Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/234

 1 98 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

Upon a report to the House the latter declares its opinion by way of address. Hereditary peers may, by a 'standing order' of the Upper House, take their seat without further preliminary ; peers newly created or summoned have to be ' introduced.' The privilege of the members of the Upper House, including the bishops, of voting by proxy, was suspended by a ' standing Order ' — number XXXII — passed, on the motion of the Lord Privy Seal, the 31st of March, 1868.

The Crown is unrestricted in its power of creating peers, and the privilege has been largely used by modern governments to till the House of Lords. In consequence of certain terms in the Act of Union — 5 Anne, c. 8 — limiting the right of election of tin- Scottish representative peers to the then existing peers of Scotland, it is understood that the sovereign cannot create a new Scottish peerage ; and such peerages are in fact never created except in the case of the younger branches of the royal family, though extinct peerages may be revived or forfeited peerages restored. By the Irish Act of Union — 39 & 40 Geo. III. c. 67 — the sovereign is restricted to the creation of one new Irish peerage on the extinction of three of the existing peerages ; but when the Irish peers are reduced to 100, then on the extinction of one peerage another may be created.

The House of Lords, in the session of 1870, consisted of 471 members, of whom 4 were peers of the Blood Royal, 2 arch- bishops, 20 dukes, 20 marquesses, 127 earls, 30 viscounts, 24 bishops, 234 barons, 16 Scottish representative peers, 28 Irish representative peers, and 4 Irish prelates, the latter sitting for the last time as peers, their title becoming extinguished at the end of the year. The list included 15 minors, reducing the actual con- stituency of the Upper House in the session of 1870 to 456. Deducting the Irish and Scottish representative peers, and the prelates, the number of hereditary peerages, at the end of July, 1870, was 408. More than two-thirds of these hereditary peer- ages were created in the present century. The three oldest existing peerages date from the latter part of the thirteenth century ; while four go back to the fourteenth, and seven to the fifteenth century. Of peerages of the sixteenth century, there exist 12 ; of the seventeenth, 35 ; of the eighteenth, 95 ; and of the present nine- teenth century, 233. In the forty years 1830-70, there were issued 176 patents of peerage, namely 34 under the administration of Earl Grey; 39 under Lord Melbourne; 11 under Sir Robert Peel; 24 under Earl Russell; 23 under Viscount Palmerston ; 25 under the Earl of Derby ; 4 under Mr. Disraeli ; and 16 under Mr. Gladstone. (See page 208 for duration of office of the above heads of the government).

The Lower House of legislature, representing, in constitutional