Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of Lords
The proper constitution of the Supreme Court of Appeal justifies the utmost solicitude of the legislature and the country. The difficulties surrounding its reconstruction were found too great to admit of solution during the session of 1856, unexpectedly complicated as they were by the creation of that very distinguished judge, Baron Parke, a peer for life only, as Lord Wensleydale. The greatest constitutional lawyers in the House of Lords, supported by a considerable majority of peers, declared that the Crown had no power to create a peer for life only, with a right to sit and vote in that house; that such an act was illegal, and that the very essence of the British peerage consisted in its hereditary character. Issuing out of these discussions a Bill for reconstructing the appellate jurisdiction was sent down from the Lords to the Commons, but so late in the session that they declined then to entertain it. Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this measure, it is still practicable, even without adopting its special machinery, to preserve the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords—itself an object of the highest importance—by providing for more assistance from the legal and equitable judicial force of the country. In the meantime a well-earned hereditary peerage was conferred on Lord Wensleydale, under which he took his seat before the session closed.—Blackstone’s Commentaries, edited by Warren.