r to induce them to avoid to involve the country in
the additional difficulties of a difference of opinion, possibly a
dispute between the Houses, on a question in the decision of which it
has been frequently asserted that their lordships had a personal
interest; which assertion, however false as affecting each of them
personally, could not be denied as affecting the proprietors of land in
general. I am aware of the difficulty, but I don't despair of carrying
the bill through. You must be the best judge of the course which you
ought to take, and of the course most likely to conciliate the
confidence of the House of Lords. My opinion is, that you should advise
the House to vote that which would tend most to public order, and would
be most beneficial to the immediate interests of the country."

This is the mode in which the House of Lords came to be what it now is,
a chamber with (in most cases) a veto of delay with (in most cases) a
power of revision, but with no other rights or powers. The question we
have to answer is, "The House of Lords being such, what is the use of
the Lords?"

The common notion evidently fails, that it is a bulwark against
imminent revolution. As the duke's letter in every line evinces, the
wisest members, the guiding members of the House, know that the House
must yield to the people if the people is determined. The two
cases--that of the Reform Act and the Corn Laws--were decisive cases.
The great majority of the Lords thought Reform revolution, Free-trade
confiscation, and the two together ruin. If they could ever have been
trusted to resist the people, they would then have resisted it. But in
truth it is idle to expect a second chamber--a chamber of
notables--ever to resist a popular chamber, a nation's chamber, when
that chamber is vehement and the nation vehement too. There is no
strength in it for that purpose. Every class chamber, every minority
chamber, so to speak, feels weak and helpless when the nation is
excited. In a time of revolution there are but two powers, the sword
and the people. The executive commands the sword; the great lesson
which the First Napoleon taught the Parisian populace--the contribution
he made to the theory of revolutions at the 18th Brumaire--is now well
known. Any strong soldier at the head of the army can use the army. But
a second chamber cannot use it. It is a pacific assembly composed of
timid peers, aged lawyers, or, as abroad, clever litterateurs. Such a