explained in the introduction, to
say what changes the late Reform Act will make in the House of Commons.]

The dignified aspect of the House of Commons is altogether secondary to
its efficient use. It IS dignified: in a Government in which the most
prominent parts are good because they are very stately, any prominent
part, to be good at all, must be somewhat stately. The human
imagination exacts keeping in government as much as in art; it will not
be at all influenced by institutions which do not match with those by
which it is principally influenced. The House of Commons needs to be
impressive, and impressive it is: but its use resides not in its
appearance, but in its reality. Its office is not to win power by awing
mankind, but to use power in governing mankind.

The main function of the House of Commons is one which we know quite
well, though our common constitutional speech does not recognise it.
The House of Commons is an electoral chamber; it is the assembly which
chooses our president. Washington and his fellow-politicians contrived
an electoral college, to be composed (as was hoped) of the wisest
people in the nation, which, after due deliberation, was to choose for
president the wisest man in the nation. But that college is a sham; it
has no independence and no life. No one knows, or cares to know, who
its members are. They never discuss, and never deliberate. They were
chosen to vote that Mr. Lincoln be President, or that Mr. Breckenridge
be President; they do so vote, and they go home. But our House of
Commons is a real choosing body; it elects the people it likes. And it
dismisses whom it likes too. No matter that a few months since it was
chosen to support Lord Aberdeen or Lord Palmerston; upon a sudden
occasion it ousts the statesman to whom it at first adhered, and
selects an opposite statesman whom it at first rejected. Doubtless in
such cases there is a tacit reference to probable public opinion; but
certainly also there is much free will in the judgment of the Commons.
The House only goes where it thinks in the end the nation will follow;
but it takes its chance of the nation following or not following; it
assumes the initiative, and acts upon its discretion or its caprice.

When the American nation has chosen its President, its virtue goes out
of it, and out of the Transmissive College through which it chooses.
But because the House of Commons has the power of dismissal in addition
to the power o