English, and Scotch Radicals should coalesce. Mutual concessions may be necessary, but this is always the case in political alliances. That the Irish should not love the English connection is hardly surprising. We are only now beginning to do them justice, and we have accompanied this modicum of justice with a Coercion Act, aimed not only at crime, but at legitimate political agitation. If we remove their grievances, if we make Irishmen the true rulers of Ireland, and if we cease to meddle in matters that concern them and not us, there is no reason to suppose that they would wish to separate from us any more than our colonies. Separation would, indeed, be as disadvantageous to them as to us." A year or two later he gave clear expression to the same Radical faith in the House of Commons in a speech which he made on his own amendment to the motion that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair: "That in the opinion of this House it is contrary to the true principles of representative Government, and injurious to their efficiency, that any person should be a member of one House of the Legislature by right of birth, and it is therefore desirable to put an end to any such existing rights." "It has been pointed out to him," he said, "that these words might include Her Majesty, which, of course, was not intended ... they had been engaged in democratising, as far as they could, the Commons {239} branch of the Legislature; but all their efforts would be abortive, all their efforts at Parliamentary reform would be illusory, if they allowed side by side with that House a Legislative Assembly to exist, which, in its nature, was aristocratic, and which had a right to tamper with and veto the decisions of the nation, which were registered by the House of Commons.... Members of the House of Lords were neither elected nor selected for their merits. They sat by the merits of their ancestors, and, if we looked into the merits of some of those ancestors, we should agree that the less said about them the better. The House of Lords consisted of a class most dangerous to the community--the class of rich men, the greater part of whose fortune was in land. It was asserted of them that the House of Lords was recruited from the wisest and best in the country--that the Lords were so wise and good that, in some mysterious way, they were able to transmit their virtues to future generations in _secula seculorum_. The practice in the selection of those gentlemen was not quite in accordance with this theory. They consisted generally of two classes--of those who were apparently successful politicians, and of those who were undoubtedly successful money-grubbers. He would take a few examples, and, as he did not wish to be invidious, he would take them from both sides of the House. They all knew and appreciated Sir R. Assheton Cross, Mr. Sclater Booth, Sir Thomas Brassey, and Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen. What did they think of these