of political color, or relatively and conditionally. This
last case arises when an accidental dislocation of the majority in the
Chamber has put the machine for the moment out of gear, and the unsafe
experiment of a sort of provisional government, doomed on the one hand
to be feeble, or tempted on the other to be dishonest, is tried; much as
the Roman Conclave has sometimes been satisfied with a provisional Pope,
deemed likely to live for the time necessary to reunite the factions of
the prevailing party.

I have said that the Cabinet is essentially the regulator of the
relations between King, Lords, and Commons; exercising functionally the
powers of the first, and incorporated, in the persons of its members,
with the second and the third. It is, therefore, itself a great power.
But let no one suppose it is the greatest. In a balance nicely poised, a
small weight may turn the scale; and the helm that directs the ship is
not stronger than the ship. It is a cardinal axiom of the modern British
Constitution, that the House of Commons is the greatest of the powers
of the State. It might, by a base subserviency, fling itself at the feet
of a Monarch or a Minister; it might, in a season of exhaustion, allow
the slow persistence of the Lords, ever eyeing it as Lancelot was eyed
by Modred, to invade its just province by baffling its action at some
time propitious for the purpose. But no Constitution can anywhere keep
either Sovereign, or Assembly, or nation, true to its trust and to
itself. All that can be done has been done. The Commons are armed with
ample powers of self-defence. If they use their powers properly, they
can only be mastered by a recurrence to the people, and the way in which
the appeal can succeed is by the choice of another House of Commons more
agreeable to the national temper. Thus the sole appeal from the verdict
of the House is a rightful appeal to those from whom it received its
commission.

This superiority in power among the great State forces was, in truth,
established even before the House of Commons became what it now is,
representative of the people throughout its entire area. In the early
part of the century, a large part of its members virtually received
their mandate from members of the Peerage, or from the Crown, or by the
direct action of money on a mere handful of individuals, or, as in
Scotland, for example, from constituencies whose limited numbers and
upper-class sympathies usually shut