e to the
popular excitement and irritation)[220] may be excused for thinking the
wound inflicted on the constitution, by thus overbearing the voice of
one House of Parliament on a single occasion, less formidable in its
immediate fruit, and more capable of being remedied and retrieved, than
that which would have followed from a renewal of insurrectionary
tumults, even if they should have come short of actual civil war.

One critic of these transactions[221] whose experience and high
reputation entitle his opinion to respectful consideration, after
reminding his readers that, "although Parliament is said to be
dissolved, a dissolution extends, in fact, no farther than to the
Commons, and that the Peers are not affected by it; no change can take
place in the constitution of their body, except as to a small number of
Scotch representative peers," proceeds to argue that, "so far as the
House of Peers is concerned, a creation of peers by the crown on
extraordinary occasions is the only equivalent which the constitution
has provided for the change and renovation of the House of Commons by a
dissolution. In no other way can the opinions of the House of Lords be
brought into harmony with those of the people." But it may be feared
that this comparison is rather ingenious than solid. Indeed, the writer
himself limits such an expedient as a creation of peers to insure the
passing of a particular measure to "extraordinary occasions." But a
dissolution of the House of Commons is so far from being so limited,
that it is the natural and inevitable end of every House of Commons
after an existence which cannot exceed seven years, and which is very
rarely so protracted. And though it may be, and probably has been, the
case that a House of Commons has passed measures to which it had no
great inclination, lest it should provoke a minister to a premature
dissolution, yet no submission on its part can long postpone it; and a
threat or apprehension of a dissolution would certainly fail to overcome
the opposition of the House of Commons, or of a party within it, if the
measure before them seemed open to serious objection. The presumed or
presumable immortality of the one body, and the limited existence of the
other, seem to constitute so essential a difference between them as must
prevent the measures adopted toward one being fairly regarded as any
guide to a justification of those employed in the case of the other.

The Reform Bill of 1832 h