The province of the houses of parliament is to legislate with the crown, to provide supplies, to exercise a supervision over the ministers of the crown and all other function aries, and to advise the sovereign on matters of public moment, The upper house, from its hereditary and aristocratic character, is a check on the popular branch of the legisla ture and on hasty legislation.
The house of lords may originate legislative measures of all kinds, except money-bills, Acts of grace and bills toffecting the rights of peers must originate in this house. In judicial capacity, defined by the appellate jurisdiction act, 1876, it forms a court of final appeal from her majesty's court of appeal in England, from the court of session, Scot land, and the superior courts of law and equity of Ireland, It has a judicature in claims of peerage and offices of honor under reference from the crown. Since the union with Scotland and Ireland, it has had the power of deciding disputed elections of representa tive peers. It tries offenders impeached by the house of commons, and members of its own body on indictment found by a grand jury. The house of lords is composed of lords spiritual and temporal. According.to a declaration of the house in 1672, the lords spiritual are only lords of parliament and not peers, a distinction which seems not to have been known in ancient times. They consist of 2 archbishops and 24 bishops England, who are said to have seats in virtue of their temporal baronies. (By the act of 1860, the Irish church, which formerly sent 4 bishops, is no longer represented.) The bishop of Sodor and Man has no seat in parliament, and on Manchester being made a see in 1847, it was arranged that one other bishop should be in the smile position, according to a rotation not including the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester, so as not to increase the number of the lords spiritual.. The lords temporal consist of: 1. The peers of England, of Great Britain, and of,thc United Kingdom, of whom there were, in 1876, S princes of the royal blood, 21 dukes, 17 marquises, 109 earls, 24 viscounts, and 232 barons. The number of the peers of the United Kingdom may be increased without limit by new creations at the pleasure of the sovereign. 2. Sixteen representatives chosen from their own body by the, peers of Scotland for each parliament. As no pro vision was made at the union for any subsequent creation of Scottish peers, the peerage of Scotland consists exclusively of the descendants of peers existing before the By order of the house of lords, an authentic list of the Scottish peers was entered on the roll of peers on Feb. 12, 1708, to which all claims since established have been added; and in order to prevent the assumption of dormant and extinct peerages by persons not having right to them, statute 10 and 11 Viet. c. 52, provides that no title standing in the roll, in
right of which no vote has been given since 1800, shall be called over at an election without an order of the house of lords. 3. Twenty-eight representatives of the Irish peerage, elected for life. Most peerages are still hereditary. Life peerages were in early times not unknown to the constitution; but in 1856, her majesty having created lord Wensleydale a peer for life, the house of lords decided he could not sit and vote. But in 1876, peers to sit as members of the house while they held the office of lords of appeal in ordinary—i.e., for judicial business, but on ceasing to act as judges to be peers no longer—were created by statute. The house has also power to call to its assistance in legal and constitutional questions the judges of the supreme court of judicature of all the four divisions, who advise what should be done. The house has power also to sit for judicial business during the prorogation of parliament. The votes of spiritual and temporal lords are intermixed, and the joint majority determine every question; but they sit apart on separate benches—the place assigned to the lords spiritual being the upper part of the house on the right hand of the throne. A lord may, by license, from the sovereign, appoint another lord as his proxy to vote for him in his absence; but a lord spiritual can only be proxy for a lord spiritual, and a lord temporal for a lord temporal, and no member of the house can hold more than two proxies at the same time. Proxies cannot vote in judicial questions or in committees of the whole house. There are other rules and restrictions incident to the right of vote by proxy; a lords' committee in 1867 reported that the practice of using proxies should be discontinued, hut no altera tion in the rules was agreed to. Peerages are lost by attainder for high treason. Neither the issue of the body of the person attainted, nor, on their failure, the descendants of the person first called to the dignity, will be admitted to it without a removal of the attainder. But where the attainted person is tenant in tail-male, with a remainder in tail-male to another, the dignity becomes vested in the remainder man on failure of the issue of the person attainteil. A peerage, whether by patent or writ, is forfeited by attainder for high treason: attainder for felonyforfeits a peerage by writ, not one by patent. An attainted peerage cannot be restored by the crown, only by an act of parliament.