104 THU SESSION OF 1836. 



England and Scotland. The Courts of Law were to have been purged 

 of their manifold abuses ; justice was to have been made of cheap and 

 expeditious attainment. Imprisonment for Debt, that disgraceful prac- 

 tice in a civilized and especially in a Christian country, was to have 

 been abolished. The Dissenters were to have the doors of the Univer- 

 sities opened to them; they were to be relieved from the payment of 

 rates to support a church of which they conscientiously disapprove, and 

 their grievances generally were to have been redressed. These, and 

 many other measures, were all promised in the King's speech at the 

 opening of the session. There they still remain ; and will, most pro- 

 bably, furnish the materials for another royal oration on the next meet- 

 ing of parliament. 



We may be told that the fault is not in Ministers, but in a Tory 

 House of Lords. We are not the apologists of the Upper House. We 

 appeal to our last four numbers in proof. We have in each of these 

 censured the conduct of the peers in no measured terms, and told them, 

 in the plainest language we could employ, what must be the inevitable 

 issue of the course they are pursuing. But, while not holding them 

 guiltless as regards the non-redemption of some of the most important 

 pledges which ministers gave the country at the opening of the session 

 we must not blind our eyes to the culpability which attaches to Lord 

 Melbourne's administration. Were Ministers ignorant of the fate which 

 awaited the particular measures we allude to on their introduction into 

 the Upper House ? The utmost stretch of charity will not suffer any 

 one to give them the benefit of that plea. In the nature of things, Mi- 

 nisters could never for one moment contemplate the bare possibility of 

 the Lords passing, in ordinary circumstances, those particular measures. 

 They knew those measures clashed with all their most fondly-cherished 

 opinions, with their most deeply-rooted prejudices. Nay, they knew 

 something still more certain as to the line of conduct their lordships 

 would pursue. They had the history of the past of the recent past 

 to instruct them. They had the rejection of several of those measures 

 by the Lords, in the last session of parliament, staring them in the 

 face. 



But we shall possibly be asked, What could ministers do? What 

 means were at their disposal for overcoming the hostility of the Peers ? 



Two courses were open to them. They ought either before the meeting 

 of parliament to have armed themselves with the power of procuring the 

 creation of a number of Peers sufficient to meet the exigency of the 



