the adverse arguments maimed, misstated,
confused. The worst judge, they say, is a deaf judge; the most dull
Government is a free Government on matters its ruling classes will not
hear. I am disposed to reckon it as the second function of Parliament
in point of importance, that to some extent it makes us hear what
otherwise we should not.

Lastly, there is the function of legislation, of which of course it
would be preposterous to deny the great importance, and which I only
deny to be AS important as the executive management of the whole State,
or the political education given by Parliament to the whole nation.
There are, I allow, seasons when legislation is more important than
either of these. The nation may be misfitted with its laws, and need to
change them: some particular corn law may hurt all industry, and it may
be worth a thousand administrative blunders to get rid of it. But
generally the laws of a nation suit its life; special adaptations of
them are but subordinate; the administration and conduct of that life
is the matter which presses most. Nevertheless, the statute-book of
every great nation yearly contains many important new laws, and the
English statute-book does so above any. An immense mass, indeed, of the
legislation is not, in the proper language of jurisprudence,
legislation at all. A law is a general command applicable to many
cases. The "special acts" which crowd the statute-book and weary
Parliamentary committees are applicable to one case only. They do not
lay down rules according to which railways shall be made, they enact
that such a railway shall be made from this place to that place, and
they have no bearing upon any other transaction. But after every
deduction and abatement, the annual legislation of Parliament is a
result of singular importance; were it not so, it could not be, as it
often is considered, the sole result of its annual assembling.

Some persons will perhaps think that I ought to enumerate a sixth
function of the House of Commons--a financial function. But I do not
consider that, upon broad principle, and omitting legal technicalities,
the House of Commons has any special function with regard to financial
different from its functions with respect to other legislation. It is
to rule in both, and to rule in both through the Cabinet. Financial
legislation is of necessity a yearly recurring legislation; but
frequency of occurrence does not indicate a diversity of nature or
comp