the magnates. Thenceforth, until very
nearly the present day, the two chambers were legally co-ordinate and
every act of legislation required the assent of both. It is true that
during the course of the nineteenth century there was a remarkable
growth of legislative preponderance on the part of the House of
Commons, until, indeed, the point was reached where all important
measures were first presented in that chamber and the Lords were very
certain not to thwart the ultimate adoption of any project of which
the nation as represented in the popular branch unmistakably approved.
Yet upon numerous occasions bills, and sometimes--as in the case of
Gladstone's Home Rule Bill in 1893--highly important ones, were
defeated outright; and at all times the chamber imposed a check upon
the lower house and exercised a powerful influence upon the actual
course of legislative business. Under the provisions of the act of
1911, however, the status and the legislative functions of the House
of Lords have been profoundly altered, and an adequate understanding
of the workings of the British parliament to-day requires some review
of the changes wrought by that remarkable piece of legislation.

Throughout upwards of a century the "mending or ending" of the Lords
has been among the most widely discussed of public issues in the
United Kingdom. The question has been principally one of "mending,"
for the number of persons who have advocated seriously the total
abolition of the chamber has been small and their influence has been
slight. The utility of a second chamber, in a democratic no less than
in an illiberal constitutional system, is very generally
admitted,[148] and no one supposes that the House of Lords will ever
be swept completely out of existence to make room for the
establishment of a new and entirely different parliamentary body. If
it were to devolve upon the people of Great Britain to-day to adopt
for themselves _de novo_ a complete governmental system, they might
well not incorporate in that system an institution of the nature of
the present House of Lords; but since the chamber exists and is rooted
in centuries of national usage and tradition, the perpetuation of it,
in some form, may be taken to be assured.

[Footnote 148: There are, of course, Englishmen who
concur in the dictum of Sieyes that "if a second
chamber dissents from the first, it is mischievous;