f election, its relations to the Premier are incessant.
They guide him and he leads them. He is to them what they are to the
nation. He only goes where he believes they will go after him. But he
has to take the lead; he must choose his direction, and begin the
journey. Nor must he flinch. A good horse likes to feel the rider's
bit; and a great deliberative assembly likes to feel that it is under
worthy guidance. A Minister who succumbs to the House,--who
ostentatiously seeks its pleasure,--who does not try to regulate
it,--who will not boldly point out plain errors to it, seldom thrives.
The great leaders of Parliament have varied much, but they have all had
a certain firmness. A great assembly is as soon spoiled by
over-indulgence as a little child. The whole life of English politics
is the action and reaction between the Ministry and the Parliament. The
appointees strive to guide, and the appointers surge under the
guidance. The elective is now the most important function of the House
of Commons. It is most desirable to insist, and be tedious, on this,
because our tradition ignores it. At the end of half the sessions of
Parliament, you will read in the newspapers, and you will hear even
from those who have looked close at the matter and should know better,
"Parliament has done nothing this session. Some things were promised in
the Queen's speech, but they were only little things; and most of them
have not passed." Lord Lyndhurst used for years to recount the small
outcomings of legislative achievement; and yet those were the days of
the first Whig Governments, who had more to do in legislation, and did
more, than any Government. The true answer to such harangues as Lord
Lyndhurst's by a Minister should have been in the first person. He
should have said firmly, "Parliament has maintained ME, and that was
its greatest duty; Parliament has carried on what, in the language of
traditional respect, we call the Queen's Government; it has maintained
what wisely or unwisely it deemed the best executive of the English
nation". The second function of the House of Commons is what I may call
an expressive function. It is its office to express the mind of the
English people on all matters which come before it. Whether it does so
well or ill I shall discuss presently. The third function of Parliament
is what I may call--preserving a sort of technicality even in familiar
matters for the sake of distinctness--the teaching function. A gr