NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14250, 22 December 1909, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS. The House of Lords is a body very unlike the body of degenerates endowed with hereditary privileges which the Radical tries his best to believe it to be. It probably is, on .the whole, the ablest body, of men in England. Not inheritance, but selection, is the principle by which its efficiency has of late been maintained in a' high degree. Some of its strongest men are there by the law of descent. A great many more J ar>» | there as the best . representatives the kingdom could supply of all that is most eminent in law, in science, in . finance, in industry, in business of one kind or another, including, if you like, breweries, and including newspapers; including, also, men eminent in high political science at Home and abroad; and in the art- of war. The three foremost English soldiers of their , time are Lord Wolseley, Lord Roberts, and Lord Kitchener, each one of them bom a commoner, and ennobled for his services in the field. The three greatest of modern English pro-Consuls are Lord Cromer, Lord Milner, and Lord Curzon. All three have won their peerages by their own efforts, and their own great achievements. The lawyers in the Lords, or peers descended from lawyers, are too many to enumerate, but we may name Lord Halebury, three times Lord Chancellor,; and at 84 with a mind undimmed. Is there anybody who does not know who, Lord Kelvin is, or Lord Lister? . ; Or, has science anywhere any . greater men! . If there be one name, in finance which for three . generations has meant 1 more to Europe than all others, it is Rothschild, and the present Lord Rothschild, the first authority in the City of London and ' throughout the kingdom, is the first peer of that great house. Lord Avebury is another and Lord Revelstoko a third, though the second of that title, the late Lord Armstrong, stood for ope kind of industry, and Lord Pirrie stands for another. Lord Burnham owes his rank -to his ownership and editorship of a great newspaper. Lord Northcliff owes his to the creative genius, alike journalistic and : financial, which has put 1 him at the head of the journalists of his time and in the front rank of public men in whatever dje--1 partment. ■ And - Lord ijorley—the Radi- , cal politician, the Radical . editor, the speculative f writer and . thinker, now the ruler of India. How came Lord Morley to be Viscount Morley- of Blackburn? Not, certainly, as the effete son of some mouldy sire upon whom a title has descended. This is what explains the existence of the House of Lords in so democratic a country as England. It exists because it is the most democratic institution in England, and because, in the-long run, it has been recognised as an assembly whose v.ppipion, is as nearly as possible .the. opinion of a. consensus ■of the com. petent. " •/ t