it is to be observed that, for the most part, they belong to it in common with every other form of free Government, since they arise mainly from the tendency of political liberty to engender party spirit, and to tempt the People to abuse the power it places in their hands. And granting that there is this tendency in all free Governments, it by no means follows that we are wrong in preferring them to those of an opposite character. As in all the other concerns of men, so in their political institutions, we know that only comparative, not absolute, exemption from evil is to be hoped for; and bad as may be the effects of faction and party spirit under free Governments, they are far less to be feared than the many evils inherent in despotism, and especially its deadening and corrupting influence both on the governed and on their rulers. Power must always be liable to abuse in whatever hands it may be placed, and flatterers, for their own purposes, will try to mislead those to whom it is entrusted, whether they are many or few; but a long experience has proved, that the abuses prevailing in despotic Governments have been far greater, and far more injurious to the welfare of the People, than those to which political liberty gives rise under a wellregulated Constitution. If we compare what has been the condition of the People under free and

under arbitrary Governments, in all ages of the world, we can have no hesitation, in spite of their faults, in giving a preference to the former; and among these, we may assert with confidence, that there is none in which evil has been found to be mixed up with good in a smaller proportion than in our own system of Parliamentary Government.*

* I cannot omit here referring to Mr. Mill's admirable vindication of the superiority of free Governments in the third Chapter of his 'Considerations on Representative Government.'

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CHAPTER IV.

REASONS OF THE SUCCESS OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT.

I HAVE remarked in the first Chapter that our own Country, since the Revolution of 1688, affords the only example which is to be found, of a Parliamentary Government carried on with success for any considerable number of years. In considering what peculiar circumstances there may be to account for the success of this kind of Government in this one instance only, our attention cannot fail to be immediately arrested by the fact, that the British Parliament differs widely in its character from the Legislatures which have been elsewhere constituted for the purpose of introducing a similar system of government.

The House of Lords has always been recognized as a body peculiar to this country, and one which

it is impossible to imitate by creating a Peerage, where such an institution has not grown up, so as to derive from long prescription the authority which nothing else could impart to it. And it has been held (I believe justly) by a majority of the best political writers, that whatever may be the theoretical objections to the constitution of the House of Lords, it has performed the important and difficult duties belonging to an Upper Chamber of the Legislature with greater success than any other body of the same kind which has hitherto been formed. It has been able to exercise a very substantial power, and to serve as a real check upon the popular branch of the Legislature, when it has been disposed to act with unwise precipitation, without pushing the exercise of this power so far as either to prevent the passing of measures on which public opinion has been finally made up, or yet to bring about a complete rupture with the House of ComDifferences between the two Houses have more than once approached the point at which they must have brought the whole machine of Government to a stop, but happily the practical good sense which distinguishes our countrymen, has always hitherto brought about an accommodation or a compromise in time to avert the threatened evil. How it is that the House of Lords has been fitted

mons.

thus successfully to fill its place in the Constitution would be an interesting subject of inquiry; it would, however, lead me too far from my object in this Essay, and I therefore forbear from entering upon it.

But the difference between the British Parliament and the Legislatures which have been established on the same general model in other countries, is by no means exclusively, nor perhaps even principally, due to the peculiar character of the Upper House. The House of Commons is also very unlike all the other Representative Bodies of which I have ever seen a description. It is distinguished from them mainly by the variety of the elements which enter into its composition, and by its having among its Members some returned by constituencies of a highly democratic character, with many others who owe their Seats to various kinds of influence, rather than to the free choice of large bodies of electors. Before the passing of the Reform Act, Members of the last description were so numerous, as to constitute a large majority of the whole House, and they still form no small proportion of it; since it was neither the design nor the effect of that measure to accomplish such a total change in the character of the House of Commons, as would have resulted from an attempt to make

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