So it was agreed between the King and his Prime Minister that Lord Brougham should be made Lord Chancellor, and thus forfeit his right to sit in the House of Commons. If we speak with literal accuracy it is not quite correct to say that a man by becoming Lord Chancellor becomes necessarily, and at once, a member of the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor of course presides over the sittings of the House of Lords, but he is not necessarily, from the first, a member of the hereditary assembly. He sits on the woolsack, which, though actually in the House of Lords, is not technically to be described as occupying such a position. If a Lord Chancellor who is actually a peer desires to take part in a debate he has to leave the woolsack and stand on some part of the floor which is technically within the Chamber. On more than one historic occasion some inconvenience has arisen from the fact that a newly created Lord Chancellor had not yet been {125} made a peer, and therefore was not entitled to take part in a debate, or even to speak for some ceremonial purpose within the Chamber on behalf of the House of Lords. Brougham as a matter of fact was not made a peer until a little time after he had become Lord Chancellor. All this, however, is only mentioned here as a matter of curious and technical interest to the reader of Parliamentary history. Brougham was made a peer soon enough for all purposes, and in the mean time he was removed altogether from the House of Commons. Brougham did not accept his new position without some grumbling. Probably he had the idea that Lord Grey and others of his colleagues were glad to have him safely provided for out of the range of the representative assembly, where his eloquence might now and then become an inconvenient influence. He accepted the position, however, and became a member of the House of Lords. From that time his real influence over the country may be said to have come to an end. After he ceased to be Lord Chancellor he remained simply an eloquent, overbearing member of the House of Lords, often delighting the galleries and the public with his meteoric flashes of eloquence; but his power as a reformer was gone, and for the greater part of his remaining career, when one or two important questions to which he was pledged had been disposed of, he took little interest in any movement of reform.