fficult to undo, and then all which may be left
will be to remove and censure him. And the second is that it is only
one House of Parliament which has much to say to this remedy, such as
it is; the House of Commons only can remove a Minister by a vote of
censure. Most of the Ministries for thirty years have never possessed
the confidence of the Lords, and in such cases a vote of censure by the
Lords could therefore have but little weight; it would be simply the
particular expression of a general political disapproval. It would be
like a vote of censure on a Liberal Government by the Carlton, or on a
Tory Government by the Reform Club. And in no case has an adverse vote
by the Lords the same decisive effect as a vote of the Commons; the
Lower House is the ruling and the choosing House, and if a Government
really possesses that, it thoroughly possesses nine-tenths of what it
requires. The support of the Lords is an aid and a luxury; that of the
Commons is a strict and indispensable necessary.

These difficulties are particularly raised by questions of foreign
policy. On most domestic subjects, either custom or legislation has
limited the use of the prerogative. The mode of governing the country,
according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut, and most
administrations move in it because it is easier to move there than
anywhere else. Most political crises--the decisive votes, which
determine the fate of Government--are generally either on questions of
foreign policy or of new laws; and the questions of foreign policy come
out generally in this way, that the Government has already done
something, and that it is for the one part of the legislature
alone--for the House of Commons, and not for the House of Lords--to say
whether they have or have not forfeited their place by the treaty they
have made.

I think every one must admit that this is not an arrangement which
seems right on the face of it. Treaties are quite as important as most
laws, and to require the elaborate assent of representative assemblies
to every word of the law, and not to consult them even as to the
essence of the treaty, is prima facie ludicrous. In the older forms of
the English Constitution, this may have been quite right; the power was
then really lodged in the Crown, and because Parliament met very
seldom, and for other reasons, it was then necessary that, on a
multitude of points, the Crown should have much more power than is
amply suffic