Some Noble Legislators.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 13, 27 March 1902, Page 18

Some Noble Legislators.

The London correspondent of the Otago Daily Times is evidently not one of those who obey the injunction to speak respectfully of those who are in authority over us. In one of hiß letters he recently referred, in a manner which must be thought unbecom. ingly flippant, to a noble lord who had appeared in some theatricals at a lordly mansion. The papers contained long accounts of the exploit, the ' object being apparently to show how many diamonds and other gems a silly bounder who happened to be a peer of the realm could crowd upon his inane person, and how absurd an appearance he could possibly complete without making the spectators absolutely ill.' He proceeds to remark (indignantly): • Yet this effeminate simpleton is one of our hereditary legislators, and hia vote in the House of Lords is as good as that of Lord Salisbury, or Lord Roaebery, or Lord Roberts, or the Archbishop of Canterbury I Surely one of these days we shall muster up courage to purge our Upper House of such imbeciles, as well as other peers Who have demonstrated their utter unfitnesß for so important a jrablio trust.' Such language comes with the Btartling effect of. the morning Bhower when the temperature outside is minus 20 The bracing effect comes afterwards when we imagine we Bee the beginning of the growth of a suspicion that birth does not necessarily confer biains, and that a decision of even so august a body as the House of Lords, arrived at with the assistance of the member referred to, may not be received with becoming meekness.