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This, again, was a point of difference between the conditions of the Scotch and Irish Unions; since by the terms of the Scotch Union the King was forever debarred from creating any new Scotch peerages. Recent legislation has given such importance to the next resolution, that it will be well to quote his precise words: "5.
Correspondence of the Sovereign with French Princes. Russian War. Abolition of the Tax on Newspapers. Life Peerages. Resignation of two Bishops. Indian Mutiny. Abolition of the Sovereign Power of the Company. Visit of the Prince of Wales to India. Conspiracy Bill. Rise of the Volunteers. National Fortifications. The Lords Reject the Measure for the Repeal of the Paper-duties.
They will in future have no other rank than that of their respective peerages; but the Duc du Maine alone, for the fidelity he has always manifested towards the King, will retain his rank for his life, although his issue, if he should have any, will not inherit it. Madame d'Orleans was in the greatest despair, and came to Paris in such a condition as moved my pity for her.
He was assured that the measure could be accomplished "by freely bestowing marquisates, baronies, and peerages, in order to content the avarice and ambition of many persons, without at the same time dissipating the greatness from which all these members depended.
They firmly advised the king to confer peerages on "such a number of persons as might ensure the success of the bill". The principle thus expressed had, as has been seen, been reluctantly approved by the king himself, but he recoiled from the application of it when he learned that it would involve at least fifty new creations.
He talks of my having appealed merely to the extinction of peerages in my argument; but, on his plan of computation, extinctions are perpetually and wholly lost sight of.
Eighty-five boroughs all of which were in the hands of private owners would lose their members if a Union were passed, and all these, accordingly, it was resolved to compensate, and no less than a million and a quarter of money was actually advanced for that purpose, while for owners less easily reached by this means peerages, baronetcies, steps in the peerage, and similar inducements, were understood to be forthcoming as an equivalent.
Nor need I say more than one word about the other part of the ideal, 'hating covetousness. The giver of peerages by the bushel died a commoner. The man that had everything at his command made no money, nor anything else, out of his long years of office, except the satisfaction of having been permitted to render what he believed to be the highest of service to the nation that he loved so well.
Your dignities, peerages, promotions, your kingships, your brazen statues erected in capital and county towns to our select demigods of your selecting, testify loudly enough what kind of heroes and hero-worshippers you are. Woe to the People that no longer venerates, as the emblem of God himself, the aspect of Human Worth; that no longer knows what human worth and unworth is!
That is the explanation, and I am glad to have finished it: the blemishes on honourable lineage are a delicate subject, and certainly this heredity we hear so much about is the finest scandalmonger in the world; it laughs at discretion, and writes strange entries between the lines of the "Peerages". Well, be that as it may, I had picked up a good deal of pleasure and a good deal of knowledge.
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