LORDS, HOUSE OF. 



LOTTERIES. 



370 



de la Malgouverney' who corresponded exactly with our Lord of 



Misrule. 



LORDS, HOUSE OF, one of the constituent parts of the Parliament 

 of the United Kingdom. [PARLIAMENT.] The other is the House of I 

 Commons. 



The persons who sit in the House of Lords are the Lords Spiritual 

 and Lords Temporal. 



Before the Reformation, when the monastic establishments which 

 abounded in England were suppressed, the superiors of many of them, 

 under the names of abbots and priors, sat as Lords Spiritual in this 

 assembly. In those times the Lords Spiritual equalled, if they did 

 not outnumber, the Lords Temporal who sat at any given time in 

 Parliament ; though now they form only about one-thirteenth of the 

 persons composing this assembly. Six more bishops were added^wheu 

 the abbots and priors were removed. 



The Lords Temporal are all the peers of England, being of full age, 

 and not incapacitated by mental imbecility; sixteen representative 

 peers of the Scottish peerage, and twenty-eight representatives of the 

 Irish peerage. The number of the Scotch and Irish representative 

 peers is fixed by the acts of union with Scotland and Ireland in 

 1707 and 1800 respectively ; but the number of peers of England is 

 perpetually varying, and depends upon the casualties of minorities, 

 and on the will of the sovereign, who can make any man a peer. In 

 June, 1860, it consisted of 3 princes of the blood royal, 3 archbishops 

 (one being an Irish representative), 20 dukes, 21 marquises, 111 earls, 

 22 viscounts, 24 English bishops, and 3 representative Irish bishops, 

 and 214 barons, besides the Scotch and Irish representative peers. 



The component parts of this assembly may be thus classified : 

 1. Persons sitting there in respect of offices held by them. Such are 

 the spiritual lords of England. 2. Persons who sit in right of in- 

 heritance of a dignity of peerage. 3. Persons who have been created 

 peers. 4. Hereditary peers of Scotland (for there can be no creation 

 of peers of that part of the United Kingdom) elected by the whole 

 body of the Scottish peerage to represent them iu parliament, at the 

 beginning of every parliament. 5. Hereditary or created peers of Ireland, 

 elected by the whole body of the Irish peerage ; they sit for life, and 

 vacancies are supplied as they occur. Irish peerages can be created 

 in the proportion of one for every three becoming extinct. And 6. 

 Spiritual lords of Ireland, who sit in turns according to a cycle estab- 

 lished by 3 Will. IV. c. 37. The great body of the house however 

 consists of hereditary Lords Temporal of England, under the several 

 denominations of dukes, marquises, earls, Viscounts, and barons. Each 

 of the individuals of these ranks haa an equal vote with the rest ; but 

 they sit in the house in classes, and according to their precedency. 



The only material changes which have been made in the constitution 

 of this assembly in the long period of its existence have been : 1. The 

 supposed limitation of the right of all holding lands in chief of the crown 

 to sit therein, by king Henry III. after the battle of Evesham. 2. The 

 removal from it of representatives of the counties, cities, and boroughs, 

 who are supposed to have formerly sat with the lords, and the placing 

 them in a distinct assembly, called the House of Commons. 3. The 

 reduction in the number of the Lords Spiritual, by the suppression of 

 the monastic establishments. 4. The introduction of the Scottish 

 representative peers. And 5. The introduction of the Irish bishops 

 and the Irish representative peers. 



This house may be traced to the very beginning of anything like an 

 li constitution. It is in fact the inftfjuiim concilium of the early 

 chronicles. The bishops are sometimes said to sit there hi virtue of 

 baronies annexed to their respective offices ; but it is questionable 

 whether baronies are attached to the bishoprics of the new creation 

 by Henry VIII. ; and at best it is but a legal fiction, it being evident 

 from the whole course of history that the bishops formed, as such, a 

 constituent part of such assemblies in the Saxon times, and were, as 

 such, among the chief advisers of the king. One of the last acts of 

 King Charles I., before he finally left London and disconnected himself 

 from the Parliament, was to give the royal assent to a bill for re- 

 moving the bishops from Parliament. The bishops were restored after 

 the return of Charley II., 1660. 



A question has been raised whether, as the Lords Spiritual and the 

 Lords Temporal, though sitting together, form two distinct eslatet of 

 the realm, the concurrence of both is not requisite iu any determina- 

 tion of this house, just as the consent of the two houses of Parliament 

 is necessary to every determination of parliament. But it is now 

 understood that the Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal are one 

 whose joint will is to be collected by the gross majority of 

 : and statutes have been made in the absence of all the Spiritual 

 Lords. 



The House of Lords has two distinct functions : the legislative and 

 the judicial. 



In its legislative character, every new law, and every change in the 

 existing law, must have the consent of a majority of this house, as well 

 as of a majority of the House of Commons. 



In iU judicial character, it is a court for the trial 1. Of criminal 

 cosea on impeachment by the House of Commons ; 2. Of peers, on 

 indictments found by a grand jury ; 3. For the hearing and deter- 

 mining of appeals from decisions of the Court of Chancery : 4. For the 

 hearing and determining of appeals on writs of error to reverse judg- 

 iu> nM of the Court of Exchequer Chamber (which is itself a court of 

 ART* AND SCI. DIV. VOL. V. 



appeal from the courts of Common Law) ; and 5. In In ariug and 

 determining appeals from the supreme courts in Ireland aud Scotland. 

