The catastrophic creation of peers for the purpose of swamping the Upper House is utterly different.  If an able and impartial exterior king is at hand, this power is best in that king.  It is a power only to be used on great occasions, when the object is immense, and the party strife unmitigated.  This is the conclusive, the swaying power of the moment, and of course, therefore, it had better be in the hands of a power both capable and impartial, than of a Premier who must in some degree be a partisan.  The value of a discreet, calm, wise monarch, if such should happen to be reigning at the acute crisis of a nation’s destiny, is priceless.  He may prevent years of tumult, save bloodshed and civil war, lay up a store of grateful fame to himself, prevent the accumulated intestine hatred of each party to its opposite.  But the question comes back, Will there be such a monarch just then?  What is the chance of having him just then?  What will be the use of the monarch whom the accidents of inheritance, such as we know them to be, must upon an average bring us just then?

The answer to these questions is not satisfactory, if we take it from the little experience we have had in this rare matter.  There have been but two cases at all approaching to a catastrophic creation of peers—­to a creation which would suddenly change the majority of the Lords—­in English history.  One was in Queen Anne’s time.  The majority of peers in Queen Anne’s time were Whig, and by profuse and quick creations Harley’s Ministry changed it to a Tory majority.  So great was the popular effect, that in the next reign one of the most contested Ministerial proposals was a proposal to take the power of indefinite peer creation from the Crown, and to make the number of Lords fixed, as that of the Commons is fixed.  But the sovereign had little to do with the matter.  Queen Anne was one of the smallest people ever set in a great place.  Swift bitterly and justly said “she had not a store of amity by her for more than one friend at a time,” and just then her affection was concentrated on a waiting-maid.  Her waiting-maid told her to make peers, and she made them.  But of large thought and comprehensive statesmanship she was as destitute as Mrs. Masham.  She supported a bad Ministry by the most extreme of measures, and she did it on caprice.  The case of William IV. is still more instructive.  He was a very conscientious king, but at the same time an exceedingly weak king.  His correspondence with Lord Grey on this subject fills more than half a large volume, or rather his secretary’s correspondence, for he kept a very clever man to write what he thought, or at least what those about him thought.  It is a strange instance of high-placed weakness and conscientious vacillation.  After endless letters the king consents to make a reasonable number of peers if required to pass the second reading of the Reform Bill, but owing to desertion of the “Waverers” from the Tories,