Amongst the sights of London surely may be reckoned the Chamber of
Peers--fallen from its high estate, but still existing as a potent
institution in this self-governing country and democratic age. Of course
it is usual to sneer at the peers--we all do so; and yet we would move
heaven and earth to be seen walking arm in arm with a peer, no matter how
old or vicious he be, on the sunny side of Pall Mall. We all say the
peers must give way to the Commons; and yet we all know that half the
latter are returned by the former, and that you can no more succeed in
contesting a county against its lords and landlords, than you can hope to
fly in the air, or to walk on the sea. Hear a pot-house orator on the
House of Peers, you would think it the most indefensible establishment
imaginable. But is it so? Ask Exeter Hall; that truly British
institution is in raptures with the whole British peerage. A lord at a
Bible meeting--a lord stammering a few unconnected common-places about
the propagation of Christianity in foreign parts, or the conversion of
the Jews--a lord denouncing the Pope, or anticipating the coming of the
millennium--is a sight dear to the British public. Sneer at the Lords as
you will, expatiate on the manifest absurdity of supposing that they are
wiser and better than other people, say, what every one knows and thinks,
that you cannot transmit brains as you can the family spoons, and that
therefore the idea involved in hereditary peerage is a lie; nevertheless,
the House of Peers still continues a great fact. And it is a gorgeous
fact as well. The apartments of the Commons are poor and mean compared
with the chamber, all resplendent with crimson and gold, where the Lords
meet. As you enter the central hall in the new Houses of Parliament, the
passage to the right leads you to the Lords. We will suppose you have
got an order--any peer can give you one; and as the House commences its
sitting at five, and there is plenty of room in the gallery, you may take
your time almost as freely as the celebrated Miss Lucy Long herself.
Passing the lobby, you soon find your way into the house, the magnificent
adorning of which will be sure to excite your utmost admiration. Some
may say it is too gaudy, everything pertaining to the chamber is so
richly decorated; but it is very fine, and when Parliament is opened by
Majesty in person, and the house is crowded with all the great men of our
land, and the galleries blaze with beauty and diamonds, the effect must
be, as it has always been described, imposing in the extreme. On
ordinary evenings, however, nothing of this splendour is visible; the
house has a deserted air; an assembly of a dozen or twenty is a very fair
muster; a debate of a couple of hours is generally considered as
unusually exciting and fierce. The best description of a debate in the
Lords we have ever read is that by Disraeli, in the "Young Duke." We
quote the passage:--"The Duke of St. James took the oaths and his seat.
He was introduced by Lord Pompey. He heard a debate. We laugh at such a
thing, especially in the Upper House; but on the whole the affair is
imposing, especially if we take a part in it. Lord Exchamberlain thought
the nation going on wrong, and he made a speech full of currency and
constitution. Baron Deprivey Seal seconded him with great effect--brief,
but bitter, satirical, and sore. The Earl of Quarterday answered these,
full of confidence in the nation and in himself. When the debate was
getting heavy, Lord Snap jumped up to give them something light. The
Lords do not encourage wit, and so are obliged to put up with pertness.
But Viscount Memoir was very statesmanlike, and spouted a sort of
universal history. Then there was Lord Ego, who vindicated his character
when nobody knew he had one, and explained his motives because his
auditors could not understand his acts. Then there was a maiden speech,
so inaudible that it was doubted after all whether the young orator
really did lose his virginity. In the end, up started the Premier, who,
having nothing to say, was manly, and candid, and liberal; gave credit to
his adversaries and took credit to himself, and then the motion was
withdrawn. While all this was going on, some made a note, some made a
bet, some consulted a book, some their ease, some yawned, a few slept.
Yet, on the whole, there was an air about the assembly which can be
witnessed in no other in Europe. Even the most indifferent looked as if
he would come forward if the occasion should demand him, and the most
imbecile as if he could serve his country if it required him."
