ily, these personages meet
together, on the great arena of a nation's fortunes, as jockeys meet
upon a racecourse, each to urge to the uttermost, as against the others,
the power of the animal he rides; or as counsel in a court, each to
procure the victory of his client, without respect to any other interest
or right: then this boasted Constitution of ours is neither more nor
less than a heap of absurdities. The undoubted competency of each
reaches even to the paralysis or destruction of the rest. The House of
Commons is entitled to refuse every shilling of the Supplies. That
House, and also the House of Lords, is entitled to refuse its assent to
every Bill presented to it. The Crown is entitled to make a thousand
Peers to-day, and as many to-morrow: it may dissolve all and every
Parliament before it proceeds to business; may pardon the most atrocious
crimes; may declare war against all the world; may conclude treaties
involving unlimited responsibilities, and even vast expenditure, without
the consent, nay without the knowledge, of Parliament, and this not
merely in support 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....

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