Anthony Taylor, Down with the Crown: British Anti-monarchism and Debates about Royalty since 1790.
However much he wishes otherwise, this just shows the paucity of republicanism in Great Britain. I feel like a crank now. Finished this whilst waiting for a wasp destroyer, the day after Juande Ramos' first game in charge. Beat Blackpool 2 - 0, and sat in the away end at the Lane for the first time.
'The House of Lords has been taken everywhere for a second chamber or senate. It is nothing of the kind. It is one of the estates of the feudal realm, reduced by the decay of feudalism to comparative impotence, such influence as it retains being not that of legislative authority, but of hereditary wealth. It has never acted as. . . an Upper Chamber revising with maturer wisdom and in an impartial spirit, the hasty or ultra-democratic legislation of the more popular House. It has always acted as what it is, a privileged order in a state of decay and jeopardy, resisting as far as it dare each measure of change, not political only, but legal, social and of every kind.' 1910 Liberal election leaflet.
'Three-quarters of the members of the House of Lords inherited their position by birth; their ancestors were, by and large, cattle robbers, land thieves, and a few were court prostitutes.' (Jack Jones)
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