Lord Penzance thought sufficient attention had not been paid to the fact that the House, though not representative in the same sense as was the other House, was and ought to be representative of the kingdom at large. The question was how the House, which must indeed always represent chiefly the realized property of the country, might be made also to reflect as completely as possible its intelligence. Indeed, should a conflict ever arise between this and the other House, it would be well that this House should contain one element dissociated from the ownership of land. He supported the Bill because it would meet this want, and he thought the number to which Lord Cairns's amendment would limit such peerages would be inadequate for the purpose. There was danger, however, that mere partisans of a Minister might be created lifepeers if the Bill contained no definition. On this account he proposed that service for five years under the Crown with distinction should be made a condition of the dignity being conferred.

The Duke of Cleveland allowed that the Bill was moderate in form, but was alarmed at the idea of a large infusion of a new element into the House as a consequence of the measure. To a House which should be a combination of numerous nominees of the Crown with an hereditary peerage, he should far prefer the institution of a second Chamber, elected simply on the representative principle.

The House having gone into Committee, Earl Stanhope proposed his amendment restricting the selection of more than one life-peer in any year to certain specific classes, Cabinet Ministers, and others.

Earl Russell was ready to accept Lord Cairns's amendment of the preamble, but he must oppose Lord Stanhope's and the other peers' amendments. His object in introducing the Bill had been to improve the authority of the House, and its debating power, by the introduction of faculties like those of a Jenner or a Watt. He believed that it would, in its present form, accomplish that end.

The Marquis of Salisbury vindicated his former remarks from the interpretation put upon them. The House might be representative without being elective; and he adhered to his view that it was expedient to make the character of the House more elastic by intermixing somehow or other representatives of the commercial and manufacturing classes.

Earl Granville approved of the Bill as likely to bring more general experience into the House, and to facilitate the obtaining for the public the services of men whose circumstances did not fit them for an hereditary dignity, besides increasing the salutary element of combativeness to which Lord Salisbury attached importance. He warned the House against encumbering the measure with restrictions which must ensure its rejection in the other House. Earl Stanhope withdrew his amendment, in consideration of Lord Russell's agreeing to another, to the effect that not more than two peers should be created in any one year, and that the total number at any time should not exceed twenty-eight. Thus the Bill

passed through Committee; and up to this point it appeared to have a remarkable concurrence of opinion in its favour. On the third reading, however, being moved, the tide turned, and it became evident that the proposed innovation was displeasing to the majority of the peers.

The Earl of Malmesbury proposed that it should be read a third time that day three months. He thought the object of the Bill could only be to place the House more on a level with the time and nation, and that there was no evidence that it was not already on a level with them. An analysis of the composition of the House showed, he believed, precisely the opposite.

Lord Lyveden thought the present system of conferring hereditary peerages on military men whom the State had to pension for their lives tended to produce a pauper Senate. He was also in favour of creating a certain number of ex officio legal peers. With regard, therefore, to motives of convenience in respect of these two classes, he should support the Bill, but not from any belief that the House needed radical reform, or that in any case two life-peerages a year could effect it.

Earl Stanhope criticised the argument that Bishops, as sitting by baronial tenure, were no precedent for the change. He instanced different cases in which life-peerages would be useful, among others, that of the two Irish Archbishops, who could not, in his view, retain with any propriety their seats in the House as Bishops after the disestablishment of their Church. He saw but little force in the objections to the Bill, although he was averse to creating an unlimited number of such peerages.

Earl Granville objected to this repeated discussion on the merits of the Bill, particularly after the compromise which had been arrived at on it.

Lord Cairns defended the opposition of certain peers to the Bill at its present stage. He had never concealed his own doubt of the expediency of the change. He feared a pressure might be put on the Minister of the day to fill up the two peerages each year, whether there were men fit for the dignity or not. At all events, whatever the benefits of the measure, he hardly believed they were such as to justify the risk of opening the whole constitution of that House to the criticisms of the other.

A division being taken, the Bill was rejected by 106 to 77.

On the same day on which the above measure was introduced by Earl Russell, Earl Grey laid on the table of the House a Bill for amending the laws relating to the election of Scottish and Irish Representative Peers. The noble earl expressed his opinion that the manner in which these elections were conducted was exceedingly unsatisfactory. In the case of Scotland, the system gave to one party a complete monopoly of the representation. The changes he sought to effect by the Bill were these:-That the Scotch peers should be put upon the same footing as the Irish; that they should be elected, not for the Parliament, but for life; that if they were

elected for life they should have the power of resigning their seats; at present, no such power existed in the case of peers of either Scotland or Ireland. He further proposed that a representative peer who should absent himself for two consecutive sessions without leave of the House, should be deemed to have resigned his seat. That the peers of Scotland, instead of being 16, should be not less than 16, and not more than 18; and, in the same manner, that the Irish peers, instead of being 28, should be not less than 28, and not more than 30, with the further provision that no election for a representative peer of either Scotland or Ireland should occur until the number of those peers should have fallen, by death or resignation, below 16 or 28 respectively. Whenever the number of peers should have fallen below the present established number for the two countries, then a writ should issue for the election of three peers; and whenever the Scotch peers should fall below 16, the peers should be summoned, and should be directed to choose three peers, thus bringing up the number at the time to 18; and in the choice of those three peers every peer should have the privilege of giving three votes, which it should be in his power either to give in favour of a single peer, or to divide between two or three peers. according to his discretion. The object of that was to ensure that every shade of opinion should have fair representation in that House, It was not precisely the representation of a minority, because there might be two or three shades of opinion to represent.

The Marquis of Clanricarde expressed his satisfaction that the subject had been taken in hand; and the Bill was read a first time, but did not proceed farther.