But let us look around us. We, the strangers, are up in a comfortable
gallery at one end of a long, narrow, and rather dark chamber, along the
sides of which are narrow windows of painted glass, and bronze statues of
the barons of the olden time. In a smaller gallery, just beneath us, sit
the parliamentary reporters. Exactly opposite us is the THRONE; its
splendour we but faintly perceive, for it is veiled from vulgar eyes; but
there it is--the very spot where Majesty sits, while around her are
principalities and powers,--there the royal assent is given to laws which
affect the weal or woe of an empire--there, with silvery voice, and
faultless delivery, and perfect pronunciation, are spoken royal speeches,
greedily bought up in second editions of the morning papers, and flashed
along the electric wires to all the great cities of our own and the
capitals of other lands. At present a few peers are leaning against the
rails and chatting--that is all. A little below the throne is the purple
velvet cushion--the object of so many a struggle--of so many a year of
unflinching toil--of so many a defence of party spoken in another
place--of so many a clever piece of intrigue. We mean the woolsack, on
which sits the Lord Chancellor Chelmsford. If the debate is continued
till a late hour, and the keeper of her Majesty's conscience retires to
dine, Lord Redesdale acts as chairman _pro tem_. His lordship is
eccentric in his dress--black trousers, white cravat, buff waistcoat,
blue coat and brass buttons, white stockings and shoes, compose a _tout
ensemble_ rarely seen in the House of Lords or elsewhere. Greater men
than Lord Chelmsford have sat on the woolsack. We live in a little age.
Our great men are little men after all. Our Lord Chancellor has never
done what other Lord Chancellors have done, viz., wielded the fierce
democracy of the lower house, shone unrivalled on the parliamentary
arena, thundered from the platform, won fame by their daring, and acumen,
and learning, and eloquence, in every corner of the land. Indeed, he
makes no pretensions to oratory or greatness of any kind. He is an able
lawyer and eager partisan, little more. In this respect not at all
resembling, or rather very much differing from, the extraordinary
individual who has just darted on the woolsack, as if he would edge off
the Chancellor and take his very seat. That individual we need not name;
a glance at the nose and plaid trousers--trousers which he is incessantly
hitching up when he speaks--are sufficient. It must be my Lord Brougham,
and no one else. To no other man born of woman has nature vouchsafed the
same power of universality. No other man would attempt to do what he is
now doing, talking law with one man, politics with another, and scandal
with a third, and all the while listening to the debate, and qualifying
himself to take a part in it. In the course of time we shall see him
pursuing an erratic career in any part of the house except in that one
part in which sit ministers and their supporters. Amongst their ranks
Lord Brougham is never to be found. To the party in power he is always
opposed. It is his pride that he never worships the rising sun. The
Ex-Chancellor has never forgotten or forgiven the treatment he received,
but it does not affect his health--it does not tinge his life with
melancholy. He does not let disappointment, like a worm in the bud, prey
upon his damask cheek. His hair is a little greyer--his face is a little
fatter; that is all the change the wear and tear of half a century of
public life has produced: and of such a half century! the half century
that waged war with France--triumphed at Waterloo--carried
Reform--repealed the Corn Laws--and saw the birth of railways and the
electric telegraph; a half century of more interest than any preceding
age--the work and the excitement of which wore out our Romillys, Follets,
and Horners, with premature decay. Yet Brougham still lives. Slightly
altering Byron, we may say of him,--
Time writes no wrinkles on his brazen brow,
Such as the _Edinburgh's_ dawn beheld he wriggleth now.
Below the woolsack is a table, at which Lord Campbell generally sits; and
on each side are ranged the orators and partizans of the two great
sections which, under some name or other, always have existed and always
will exist in our national history. The uninitiated call them
Conservatives and Whigs; the wiser simply term them the men who are in
office and the men who are not. The Government for the time being sits
on the right hand of the Lord Chancellor, who acts as Speaker, and who
has a far easier berth of it than Mr. Denison. The Lords are not
long-winded, nor noisy; not passionate, and, like true Britons, always
adjourn to dinner. Hence no post-prandial scenes are visible. In the
small hours no patriots, smelling strongly of whisky-and-water and
cigars, expatiate to a wearied assembly on that ever fertile theme, the
wrongs and woes of the Green Isle. The Lords, like Mr. Wordsworth's
gods--
"Approve the depth but not the tumult of the soul."
We can never fancy the House of Lords to be what you may sometimes take
the House of Commons to be--a bear garden or a menagerie. You miss the
vulgarity of the one, and you also miss its excitement and
earnestness--its cries of "question" and "divide" when some well-known
bore is on his legs, and its long resounding cheers when some favourite
partisan sits down. All is staid, and correct, and proper, with the
exception of a tirade from the Rupert of debate, or some father in God on
the Episcopal Bench. We would fain say a few words about these reverend
gentlemen. One could hardly expect to find the ministers of the
self-denying and lowly Jesus of Nazareth sitting in a gorgeous house with
the proudest and wealthiest of the English peers. You would expect to
find them rather by the bed-side of the sick, in the houses of the poor,
combating with the vice and infidelity of the day; or else you would look
for them in their studies, surrounded with stately folios; or in the
midst of their clergy, reviving the fainthearted, urging on the timid,
counselling the young, and girding up the energies and hearts of all.
