Commons is that it has no
leisure. The life of the House is the worst of all lives--a life of
distracting routine. It has an amount of business brought before it
such as no similar assembly ever has had. The British Empire is a
miscellaneous aggregate, and each bit of the aggregate brings its bit
of business to the House of Commons. It is India one day and Jamaica
the next; then again China, and then Schleswig-Holstein. Our
legislation touches on all subjects, because our country contains all
ingredients. The mere questions which are asked of the Ministers run
over half human affairs; the Private Bill Acts, the mere privilegia of
our Government--subordinate as they ought to be--probably give the
House of Commons more absolute work than the whole business, both
national and private, of any other assembly which has ever sat. The
whole scene is so encumbered with changing business, that it is hard to
keep your head in it.

Whatever, too, may be the case hereafter, when a better system has been
struck out, at present the House does all the work of legislation, all
the detail, and all the clauses itself. One of the most helpless
exhibitions of helpless ingenuity and wasted mind is a committee of the
whole House on a bill of many clauses which eager enemies are trying to
spoil, and various friends are trying to mend. An Act of Parliament is
at least as complex as a marriage settlement; and it is made much as a
settlement would be if it were left to the vote and settled by the
major part of persons concerned, including the unborn children. There
is an advocate for every interest, and every interest clamours for
every advantage. The executive Government by means of its disciplined
forces, and the few invaluable members who sit and think, preserves
some sort of unity. But the result is very imperfect. The best test of
a machine is the work it turns out. Let any one who knows what legal
documents ought to be, read first a will he has just been making and
then an Act of Parliament; he will certainly say, "I would have
dismissed my attorney if he had done my business as the legislature has
done the nation's business". While the House of Commons is what it is,
a good revising, regulating and retarding House would be a benefit of
great magnitude.

But is the House of Lords such a chamber? Does it do this work? This is
almost an undiscussed question. The House of Lords, for thirty years at
least, has been in popular discussion an ac