The son, at a far more critical moment, adopted the course which he did
adopt as the only means which he saw of extricating the state and the
nation from an alternative of great calamities: the extinction of, or at
least a deep wound to, the legislative independence of the House of
Lords, by the following of a single precedent[218] which had ever since
been universally condemned; or, on the other hand, a continuance of
outrages and tumults which had already disgraced the nation in the eyes
of the world, and which, if renewed and continued, could not fail to
imperil the safety of the state. Such a motive may certainly be allowed
to excuse the irregularity of the act.
When, however, we come to consider the proposal to create peers, which
drove the King to take such a step, that is a question on which, while
it is still more important, it is also more difficult to form a
satisfactory judgment. It was denounced by the Duke of Wellington and
other peers as utterly unconstitutional and revolutionary; as a
destruction of the great principle of the equality of the two Houses; as
a denial to the peers of their right to form and act upon their own
deliberate judgment; and as a reduction of their position to that of a
body existing merely to register the decrees of the other House.
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