councils, without extending this article beyond its legitimate limits.

As genius is not necessarily or usually transmitted from generation to
generation, while a seat in the House of Lords is an inheritable
privilege, it will be readily believed that there is a considerable
number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative
duties,--men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to
comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be
adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain
ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are
obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are
greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been
discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and
canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about
what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an
evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while
noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences by a
statement of their views upon the subject under discussion, will be sure
to retire with a very unfavorable and wholly incorrect estimate of the
speaking talent of English peers.

It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members
of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates.
As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four
hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the
average attendance is less than fifty. The right to vote by proxy is a
peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious
voting to a great extent is common on all important issues. Macaulay,
many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords "a small and torpid
audience"; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there