that
there might be advantages in such an exercise of power under certain
limitations; and the existing system does, undoubtedly, appear open to
improvement in certain cases. At present the only mode of rewarding
naval or military commanders who have performed brilliant and useful
service, or a Speaker of the House of Commons, whose public career,
though less showy and glorious, may at times have been scarcely less
valuable, and has certainly been by far more irksome, is the grant of a
peerage with a pension for lives. Without the peerage they cannot have
the pension.[294] And, consequently, many most distinguished officers,
whose conspicuous merits well deserved conspicuous honors, have gone
unrewarded except by some promotion of knighthood, which carries with it
no substantial benefit; while the descendants of some of those who have
been ennobled have openly lamented that the only mode which could be
found of honoring their fathers proves a punishment to their heirs, by
encumbering them with an empty title, which they are unabl