from again interfering to control the Commons in such matters. At the
same time it seems superfluous to point out that one claim advanced by
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was apparently carried beyond his
usual discretion by his parental fondness for the rejected bill, is
utterly unreconcileable with the maintenance of any constitution at all
that can deserve the name. When there are three bodies so concerned in
the legislation that the united consent of all is indispensable to give
validity to any act, to claim for any one of them so paramount an
authority that, even if it should adopt a manifestly mischievous course,
neither of the others should have the right to control or check or
correct the error, would be to make that body the irresponsible master
of the whole government and nation; to invest it with that "overruling
power" which Lord Palmerston with such force of reasoning had
deprecated; and to substitute for that harmonious concert of all to
which, in his view, the perfection of our liberties was owing, a
submission to one, and that the one most liable to be acted upon by the
violence or caprice of the populace. He was a wise man who said that he
looked on the tyranny of one man as an evil, but on the tyranny of a
thousand as a thousand times worse. And for this reason also the
resolutions which were now adopted seem to have been conceived in a
spirit of judicious moderation, since, while rendering it highly
improbable that the Lords would again reject a measure relating to
taxation, it avoided absolutely to extinguish their power to do so. Lord
Palmerston, it may be thought, foresaw the possibility of an occasion
arising when the notoriety that such a power still existed might serve
as a check to prevent its exercise from being required. In the very case
which had given rise to this discussion he regarded it as certain that
the feeling of the majority of the nation approved of the action of the
peers; and, as what had occurred once might occur again, it was
certainly within the region of possibility that another such emergency
might arise, when the Lords might interfere with salutary effect to save
the country from the evil result of ill-considered legislation; finance
being, above all others, the subject on which a rash or unscrupulous
minister may find the greatest facility for exciting the people by
plausible delusions. There is, moreover, another reason why it would not
only be impolitic, but absol