ethod of election. It is asserted that the reason the House of
Commons is able to exercise these functions is because England is a
deferential nation, and the people leave government in the hands of
their betters, the higher classes. On one point he is emphatic, and that
is the absolute necessity of party. He writes:--

The moment, indeed, that we distinctly conceive that the House of
Commons is mainly and above all things an elective assembly, we at
once perceive that party is of its essence. The House of Commons
lives in a state of perpetual potential choice; at any moment it
can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler. And therefore party is
inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.

As to the present trend of affairs, the opinion of a foreign observer,
Gneist--"History of the English Constitution"--may be quoted:--

England, too, will experience the fact that the transition to the
new order of industrial society is brought about through a process
of dissolution of the old cohesions, upon which the constitution of
Parliament is based. The unrepresented social mass, which is now
flooding the substructure of the English Constitution, will only
stay its course at a universal suffrage, and a thorough and
arithmetical equalization of the constituencies, and will thus
attempt, and in a great measure achieve, a further dissolution of
the elective bodies. To meet the coming storm a certain fusion of
the old parties seems to be immediately requisite, though the
propertied classes, in defending their possessions, will certainly
not at first display their best qualities. As, further, a regular
formation in two parties cannot be kept up, a splitting up into
fractions, as in the parliaments of the Continent, will ensue, and
the changing of the ministry will modify itself accordingly, so
that the Crown will no longer be able to commit the helm of the
state in simple alternation to the leader of the one or the other
majority. And then a time will recur in which the _King in Council_
may have to undertake the actual leadership. (Vol. ii., pp. 452,
453.)

In other words, that an industrial society is incapable of
self-government! Note the reason for this remarkable conclusion--a
splitting up into fractions, _i.e._, imperfect organization.

Take now the evidence of the distinguished hist