the publicity necessary to prevent jobs is maintained, and corrupt extravagance is thus guarded against, the Ministers of the Crown have every motive, both of duty and of interest, to induce them to enforce economy in the public service. They usually do this far more effectually, and above all far more steadily, than the House of Commons, which, like all popular bodies, is apt to be led sometimes into extravagance, sometimes into. injudicious parsimony.

A curious example of the changes of temper to which the House of Commons is liable on questions of economy, and of the inconsistencies into which it is apt to fall when it refuses to follow its accustomed leaders, is afforded by its conduct with respect to the Civil Service Bill in the same Session of 1857.* The object of this Bill was to relieve the permanent civil servants of the Crown from deductions made from their salaries under an Act of Parliament, for the purpose of raising a fund for superannuations,-a relief which would be equivalent to augmenting their salaries by an amount varying from two and a half to five per

* It deserves to be noticed that this Session, which was remarkable, beyond any other of late years, for the great waste of time by the House of Commons in laborious trifling, was the first Session of a new Parliament, after a dissolution which had deprived many old and experienced Members of their seats.

cent. The second reading of this Bill was carried against the Government by a large majority, though only nine or ten years before the Ministers of that day had had the greatest difficulty in resisting a proposal precisely the reverse of that since adopted, namely, to diminish all salaries by ten per cent. This proposal, for cutting down salaries generally, was supported, at the time when the economical fit was strong upon the House of Commons, by many of the very Members whose votes have since swelled the majority for augmenting them. The Superannuation Act, the chief clauses of which this Bill was intended to repeal, was itself passed, in deference to the feeling of the House, in one of its fits of economy. The defeat of the Government upon this question also illustrates the power now exercised by means of an artificial and organized agitation. This machinery (an invention of the last few years), skilfully worked by those interested in the measure, had led so many Members of the new Parliament to pledge themselves in favour of the Bill, as to ensure its success.

I have dwelt at greater length than I should otherwise have done on the error I conceive the House of Commons to have committed in undertaking duties that do not properly belong to it,

because there appears to be a strong disposition on the part of the public to encourage the House in a mistake which, if persisted in, may detract materially from its usefulness. If, however, either from this or from any other cause, the proper business of Parliament should suffer such delay as to create serious inconvenience, we may trust that the practical good sense of the Nation will lead to the adoption of some mode of correcting the evil. Hitherto (as I have said) I think we have had no real reason to complain of the slowness with which the work of legislative improvement has been carried on.

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CHAPTER V.

EFFECTS OF PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

HAVING, in the preceding Chapters, considered the nature of our system of Parliamentary Government, its merits and its faults, I propose now to inquire in what manner the working of this system has been affected by the Reform of the Representation which was carried in 1832, and to offer some remarks on the character and consequences of that celebrated measure.

The three Acts for the Amendment of the Representation of the People in Parliament, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, must be regarded as forming together a single measure, having for its object the transfer of a large amount of political power to the People, from the hands of a comparatively small number of persons, who were previously enabled to command a majority of the Seats

in the House of Commons. So great a change in the distribution of political power has, probably, seldom or never been accomplished in any country without violence or convulsion; it amounted, in fact, (as was justly said at the time,) to a revolution, though a peaceful and, I believe, a most beneficial revolution. Still, large as it was, the measure did not profess to sweep away all the anomalies and irregularities of our system of Representation, in order to create a new one more in accordance with what is considered by some persons to be the true theory of Representation. On the contrary, the design was to correct evils which had been practically felt, but to make no further changes than were indispensable for this purpose, in a Constitution of which, in spite of some imperfections, the general excellence was recognized Experience had proved that, in the House of Commons as then constituted, public opinion was so weak, and influence of another kind so powerful, that the conduct, both of Parliament and of the Executive Government, was habitually biassed in a manner detrimental to the general welfare of the Nation. Clear evidence of this was to be found in the manner in which the Country had for many years been governed, and especially in the heavy burden of taxation imposed upon the people. There