Page:The Irish Parliament; what it was, and what it did.djvu/22

 of seats in the House of Commons, had become so usual, that when Lord Fitzwilliam, the most popular Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, departed from the custom, and ennobled Lord Chief Baron Yelverton, Mr. Egan sarcastically inquired whether such conduct had led to his recall. Was he recalled because he (Lord Fitzwilliam) disdained to sell peerages, to corrupt the House of Commons, as one of his predecessors had done," and intended to send a character to the Upper House (the Chief Baron), than whom, travel east or west, none more deserving was to be found, as a contrast and corrective to the spawn and reptility that had crept into that august assembly." " The peerage," Mr. Lecky feels himself constrained to say " which was the natural representative of the landed classes, was systematically degraded, and the majority of Irish titles are historically connected with memories not of honour, but of shame."

The alteration in the Constitution in 1782 gave, as will be subsequently explained, increased power to the Peerage. The advocates of popular rights understated the case when they said that peerages were sold, and members of the House of Commons purchased with the money obtained by the sale. The independence of the House of Lords was assailed by direct ministerial corruption. "The peers," writes the Duke of Rutland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in