ient for it at present. But now the real power is not in
the Sovereign, it is in the Prime Minister and in the Cabinet--that is,
in the hands of a committee appointed by Parliament, and of the
chairman of that committee. Now, beforehand, no one would have ventured
to suggest that a committee of Parliament on foreign relations should
be able to commit the country to the greatest international obligations
without consulting either Parliament or the country. No other select
committee has any comparable power; and considering how carefully we
have fettered and limited the powers of all other subordinate
authorities, our allowing so much discretionary power on matters
peculiarly dangerous and peculiarly delicate to rest in the sole charge
of one secret committee is exceedingly strange. No doubt it may be
beneficial; many seeming anomalies are so, but at first sight it does
not look right.

I confess that I should see no advantage in it if our two Chambers were
sufficiently homogeneous and sufficiently harmonious. On the contrary,
if those two Chambers were as they ought to be, I should believe it to
be a great defect. If the administration had in both Houses a
majority--not a mechanical majority ready to accept anything, but a
fair and reasonable one, predisposed to think the Government right, but
not ready to find it to be so in the face of facts and in opposition to
whatever might occur; if a good Government were thus placed, I should
think it decidedly better that the agreements of the administration
with foreign powers should be submitted to Parliament. They would then
receive that which is best for all arrangements of business, an
understanding and sympathising criticism, but still a criticism. The
majority of the legislature, being well disposed to the Government,
would not "find" against it except it had really committed some big and
plain mistake. But if the Government had made such a mistake, certainly
the majority of the legislature would find against it. In a country fit
for Parliamentary institutions, the partisanship of members of the
legislature never comes in manifest opposition to the plain interest of
the nation; if it did, the nation being (as are all nations capable of
Parliamentary institutions) constantly attentive to public affairs,
would inflict on them the maximum Parliamentary penalty at the next
election and at many future elections. It would break their career. No
English majority dare vote for an