Fourth Epoch (1832—1884).

What then, in brief, is the case against the Peers? In the first epoch of their career they robbed the People; in the page 101 second they robbed the Church; in the third they robbed the Crown; in the fourth, as always, they have been the steady foes of suffrage reform, of Nonconformists, of Roman Catholics, of Ireland, of Agriculture, of Trade, of Education. "The Peers," says Lord Rosebery," have no friends." This news is too good to be true; but it is strange indeed that they should have any. All good legislation they retard, all bad legislation they expedite. Whatever progress we have made has been made in spite of them. They represent political privilege and social injustice. The Peers alone possess nearly a fifth of the whole soil of the country, for the restricted use of which they levy on the cultivators a private tax called rent of nearly twelve millions per annum. Not content with this, our Dukes, Marquises, Earls, and their relatives have within the last thirty-three years looted the Exchequer of more than sixty-six million sterling in salaries and pensions. Noble lords divide among them annually in the shape of annuities, pensions, salaries, &c., £639,865! They are a House of Landlords, and until they are abolished root and branch no solution of the great Land Question is to be dreamed of. They are the veriest octopuses of civilisation. Every State that has tolerated an aristocracy has eventually been ruined by it—witness Greece, Rome, Carthage, Venice, Spain, Austria. Latifundio, perdidére Italiam immo et provincias.

And when the Hereditary House is abolished, the demand which will be made by reactionaries for a Representative Second Chamber must be sternly resisted. True, most nations have Second Chambers in imitation of our pernicious example; but there is not one of them, however constituted, whose history is not a conclusive argument against such institutions. The Second Chambers of Europe and America are nothing more than standing monuments of the gregarious folly of mankind. Nations can no more have two wills than individuals. A Second Chamber at one with the First is superfluous; in opposition it is noxious. Lord Salisbury wishes to import here the American Senate (the last stronghold of the slaveholders) at a moment when that body stands condemned by the ablest political thinkers in the Republic as a filthy rag of aristocracy. No, no, my Lord of Hatfield, you cannot be permitted thus recklessly to "Americanise our page 102 our institutions." The fiat has gone forth—Delenda est Carthago.

Clear the way, my lords and lackeys! You have had your day
Here you have your answer—England's yea against your nay.
Long enough your House has held you; out, and clear the way!