You would expect to find them in the House of the Lord rather than in the
House of Lords. In short, anywhere but in the turmoil of party conflict.
This, however, is not the case. The bishops are almost the first object
that attracts your eye. They sit on benches by themselves, on the
Government side, but beyond the ministerial bench. In the "dim religious
light" of the Upper House, you can scarcely make out what they are. You
see venerable wigs, and black robes, and lawn sleeves; and if you look
sharp, you may, at times, catch the outline of a reverend face--most
probably of Dr. Tait, the energetic bishop of London, or of the pug nose
and plebeian profile of Samuel of Oxford. They are very regular in their
attendance, and frequently take part in the debate. Indeed, the latter
bishop is a great man in the Lords; and so was Henry of Exeter, but his
voice is seldom heard, and his name never mentioned now, though he is
generally present, and sits at the end of the benches nearest to the
spectator, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is also pretty regular
in his attendance, occupies the other end of the bench. The other
bishops do not muster quite so strongly. Half of them is a good
attendance. It is to be hoped they are more profitably employed.
Coming lower down, our eyes rest on the men who did carry on government,
and generally occupy the unenviable situation of Ministers of the Crown.
At present they are out of office, and are seated on the Lord
Chancellor's left. Generally, at the top of the bench, is seated a
slight, undersized, juvenile, red-haired Scot--that is the Duke of
Argyle, who, in virtue of being a Duke, and the husband of the daughter
of the Duchess of Sutherland, was Lord Privy Seal. His lordship is as
pert and ready as any forward youth in a debating-club, and has much of
the appearance and manner of such a one. He gives you no great idea of
hereditary statesmanship, the only quality conspicuous in him being a
tolerable amount of modest assurance, perfectly natural to a peer who is
an author and has lectured at mechanics' institutions, and read papers
before the British Association. By him is seated Lord Panmure, very red
in the face, which redness seems to arise from a military stock which he
persists in wearing. There sits the Marquis of Clanricarde, who has
suffered much from public opinion, and who deserves to suffer, if only
his conduct in certain electioneering matters be taken into account. The
Earl of Granville is the leader of this small band; he is a pleasant
looking man, and speaks not badly for a lord. The Whig Nestor, the aged
Marquis of Lansdowne, worthy of remembrance for his friendship for Tom
Moore, is easily detected by his blue coat and brass buttons, that
remnant of the palmy days of party. None of these men are remarkable for
oratorical power. A strong contrast is presented by the illustrious
personage sitting on the next row, higher up, just opposite the
bishops--a severe, well-made, heavy, grey-haired man, who sits almost
silent and sullen, as if he had no feelings, as if the debate was a sham,
and he should be glad if it were over. We refer to
"The travelled thane, Athenian Aberdeen,"
the best-abused man, at one time, in her gracious Majesty's dominions,
but without whom, nevertheless, it is questionable whether the Queen's
Government could be carried on. Unfortunately, Lord Aberdeen is not the
man for the public. The public likes to be gammoned, and his lordship
cannot gammon. He is spare in words, cold and unimpassioned in delivery,
and somewhat too indifferent to party attacks. On neighbouring benches
are seated discontented Whigs, overlooked in the scramble for place, and
who therefore view the proceedings of all governments with an impartial,
but yet a jealous eye. Prominent amongst such is the sandy-looking
unamiable Earl Grey, who seems angry with himself and all the world,
because he is lame, and has not the command of the colonies. Below the
table are half-a-dozen benches, on which congregate a few peers till
dinner time. Here sits Earl Fitzwilliam--here also sits one of the most
frightful bores in the House, Lord Monteagle, who always speaks, and, for
a lord, cruelly long. That is the consequence of his having been in the
Lower House. Never stop to hear him. As soon as you see his bald head,
be off. The Dukes sit here. On the front bench on your right is the
Duke of Cambridge. On his left is seated the Duke of Newcastle, a
promising orator when a member of the Lower House, and a follower of Sir
Robert Peel. Crossing to the government benches, the Earl of Derby fills
the first place. We need not paint his portrait; the sharp aristocratic
face--but feebly reflected in that promising young man, but unfortunate
speaker, his son--is familiar to us all; there he is out of place. He
has no fitting opponents. It was among the Commons that he won his
laurels. Yet, at times, the old afflatus fills him, and his clear voice
and fluent declamation are as bitter and terrible as when night after
night he wrestled, as if for very life, with the brawny champion of
Catholic Emancipation, and the somewhat too selfish, unscrupulous
exponent of Irish wrongs. By his side is his trusty page, the inelegant
and insipid Malmesbury, of whom, in a passing freak, the author of
"Vivian Grey" not merely made a statesman, but actually Minister for
Foreign Affairs. On the bench behind the Premier sits that wonderful old
man eloquent, whose shrill tones may occasionally be heard, and whose
intellect seems as great and grand as when he was Sir John
Copley--Attorney-General before the Reform Bill was carried, and England,
according to Croker, for ever undone. Near him sits a tall, thin
gentleman, with a copious head of hair, and a force of gesticulation
hardly English: that is the Earl of Ellenborough, in his own opinion
hero, statesman, lawyer, "all things by turns, and nothing long;" in this
respect second only to Lord Brougham, who sits everywhere, speaks
wherever he can, and whose Ciceronian eloquence, aided by a delivery more
expressive than dignified, by gestures and tones at any rate vivacious,
astonish the weak nerves of the spectators, and oft-times puzzles the
parliamentary reporters themselves. Few other notabilities do we see.
