seeming consistency; but still, when opposing a measure which he might have been expected to support, he would have probably found it more expedient, as well as more agreeable, to confine himself chiefly to the task of attacking some "great man in the present administration." It ought to be said of Stanhope that he was distinctly in advance of his age as regarded the recognition of the principle of religious equality. He was not only anxious to put the Protestant Dissenters as much as possible on a level with Churchmen in all the privileges of citizenship, but he was even strongly in favor of mitigating the severity of the laws against the Roman Catholics. In his "History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," Lord Stanhope, the descendant of the minister whose career and character have done so much honor to a name and a family, claims for him the credit of having put on paper a scheme "not undeserving of attention as the earliest germ of Roman Catholic emancipation." Stanhope's life was too soon and too {174} suddenly cut short to allow him to push forward his scheme to anything like a practical position, and it is not probable that he could in any case have done much with it at such a time. Still, though fate cut short the life, it ought not to cut short the praise. [Sidenote: 1719--The Peerage Bill] The Peerage Bill raised a question of some constitutional importance. The principal object of this measure, which was introduced on February 28, 1719, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Somerset, and was believed to have Lord Sunderland for its actual author, was to limit the prerogative of the Crown in the creation of English peerages to a number not exceeding six, in addition to those already existing. According to the provisions of the Bill, the Crown might still create new Peers on the extinction of old titles for want of male heirs; but with this exception the power of adding new peerages would be limited to the number of six. It was also proposed that, instead of the sixteen elective Peers from Scotland, twenty-five hereditary Peers should be created. This part of the Bill was that which at the time gave rise to most of the debate, in the House of Lords at least; but the really important constitutional question was that which involved the limitation of the privilege of the Sovereign. The Sovereign himself sent a special message to the House of Lords, informing them that "he has so much at heart the settling the Peerage of the whole kingdom upon such a foundation as may secure the freedom and constitution of Parliament in all future ages, that he is willing that his prerogative stand not in the way of so great and necessary a work." The ostensible motive for the proposed legislation was to get rid of difficulties caused by the over-increase of the numbers of the peerage since the union of England and Scotland; the real object was to guard