House of Lords

“ The peers of England had the substance, the peers of France the shadow.
To conclude, the House of Lords was a starting-point; towards civilization this is an immense thing. It had the honour to found a nation. It was the first incarnation of the unity of the people: English resistance, that obscure but all-powerful force, was born in the House of Lords. The barons, by a series of acts of violence against royalty, have paved the way for its eventual downfall. ”

“ So, gentlemen, it at once appears that there are 30,000,000 people in this country who are as much represented by the House of Lords as by the House of Commons, and who, for the protection of their rights, must depend upon them and the majesty of the Throne. ”

“ But what strikes me about the House of Lords is that it is a singularly independent assembly. It is not at the beck and call of any man. It is a body which does not care at all about party claptrap, but which does care a great deal about a good argument, from whatever quarter it may proceed. ”

“ Traditionally the power of the king had been restricted by a Parliament, composed of a House of Lords and a House of Commons, and as the former was then far more influential than the latter, supreme political control had rested practically with the king and the members of the upper house—great land-holding nobles and the princes of the church. ”

“ Nor will it be thought surprising that the House of Lords contains a considerable number of men of sterling ability, statesmen of broad and comprehensive views, accustomed to deal with important questions of public interest and national policy with calm, deliberate judgment, and far-reaching sagacity. ”

“ If age can confer dignity and distinction upon any assembly, then must the House of Lords be peculiarly distinguished, for it is certainly the most venerable as well as the most antiquated of our Parliamentary institutions. ”

“ I suppose it need not be added, that the government of England cannot move a step, while the house of commons continues to dislike proceedings, or persons employed; at least in an age where parliaments are grown so frequent, and are made so necessary: whereas a minister is but the creature of a day; and a house of lords has been modelled in many reigns, by enlarging the number, as well as by other obvious expedients. ”

“ The House of Lords in 1485.—Despite the numerous strictures that have been mentioned, Parliament in the Tudor period by no means stood still. The enormous power and independence exhibited by the chambers, especially the Commons, in the seventeenth century was the product of substantial, if more or less hidden, growth during the previous one hundred and fifty years. ”

“ The worst enemy our grandfathers supposed they had in England, throughout their Revolution, was the ministerial majority of that House of Commons, made up of placemen sitting for rotten boroughs, the sons of peers, and the country gentlemen, who belonged to a caste as much as their first-cousins who sat by titles in the House of Lords. ”

“ The King governing and administering Justice by His House of Lords, and advising with both His Houses of Parliament in all important matters, is the Government I own, am born under, and am obliged to. ”

“ The House of Commons was full of converted Jacobites and soldiers, while the House of Lords, undoubtedly the more liberal assembly of the two during the first half of the century, was rapidly losing that character. ”

“ Even now, however, as pointed out in the preceding chapter that might have been, the House of Lords is not at all what it was in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries when the majority of its members were Lords spiritual, men who had come up from the masses as a rule. ”

“ The House of Lords was a second-rate force, even when the peers were a first-rate force, because the greatest peers, those who had the greatest social importance, did not care for their own House, or like it, but gained great part of their political power by a hidden but potent influence in the competing House. ”

“ Powers. [228] The galleries are filled with specially privileged visitors of both sexes, and, as the royal procession enters, the whole assembly rises to its feet and remains standing until their Majesties have reached the two thrones at one end of the Chamber.
On taking his place upon the throne, the King bids the peers to be seated, and, through the Lord Great Chamberlain, commands Black Rod to inform the Commons that it is His Majesty's pleasure that they attend him immediately in the House of Lords. ”

“ A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that "the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it"—to look at it not on a great party field-day, or at a time of parade, but in the ordinary transaction of business. ”

“ My Lords, ’Tis not only your Interest, but the Interest of the Nation that you Maintain your Rights, for let the House of Commons and Gentry of England think what they please, there is no Prince that ever governed without Nobility or an Army: if you will not have one; you must have t’other, or the Monarchy cannot long support, or keep itself from tumbling into a Democratical Republique. ”

“ Whereas the Parliament hath Abolished the Kingly Office in England and Ireland, and in the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, and hath Resolved and Declared, That the People shall for the future be Governed by its own Representatives, or National Meetings in Councel, Chosen and Entrusted by them for that purpose, Hath setled the Government in the way of a Commonwealth and Free State, without King or House of Lords ”

“ My Lords, the Constitution of our Government hath provided better for Us, and I can never believe so Wise a Body as the House of Commons, will prove that Foolish woman, which plucks down her House with her hands. ”

“ II. The constituent parts of a parliament are the next objects of our enquiry. And these are, the king's majesty, sitting there in his royal political capacity, and the three estates of the realm; the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, (who sit, together with, the king, in one house) and the commons, who sit by themselves in another [n] . And the king and these three estates, together, form the great corporation or body politic of the kingdom, of which the king is said to be caput, principium, et finis. For upon their coming together the king meets them, either in person or by representation ”