Perhaps we may note on the opposition benches the pale aristocratic form
of that popular nobleman, the Earl of Shaftesbury. Disraeli makes one of
his peers say, the House of Lords looks like a house of butlers. We
think the satirist is unjust. At any rate, the peers are well dressed.
Hats, gloves, boots, and frock-coats are all unexceptionable. We need
not say, in this respect, the House of Lords presents a very different
appearance to the House of Commons. Yet the Lords need not be so
particular about their "gorgeous array;" there are seldom more than
half-a-dozen ladies present to admire and reward their display. The
Lords are more polite than the Commons. Such ladies as are present take
their seats in the gallery, where they can see and be seen; in the other
house, as our readers know, the case is different. But even the ladies,
we dare say, would not mind being treated as the Commons treat them, if
the debates in the Lords were as good as in the Commons. If the peers
did not dress so well, and were not so excessively polite, but spoke
better, no great harm would be done; but there's the difficulty. It is
difficult for a polite man to be ill-bred, and to lose his temper, and
say sharp things. In the House of Commons nothing is easier. Say
something bitter, and you will have a murmur of applause--be savage, and
at any rate your own party will cheer; but in the Lords you can't get up
the semblance of earnestness. The whole thing seems too much like
play--an apology for business, and that is all. No man can speak to
twenty sleepy peers as he could to four or five hundred eager partisans.
No man can be impressive in the bosom of his family--and the Lords are a
family party, all connected, or nearly so; and if a stranger comes in, he
soon apes the fashionable tone, and becomes as dull and apathetic as the
rest. And why should a lord be otherwise? A lord is not more a lord for
having brains--nor the less a lord for being without. Intellect, skill,
oratory, are no helps--are unnecessary in an hereditary institution. Sir
Robert Peel knew this, and lived and died a commoner. Chatham became
comparatively a small man when he took a pension and a peerage. So was
it with Walpole, when meeting his old rival Pulteney, after they had both
been raised to the peerage, he exclaimed, "Here we are, my lord, the two
most insignificant personages in Europe." The Upper House but registers
the decisions of the Lower--the business of the country is carried on
elsewhere.
But while we have been looking at the House, the debate has closed. Lord
Granville has asked a question and made an attack. Lord Derby has
uttered a few petulant remarks, to which Lord Aberdeen has made a cold
and formal reply, to which some peers, disappointed of place, have added
a little independent criticism on their own account. Two or three
exquisites have been discussing little matters of their own, till they
find that if they stop much longer they will be too late for Rotten Row,
and the House merely waits for Lord Monteagle to sit down and go home.
Happily his lordship is briefer than his wont, and the Lord High
Chancellor declares the House adjourned. Rushing outside, we catch hasty
glimpses of our hereditary legislators as they, in fashionable brougham
or on splendid blood, start for their parks or respective Belgravian
homes. We also, in more plebeian manner, do the same. We are sure the
reader will have had enough of the Lords for one night. He will have
found out that they are not much better orators or speakers than other
men--that even lords stammer, utter incoherent remarks, display poverty
of ideas. Let us add, in conclusion, the great merit of a night in the
Lords is, that it is soon over. If the Lords be dull, at any rate they
are short. To be dull and long-winded is an offence against good
breeding of which few peers are guilty.