 The House can require the attendance of the judges of the superior 

 courts of law, to assist it in the discharge of its duties ; which U 

 sometimes done. 



A few points in which the House of Lords differs from the lower 

 house of Parliament remain to .be noticed. In the chair of the house 

 sits the lord high chancellor of England. When the king goes to 

 Parliament he takes the throne in the House of Lords, and the 

 Commons are summoned to attend him there to receive the com- 

 munication of his will and pleasure. The royal assent to bills, whether 

 given by the sovereign, in person, or by a commission appointed 

 by the king or queen, is given in the House of Lords. All bills 

 which affect the rights and dignities of the peerage must originate in 

 that house. The members of the House of Lords have a right of 

 voting on any measure before the house by proxy, but the proxy must 

 be a member of the house; and, lastly, they have the privilege of 

 entering on the journals of the house their dissent from any measure 

 which has received the sanction of the majority, with the reasons for 

 that dissent. This is called their protest. For further information see 

 PARLIAMENT. 



LORDSHIP. [LEET.] 



LOTIONS, or washes, termed also epithems, and when intended for 

 the eye, collyria, or eye-washes, are either mixtures of different ingre- 

 dients, or solutions of various medicinal substances, in water or other 

 menstrua, designed for external application. If the object be to reduce 

 the temperature of a part, they are generally formed of spirituous or 

 other volatile principles, which by their evaporation occasion cold (and 

 such must be applied by means of a very thin single layer of linen) ; or 

 of saline bodies, which at the moment of their solution cause a reduced 

 temperature, and which should be applied immediately after being 

 mixed, and frequently renewed. Others are composed of stimulating 

 substances, and are intended to impart power to indolent tumours or 

 ulcers, while a different set are designed to allay pain, and are com- 

 posed of sedative or narcotic principles. 



Many of the nostrums sold under the name of lotions are solutions 

 of very active ingredients, and their application is often productive of 

 very serious effects. 



LOTTERIES have been encouraged by some states for the purpose 

 of raising a revenue. The general plan has been for the government 

 to sell a certain number of tickets or chances, and to distribute by lot 

 a part of the money thus collected as prizes among a comparatively 

 small number of the purchasers. Lotteries are games of chance, the 

 aggregate number of players in which are sure to lose a part of their 

 venture. During the period in which the English state lotteries were 

 carried on by Act of Parliament, it was the plan to distribute in prizes 

 of different magnitudes an amount equal to 10i. for each ticket or 

 chance that was issued, and the profit to the state consisted of the sum 

 beyond that rate which contractors were willing to give for the 

 privilege oi selling to the public the tickets or shares of tickets, which 

 for that purpose they might divide into halves, quarters, eighths, and 

 sixteenths of tickets. The price paid by the contractors for this 

 privilege varied with circumstances, but was usually about six or seven 

 pounds per ticket beyond the amount repaid iu prizes, while the price 

 charged by the contractors to the public was generally four or five 

 pounds per ticket beyond that paid to the government ; and more than 

 this rate of advance was always required when the tickets were 

 divided into shares, the smaller shares being charged more in propor- 

 tion than the lirger. 



The earliest English lottery of which there is any record was in 

 1569, when 40,000 chances were sold at ten shillings each : the prizes 

 consisted of articles of plate, and the profit was employed for the 

 repair of certain harbours. In the course of the following century the 

 spirit of gambling appears to have materially increased in this direc- 

 tion, for private lotteries were, early in the reign of Queen Anne, 

 suppressed " as public nuisances." In the early period of the history 

 of the National Debt of England, it was usual to pay the prizes in the 

 state lotteries in the form of terminable annuities. In 1694 a loan of 

 a million was raised by the sale of lottery tickets at 10/. per ticket, the 

 prizes in which were funded at the rate of 1 4 per cent, for sixteen 

 years certain. In 1746 a loan of three millions was raised on 4 per 

 cent, annuities, and a lottery of 50,000 tickets at 10/. each ; and in the 

 following year one million was raised by the sale of 100,000 tickets, the 

 prizes in which were funded in perpetual annuities at the rate of 4 per 

 ceiit. per annum. Probably the last occasion on which the taste for 

 gambling was thus encouraged was in 1780, when every subscriber of 

 1000/. towards a loan of twelve millions at 4 per cent, receive,! a bonus 

 of four lottery tickets, the value of each of which was 10A 



Iu 1778 an Act was passed obliging every person who kept a lottery- 

 office to take out a yearly licence, and to pay 50/. for the same, a 

 measure which reduced the number of lottery-offices from 400 to 51. 



By limiting the subdivision of chances to the sixteenth of a ticket as 

 the minimum, it was intended to prevent the labouring population 

 from risking their earnings, but this limitation was extensively and 

 easily evaded by means which aggravated the evil, the keepers of these 

 illegal offices (commonly known as " little goes ") and insurance offices 

 requiring extra profits to cover the chances of detection aud punish- 

 ment. All the efforts of the police were ineffectual for the suppression 



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