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The Baron’s curiosity was still further excited by observing that they consisted principally of a London and a St Egbert’s directory, several volumes of a Dictionary of National Biography, and one or two peerages and county family compilations. He looked up with a smile. “You may well wonder, my dear Baron. The fact is, I am looking for a name.” “A name! vat name?”
His lordship himself, and the order to which he belonged, and those who aspired to enter it, were, it must be added, among the most insatiable of these purchased supporters. The Dublin Gazette for July, 1800, announced not less than sixteen new peerages, and the same publication for the last week of the year, contained a fresh list of twenty-six others.
All the claimants for new peerages oppose it with their clamours, as if this was a creation, and taking it for granted that the King is to accept their interpretations instead of his own. I suppose, if he fulfilled all his engagements upon that score, there would be an addition to the House of Lords equal to the present number.
It was all very well to talk as I had done of wealth and power and peerages, but what did I know nowadays of my uncle's position? Suppose in the midst of such boasting and confidence there came some turn I did not suspect, some rottenness he had concealed from me? I resolved I had been playing with aeronautics long enough; that next morning I would go to him and have things clear between us.
He was not to have the power to create peerages, nor to alienate the property of the crown, nor to grant offices in reversion; and, as the Queen was to have the care of his Majesty's person, she also was to have the appointment of all the offices in the royal household.
On the expediency of the measure its opponents had urged that it would effect a remodelling of the House of Peers, a total change of its constitution, by the introduction of a second and distinct class of peerages; and Lord Campbell, with a not unbecoming jealousy for what he regarded as the interests of his brother lawyers, argued that it would "henceforth prevent any lawyer, however eminent he might have been as an advocate, whatever services he might have rendered to the state in the House of Commons, whatever fame or fortune he might have acquired, from aspiring to an hereditary peerage, or to becoming the founder of a family, since, to make a distinction between the Chancellor and the Chief-justice, between one Chancellor or Chief-justice and another, when coming into the Upper House, as to the tenure of their honors, would be intolerable; all must be under the same rule, 'no son of theirs succeeding." And Lord Lyndhurst closed his argument by drawing a comparison between the House of Lords and the French Senate: "It was but a few weeks since he had read an official comment in the Moniteur, coming from the highest source, on the inefficiency, the want of patriotism, energy, and the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to which they were called, that characterized that illustrious body, the Senate of France.
That this profuse creation of peers was more than the result of passing embarrassment was shown by its continuance under James's successors. Charles the First bestowed no less than fifty-six peerages; Charles the Second forty-eight.
His sagacity was only equalled by his prudence and patience, and these contributed, as well as his personal bravery, to his splendid successes, which secured for him magnificent rewards palaces and parks, peerages, and a nation's gratitude and praise. But there is a limit to all human glory.
For the present Government have showered down Peerages, Knighthoods of various orders, Lieutenancies of Counties, Deputy-Lieutenancies and Commissions of the Peace not to speak of salaried offices both in Ireland and elsewhere on Protestants who would consent to turn Nationalists, in a manner which makes it absurd to talk any more about bribery at the time of the Union.
This Austrian General, Fieldmarshal Browne, will by and by concern us somewhat; and the reader may take note of him. "Who the Irish Brothers Browne, the Fathers of these Marshals Browne, were? I have looked in what Irish Peerages and printed Records there were, but without the least result. There are so many Irish in the like case with these Brownes.
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