of legal theory it is the nation,
being the historical successor of the Folk Moot of our Teutonic
forefathers. Both practically and legally, it is to-day the only (p. 077)
and the sufficient depository of the authority of the nation; and
it is therefore, within the sphere of law, irresponsible and
omnipotent."[105] Whether the business in hand be constituent or
legislative, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, the right of
Parliament--or, more accurately "the King in Parliament"--to discuss
and to dispose is indisputable.

[Footnote 105: The American Commonwealth (3d ed.),
I., 35-36.]

I. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS PRIOR TO 1832

*80. Present Ascendancy.*--Legally, as has been explained, Parliament
consists of the king, the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the
commons. For practical purposes, however, it is the House of Commons
alone. "When," as Spencer Walpole wrote a quarter of a century ago, "a
minister consults Parliament he consults the House of Commons; when
the Queen dissolves Parliament she dissolves the House of Commons. A
new Parliament is simply a new House of Commons."[106] The gathering
of the "representatives of the commons" at Westminster is, and has
long been, without question the most important agency of government in
the kingdom. The House of Commons consists at the present day of 670
members, of whom 465 sit for English constituencies, 30 for Welsh, 72
for Scottish, and 103 for Irish. Nine of the members are chosen, under
somewhat special conditions, by the universities, but the remaining
661 are elected in county or borough constituencies under franchise
arrangements, which, while based upon residence and property
qualifications, fall not far short of manhood suffrage. The chamber is
at the same time the preponderating repository of power in the
national government and the prime organ of the popular will. It is in
consequence of its prolonged and arduous development that Great
Britain has attained democracy in national government; and the
influence of English democracy as actualized in the House of Commons
upon the political ideas and the governmental agencies of the outlying
world, both English-speaking and non-English-speaking, is simply
incalculable.

[Footnote 106: The Electorate and the Legislature
(London, 1892), 48.]

*81. Undemocratic Character at the Opening of the Nineteenth
Century.*--"The virtue, the