body has no force to put down the nation, and if the nation will have
it do something it must do it.

The very nature, too, as has been seen, of the Lords in the English
Constitution, shows that it cannot stop revolution. The Constitution
contains an exceptional provision to prevent it stopping it. The
executive, the appointee of the popular chamber and the nation, can
make new peers, and so create a majority in the peers; it can say to
the Lords, "Use the powers of your House as we like, or you shall not
use them at all. We will find others to use them; your virtue shall go
out of you if it is not used as we like, and stopped when we please."
An assembly under such a threat cannot arrest, and could not be
intended to arrest, a determined and insisting executive.

In fact the House of Lords, as a House, is not a bulwark that will keep
out revolution, but an index that revolution is unlikely. Resting as it
does upon old deference, and inveterate homage, it shows that the spasm
of new forces, the outbreak of new agencies, which we call revolution,
is for the time simply impossible. So long as many old leaves linger on
the November trees, you know that there has been little frost and no
wind; just so while the House of Lords retains much power, you may know
that there is no desperate discontent in the country, no wild agency
likely to cause a great demolition.

There used to be a singular idea that two chambers--a revising chamber
and a suggesting chamber--were essential to a free Government. The
first person who threw a hard stone--an effectually hitting
stone--against the theory was one very little likely to be favourable
to democratic influence, or to be blind to the use of aristocracy; it
was the present Lord Grey. He had to look at the matter practically. He
was the first great Colonial Minister of England who ever set himself
to introduce representative institutions into ALL her capable colonies,
and the difficulty stared him in the face that in those colonies there
were hardly enough good people for one assembly, and not near enough
good people for two assemblies. It happened--and most naturally
happened--that a second assembly was mischievous. The second assembly
was either the nominee of the Crown, which in such places naturally
allied itself with better instructed minds, or was elected by people
with a higher property qualification--some peculiarly well-judging
people. Both these choosers choose the best men