majority of the House of
Commons has therefore dominant power: it can legislate as it wishes.
And though the whole House of Commons upon great subjects very fairly
represents public opinion, and though its judgment upon minor questions
is, from some secret excellencies in its composition, remarkably sound
and good; yet, like all similar assemblies, it is subject to the sudden
action of selfish combinations. There are said to be 200 "members for
the railways" in the present Parliament. If these 200 choose to combine
on a point which the public does not care for, and which they care for
because it affects their purse, they are absolute. A formidable
sinister interest may always obtain the complete command of a dominant
assembly by some chance and for a moment, and it is therefore of great
use to have a second chamber of an opposite sort, differently composed,
in which that interest in all likelihood will not rule.

The most dangerous of all sinister interests is that of the executive
Government, because it is the most powerful. It is perfectly
possible--it has happened and will happen again--that the Cabinet,
being very powerful in the Commons, may inflict minor measures on the
nation which the nation did not like, but which it did not understand
enough to forbid. If, therefore, a tribunal of revision can be found in
which the executive, though powerful, is less powerful, the Government
will be the better; the retarding chamber will impede minor instances
of Parliamentary tyranny, though it will not prevent or much impede
revolution.

Every large assembly is, moreover, a fluctuating body; it is not one
house, so to say, but a set of houses; it is one set of men to-night
and another to-morrow night. A certain unity is doubtless preserved by
the duty which the executive is supposed to undertake, and does
undertake, of keeping a house; a constant element is so provided about
which all sorts of variables accumulate and pass away. But even after
due allowance for the full weight of this protective machinery, our
House of Commons is, as all such chambers must be, subject to sudden
turns and bursts of feeling, because the members who compose it change
from time to time. The pernicious result is perpetual in our
legislation; many Acts of Parliament are medleys of different motives,
because the majority which passed one set of its clauses is different
from that which passed another set.

But the greatest defect of the House of