Excerpt from The House of Lords: Its History, Rights and Uses, With a Short Summary of the Past Actions of Some of Our Old Nobility

The object of the following pages is twofold: - 1st. To correct, in some measure, the misrepresentations and apocryphal tales which are so frequently circulated about the origin, use, and position of our Aristocracy. 2nd. To furnish those who desire to look into the subject with some reliable data and with a few hints for correcting some of the wrong notions which are being so industriously spread by the enemies of our present Constitution - Radical and revolutionary agitators - whose sole object seems to be destruction.

The reader will notice that in some portions the subject has been dealt with in an abrupt and fragmentary manner - intentionally so - simply from a desire to confine this work to a definite size, and also that the ideas herein expressed might be followed up and enlarged by the reader himself. They are merely intended as "hooks" on which he may hang his own ideas, and carry out the suggested thoughts.

Much important matter, chiefly of an illustrative character, has necessarily been suppressed, but the facts adduced may be relied on for accuracy, and that I conceive to be the most important part of a book of this kind.

The necessity for the "Fifth Edition" of this work at the present time springs from the fact that, up till quite recently, the attacks on the House of Lords have been made chiefly by extreme Radicals, Revolutionists and Socialists individually. Since, however, the declaration of the Liberal Conference at Leeds (1894), and the subsequent official adoption by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and his Cabinet of a policy calculated to destroy the Constitution of the House of Lords and injure its influence, it has become increasingly necessary for all friends of Constitutional liberty to spread correct information respecting the work and position of that branch of our Legislature, to whose action we owe so much of our present social and political freedom.

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