The Supreme Court of Appeal had been violently attacked in the Commons, where certain members declared it to be inferior to any tribunal in the land. Palmerston in 1856 determined to remedy its defects by the addition of two Law Lords who should be life peers. This scheme was upheld by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cranworth, but met with determined opposition in the Upper House. The Law Lords were especially opposed to it, fearing that, if such a precedent were allowed, no lawyer in the future would ever be given an hereditary peerage. On the Premier's recommendation the Queen proposed to confer life peerages upon two distinguished lawyers, Parke and Pemberton Leigh, and proceeded to issue a patent to the former, creating him Baron Wensleydale for life. When, however, the matter was referred to the Committee for Privileges, they decided that no life peer could either sit or vote in the House of Lords, and the Wensleydale and Kingsdown peerages had consequently to be made hereditary. Persons who are raised to the peerage to-day are made peers of the United Kingdom. No Scotch peer has been created since the Union in 1707, and the right of conferring an Irish peerage which existed under certain restrictions in the Act of Union has ceased to be exercised except upon one notable recent occasion.[41] [41] Lord Curzon of Kedleston was so created in 1898. During the last fifty years some one hundred and fifty additions have been made to the membership of the House of Lords. The only limit to the numerical increase of peers would seem to lie in the good sense of the Prime Minister or the patience of the Sovereign. It is of course the latter who confers peerages, though as the former usually brings suitable candidates for ennoblement to the royal notice, he is generally held responsible for the result of his recommendations.[42] [42] When the last Liberal Government of Queen Victoria came into office the Court officials were discussing the new Administration one day at Windsor. "I wonder what peers they'll make," remarked one of the ladies-in-waiting. The Queen turned upon her with uplifted eyebrows. "_They!_" she exclaimed. An uncomfortable silence ensued. Again, in 1909, a Cabinet Minister's allusion in a speech to certain newspaper proprietors whom a Conservative Prime Minister had "taken the precaution to make into barons" inspired the King's private Secretary to write a letter to a correspondent in which he stated that, notwithstanding the Minister's statement, "the creation of Peers remains a Royal prerogative." [Illustration: THE HOUSE OF LORDS IN 1742 FROM AN ENGRAVING BY JOHN FINE] The House of Lords now includes some 616 members, divided, as we have seen, into four classes; the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal--Princes of the Blood, Dukes, Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts, Barons--the Representative Peers of Scotland and Ireland, and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary.