or in development, but in reversal, of policy already
known to and sanctioned by the nation. But the assumption is that the
depositaries of power will all respect one another; will evince a
consciousness that they are working in a common interest for a common
end; that they will be possessed, together with not less than an average
intelligence, of not less than an average sense of equity and of the
public interest and rights. When these reasonable expectations fail,
then, it must be admitted, the British Constitution will be in danger.

Apart from such contingencies, the offspring only of folly or of crime,
this Constitution is peculiarly liable to subtle change. Not only in the
long run, as man changes between youth and age, but also, like the human
body, with a quotidian life, a periodical recurrence of ebbing and
flowing tides. Its old particles daily run to waste, and give place to
new. What is hoped among us is, that which has usually been found, that
evils will become palpable before they have grown to be intolerable.

There cannot, for example, be much doubt among careful observers that
the great conservator of liberty in all former times, namely, the
confinement of the power of the purse to the popular chamber, has been
lamentably weakened in its efficiency of late years; weakened in the
House of Commons, and weakened by the House of Commons. It might indeed
be contended that the House of Commons of the present epoch does far
more to increase the aggregate of public charge than to reduce it. It
might even be a question whether the public would take benefit if the
House were either intrusted annually with a great part of the
initiative, so as to be really responsible to the people for the
spending of their money; or else were excluded from part at least of its
direct action upon expenditure, intrusting to the executive the
application of given sums which that executive should have no legal
power to exceed.

Meantime, we of this island are not great political philosophers; and we
contend with an earnest, but disproportioned, vehemence about changes
which are palpable, such as the extension of the suffrage, or the
redistribution of Parliamentary seats, neglecting wholly other
processes of change which work beneath the surface, and in the dark, but
which are even more fertile of great organic results. The modern English
character reflects the English Constitution in this, that it abounds in
paradox; that it posses