An alteration of the law in regard to the property of married women was much discussed in both Houses, but was finally deferred to a future session by the House of Lords, after passing the ordeal of a second reading. This Bill was nearly the same as had been introduced by Mr. G. Shaw Lefevre in the preceding session. The Recorder of London, Mr. Russell Gurney, took charge of the present Bill, and advocated its principle with much effect. He put it forward chiefly as a measure for the protection of the 800,000 wage-earning married women in the country, and of the considerable class with fortunes too small to justify application to a court of equity. The Recorder maintained that no other remedy but this would enable the wife to retain her own earnings, subject to the same liabilities as a husband. Of the extent of the evil now felt he gave some distressing instances from his own judicial experience, and he showed that the Bill was not only in accordance with the law of the principal nations of Europe, and of the United States, but that it was an extension of our own everyday practice of settlements. He offered to refer the Bill to a Select Committee if it were read a second time.

Mr. Jessel supported the Bill, arguing that our present law was the relic of a time when a wife was considered the slave of the husband. He advocated the change, because, among other things,

it would raise the status of married women, and would thus ultimately benefit the husband.

The measure was also supported by Mr. Shaw Lefevre, who referred at some length to the example of the United States, by Mr. Osborne Morgan, Sir F. Goldsmid, and by the SolicitorGeneral, who declined to treat it as a poor man's question, but argued generally that the property of a wife, rich or poor, ought to be protected as much as the husband's.

Mr. Lopes moved the rejection of the Bill. He professed his readiness to concur in a measure for the protection of the earnings of married women, but held that this Bill went farther than was necessary for that purpose. The advantages given to the husband. by the present law were more than compensated by the liability of paying the wife's debts and maintaining her children. He dwelt on the licence which the Bill would give to married women with independent incomes; and as to settlements, they were intended not so much for the protection of the wife as of the children.

Mr. Beresford-Hope sympathized with the grievance of the needy class which the Bill sought to remedy, but objected to the wanton interference with the married relations of the easy class which it threatened. The free-trade in divorce prevailing in the United States vitiated any parallel with them; and in what country, he asked, under this state of law, were conjugal relations so pure as in England? The Bill would revolutionize the whole system of credit. He drew an amusing picture of the devices to which a married couple living under the new dispensation would resort to keep their creditors at arms length-" the husband walking abroad in his wife's gown, and the wife in her husband's coat."

Mr. Henley also opposed the Bill as going far beyond the grievance which he admitted to exist. There was no mutuality in the arrangement; and if the Bill passed, the wife's earnings should be liable for the husband's debts.

Mr. Lopes did not press his opposition to a division, and the Bill was read a second time and referred to a Select Committee. Having gone through this investigation it was read a third time, being opposed at that stage by Mr. Raikes, who deprecated the measure as part of a movement which aimed at putting women on a civil equality with men, which would be most injurious to them, and would strike a blow at the institution of marriage. The House, however, passed the Bill by a majority of 131 to 32.

Lord Penzance took the measure in charge, and gave it the benefit of his support in the House of Lords. Disclaiming any sympathy with the theorists who would place the sexes on a footing of absolute equality, and admitting the danger of disturbing beyond the actual necessities of the case the present relations of married life, he pointed out the hardships often undergone by women to whom a settlement was too expensive a luxury; and acknowledging that the Bill would revolutionize the common law,

he urged that a mere extension of the system of "protection orders" would not remedy the evil. The advanced period of the session precluding sufficient consideration of the details to allow of immediate legislation, he invited the House to affirm the principle of the Bill, with a view to an early settlement of the question.

In the short discussion which followed, the Duke of Northumberland, who but for the contemplated withdrawal of the Bill had intended to move its rejection, admitted that the existing evil required a remedy. The Lord Chancellor cited the long-standing practice of the Court of Chancery in encouraging settlements as evidence of the defectiveness of the common law. Lord Cairns admitted the force of that argument, though he objected to some of the details of the Bill. Lord Romilly also described the state of bondage in which women of the humbler class were held by the present state of the law, and Lord Shaftesbury urged the importance of the question, and dwelt on the magnitude of the evil which existed in the manufacturing districts. The Bill was read a second time, but owing to the pressure of time could not be proceeded with.

Mr. Locke King, who had long laboured to bring about a change of the law of inheritance to landed property, assimilating the distribution of real estate to that of personal estate in case of intestacy, again brought in a measure for that purpose, but it was so late in the session before it came to be discussed that all chance of passing it into a law was at an end. Mr. King urged, in moving the second reading, all the principal arguments he had frequently adduced, and dwelt on the hardship and injustice caused by the existing law of descent. He did not anticipate any extensive change from the passing of his Bill, believing that it would operate almost solely on small properties, but if it should tend towards the division of great estates he should not regret the consequences.

He

Mr. Beresford-Hope moved the rejection of the Bill. examined its effect both on large and small estates. With regard to the latter he described it as a measure of confiscation, for it would put them to the expense of frequent sales, and ultimately would lead to the aggrandizement of large estates. He objected to it also that it would diminish the motives for exertion and selfreliance among younger sons, that it would limit the discretion of testators, and would subject these small properties to probate as well as succession duties, and he illustrated his arguments by the action of the law of gavelkind in Kent. As to large estates, he pointed out that, since free trade in corn, land had become more of a luxury than a necessity in England; and, preferring moderate residential estates both to large aggregations and minute divisions, he objected that the change would diminish the inducements of successful commercial men to invest in land. He maintained that all the evils complained of might be remedied by facilitating the making of wills.

Mr. Leveson Gower supported the Bill as a measure of justice, having no fear that it would lead to excessive subdivision of property