George III., by an unsparing use of his prerogative, changed the character and politics of the Upper House.

His creations were country gentlemen of sufficient wealth to own "pocket" boroughs in the House of Commons, and lawyers who supported the Royal prerogative.[69] From George III.'s time onward there has always been a standing and ever-increasing majority of Tory peers in the House of Lords.

And while the actual number of members of the Upper House has been enlarged enormously, this majority has became enlarged out of all proportion.

Liberal and Tory Prime Ministers were busy throughout the nineteenth century adding to the peerage--no less than 376 new peers were created between 1800 and 1907; but comparatively few Liberals retained their principles when they became peers, and two of the present chiefs of the Unionist Party in the House of Lords--Lords Lansdowne and Selborne--are the sons of eminent Liberals.
So it has come about that while the House of Commons has been steadily opening its doors to men of all ranks and classes, and in our time has become increasingly democratic in character, the House of Lords, confined in the main to men of wealth and social importance, has become an enormous assembly of undistinguished persons, where only a small minority are active politicians, and of this minority at least three-fourths are Conservatives.
This change in the House of Lords began, as we have seen, in the reign of George III., when the Whig ascendancy in Parliament had passed.

But the Whigs did nothing during their long lease of power to bring democracy nearer, and were entirely contemptuous of popular aspirations.