226 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



this material may be indefinitely increased, both in quan- 

 tity and quality, by the creation of life-peerages as above 

 suggested. A peer is, at all events, an English gentleman. 

 Many peers belong to families whose names are household 

 words in our history, and these may well be supposed to 

 have the real interests of their country at heart, and to be 

 influenced more or less profoundly by the good old aristo- 

 cratic maxim, Noblesse oblige. Most of them have had the 

 best education our universities can afford, and have added 

 thereto that wider education derived from foreign travel 

 and from association with men of eminence at home and 

 abroad. They have the means and the leisure to make 

 themselves personally acquainted with the results of 

 various forms of government, and especially with those of 

 our Colonies, where free institutions are working out the 

 solution of many political and social problems ; and if the 

 duty of legislation was conferred upon them, not as an 

 accident of birth but by the free choice of their countrymen, 

 and as an indication of popular confidence in their integrity 

 and their special acquirements, they would probably devote 

 themselves with ardour to the work. We know already 

 that they do not lack either intellectual power or the 

 special faculties of statesmen, and we could ill spare men 

 of such attainments as the Marquises of Ripon and Salis- 

 bury, the late Duke of Argyll or the Earl of Rosebery, from 

 the great council of the nation. Let us, then, briefly con- 

 sider on what principles the new House of Lords should 

 be constituted, what should be the qualification of its 

 members, and how they should be chosen. 



Constitution of the Representative Upper Chamber. 



The first point to be considered is what should be the 

 constitution of the new House of Lords. And here it 

 seems to me to be important that this House should be 

 distinguished from the House of Commons, not only by 

 the preliminary qualification of its members as peers, but 

 by representing local areas considered as separate units, 

 and therefore without regard to the population of the 

 areas : just as the Senate of the United States represents 



