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Untitled Article
Reforntf ., indicating a policy which , as you strenuously recomnielid , it rhiay be assumed you intend to-pursue . t ^ emur in tlic first place to your scheme of Reform ; but , secondly , and far more strongly to your proposed postponement of all other considerations to this one topic .
You are , no doubt , ready to promote , with heart and soul , any plan which can be shown to you to be more efficient than your own . But it is an unfortunate circumstance that your notion of an elective House of Lords has already laid hold of the ? public mind , and may require a prolonged discussion to dislodge it . Mr . Roebuck ' s scheme seems to me far more practicable and more efficient . His proposition is to reduce the Veto of the Lords upon a bill which has passed the
Commons , to a single exercise ; so that if the Commons again determine upon a measure which has been rejected by the Lords , it forthwith ( having received the royal assent ) becomes law . This plan would simply delay any measure of improvement adopted by our representatives for one Session . However beneficial the change , it implies the least quantum of individually-annoying interference that perhaps everaccompanied anyimportantreform . Tire re would be no alteration in the constitution of the House
of Peers . The hereditary dignities , and the relative positions of the members of the upper House , would remain as they are . Tine peers of the empire would not become elective ; the Scotch and Irish peers would not cease to be elective ; the former would still be chosen , as at present , for the duration of Parliament , —the latter for life ; and even the bishops need not be disturbed . The entire good ascribed to a second chamber by
its apologists would continue to be realized . There would be the drag upon the wheels of the chariot of improvement , checking * the rapidity of their movement , and only deprived of the power of bringing them to a complete stand-still . Your plan , on the other hand , would be felt as an intolerable nuisance by every individual peer . It would strip him of all authority whatever , except as he could obtain it by means of a
process to which he would feel it a degradation to submit . The peers of the empire would be levelled with those of Scotland and Ireland . The church would be deprived of a species of representation , by which it seems to set much store , —and the " mitred front" compelled to betake itself to holy privacy , or to he tried , for a fit . bv some of the cloven hoofs that . li * wt — —— - -- -- - - —¦ - - ^ - - -v- ^« V /
_ . j j — — — — —— _ — . , _ — ^^ V *_^^ V * - S ^ . J % _ J the hustings . And of all this irritation , what would be the result '? A second chamber not much better than the present . The election would only be like the striking * a special jury on the old By&tcnn , which Home Tooke compared to a free choice of a dozen oranges out of a box which was full of rottcmones . You propose adding 180 peers to the present number ; never allowing
Untitled Article
56 Agitation of Peerage Reform .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 56, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/56/
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