e "accident of an accident". But such a House as
this could not be pleasant to great noblemen. They could not like to be
second in their own assembly (and yet that was their position from age
to age) to a lawyer who was of yesterday,--whom everybody could
remember without briefs, who had talked for "hire," who had "hungered
after six-and-eightpence". Great peers did not gain glory from the
House; on the contrary, they lost glory when they were in the House.
They devised two expedients to get out of this difficulty: they
invented proxies which enabled them to vote without being present,
without being offended by vigour and invective, without being vexed by
ridicule, without leaving the rural mansion or the town palace where
they were demigods. And what was more effectual still, they used their
influence in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords. In
that indirect manner a rural potentate, who half returned two county
members, and wholly returned two borough members, who perhaps gave
seats to members of the Government, who possibly seated the leader of
the Opposition, became a much greater man than by sitting on his own
bench, in his own House, hearing a Chancellor talk. The House of Lords
was a second-rate force, even when the peers were a first-rate force,
because the greatest peers, those who had the greatest social
importance, did not care for their own House, or like it, but gained
great part of their political power by a hidden but potent influence in
the competing House.

When we cease to look at the House of Lords under its dignified aspect,
and come to regard it under its strictly useful aspect, we find the
literary theory of the English Constitution wholly wrong, as usual.
This theory says that the House of Lords is a co-ordinate estate of the
realm, of equal rank with the House of Commons; that it is the
aristocratic branch, just as the Commons is the popular branch; and
that by the principle of our Constitution the aristocratic branch has
equal authority with the popular branch. So utterly false is this
doctrine that it is a remarkable peculiarity, a capital excellence of
the British Constitution, that it contains a sort of Upper House, which
is not of equal authority to the Lower House, yet still has some
authority. The evil of two co-equal Houses of distinct natures is
obvious. Each House can stop all legislation, and yet some legislation
may be necessary. At this moment we have the best instance