So it remained from 1660 to 1911. Since the latter date the equipoise of the Constitution has once again been overthrown. The Parliament Act was the deathblow both to the dignity and to the efficiency of the House of Lords. To all intents and purposes we have been living, for the last six years, under a unicameral legislature.

Can this state of things endure? No one who is not either completely ignorant or blinded by partisanship will answer this question in the affirmative. Theory and experience alike point to the necessity of some kind of Second Chamber.

In John Stuart Mill's brief but authoritative treatise on 'Representative Government' there is a chapter (c. xiii.) which is as fresh and pertinent as when it was written in 1861. Mill was no fanatical believer in bicameralism, still less did he approve of a Second Chamber constituted like the House of Lords, but no one has stated the argument against an omnipotent single chamber more effectively. Elect it as you will, you cannot trust a single chamber, any more than you can trust an individual, not to develop the temper of a tyrant.

'It is important [writes Mill] that no set of persons should, in Government affairs, be able even temporarily to make their sic volo prevail without asking anyone else for his consent. A majority in a single assembly, when it has assumed a permanent characterwhen composed of the same persons habitually acting together, and always assured of victory in their own House-easily becomes despotic and overweening, if released from the necessity of considering whether its acts will be concurred in by another constituted authority. The same reason which induced the Romans to have two consuls makes it desirable there should be two chambers: that neither of them may be exposed to the corrupting influence of undivided power, even for the space of a single year.'

Could not the end desired by Mill be secured, along with other advantages, by other means-the Referendum, for example, or the Recall? It is not to be denied that by the adoption of either of these expedients the electorate might be enabled to impose a veto upon unpalatable measures passed by a single chamber. It is also true that the referendal function-the power of submitting projets de loi to the judgment of the constituencies-was one of the most cherished and one of the most important functions performed by the House of Lords up to 1910. But it was not the only one. We say nothing, for the

moment, of the concurrent right of initiation, partly because the Lords with almost inconceivable unwisdom allowed this important right to fall into virtual desuetude; partly and much more because a similar power can be and is exercised-in Switzerland, for example-by the device of the Popular Initiative. It is not, however, enough that in a well-constituted legislature the two Chambers should enjoy equal and concurrent rights of veto and initiative. Even under primitive conditions the art of legislation is not simple. In an ancient and complicated civilisation it is extremely delicate and difficult. A Second Chamber is urgently needed for purposes of amendment and revision. This cannot be secured by the Referendum or the Recall. These devices may avert mischief; they cannot ensure benefit. They can vindicate the rights of the majority; they cannot compel consideration for the legitimate susceptibilities of the minority. This function is most effectively, though by no means perfectly, performed by a Second Chamber endowed with concurrent rights of legislation. Walter Bagehot put this point with that rough commonsense, the possession of which made him one of the most persuasive of political philosophers :

'If we had an ideal House of Commons perfectly representing the nation, always moderate, never passionate, abounding in men of leisure, never omitting the slow and steady forms necessary for good consideration, it is certain that we should not need a higher chamber. . . . But though beside an ideal House of Commons the Lords would be unnecessary, and therefore pernicious, beside the actual House a revising and leisured legislature is extremely useful, if not quite necessary.'

Methods in the House of Commons have not since Bagehot's day become more scientific; procedure is not more leisurely; debate is not more orderly; nerves are not less strained, nor tempers more controlled. The force of his reflections has not, therefore, been impaired, but strengthened by the efflux of time.

Nor should it be forgotten that since Bagehot's day a momentous change has taken place not merely in the personnel but in the status of the individual legislators belonging to the lower House. They are no longer financia independent of the Executive. The Cabinet can send trn back to their constituents; and it must always be uncertain how many of VOL. 226. NO. 461.

them will after a general election retain their seats and their salaries.

A stipendiary House of Common must become, as regards its legislative function, a mere adjunct of the Executive that can dissolve it. On this ground alone it is imperative that there should be a revising body entrusted with effective and independent authority.

Nor can the powers of Parliament be limited to legislation and taxation. Ever since the seventeenth century it has been admitted that Parliament ought also to exercise continuous vigilance over the doings of the Executive. It is not suggested that even now the House of Commons has entirely surrendered this function, but it is certain that it becomes year by year less competent to perform it. For competent criticism of the Executive, for informing debate on foreign affairs, or on Imperial problems, the thoughtful public looks, therefore, less and less to the House of Commons, more and more to the House of Lords. But criticism divorced from responsibility tends to futility, and verbal debates, unless they can eventuate in action, are apt to wear the garb of unreality. If power is concentrated in one House it is idle permanently to look for effective criticism from the other. It is, therefore, essential to vigour and continuity of administration, not less than to sanity of legislation, to secure that the Second Chamber of the future shall be both independent in composition and invested with adequate powers.

Such a Chamber is pre-eminently demanded in the interests of Democracy itself. Aristotle long ago perceived the truth that it is harder to maintain than to establish a Democracy:

'The mere establishment of a democracy is not the only or principal business of the legislator. . . a far greater difficulty is the preservation of it. . . . The legislator should guard against the destructive elements and should make laws, whether written or unwritten, which will contain all the preservatives of States. . . The demagogues of our own day often get property confiscated in the law courts to please the people; but those who have the welfare of the people at heart should counteract them. . . .

The dangers peculiar to democracy-more particularly the liability to the pernicious influence of the demagogue-have been the commonplace of criticism from Aristotle's day to

wn. The most subtle and the most insidious is the

tendency to economic legislation conceived in the supposed interests of a particular class. No State, however prosperous, could survive a long course of such treatment perseveringly pursued. Against it there is no mechanical safeguard so effective as that of a really strong Upper Chamber. It is, therefore, probable, as Mr. Lecky insisted in 'Democracy and 'Liberty' (i. 364),

'that the continuance without a great catastrophe of a democratic government depends mainly upon the possibility of organising such a Chamber, representing the great social and industrial interests of the country and sufficiently powerful to avert the evils that must sooner or later follow from the unbridled power of a purely democratic House of Commons.'

It seems, however, unnecessary to multiply theoretical arguments in favour of a bicameral legislature. After all, the most impressive argument is that derived from experience: the all but universal preference exhibited by the nations of the civilised world for this somewhat artificial device. For the device is artificial and in a sense accidental. The English Parliament might have disposed itself in three orders as did the States of Scotland and France; it might, like Sweden, have indulged in four; it might have brought all the Estates together into one Chamber. On the historical causes which led to the evolution of the bicameral system in England it is unnecessary to dwell. It suffices to say that the parliamentary systems of the modern world are, to a great extent, conscious imitations of our own; but it is important to observe that the imitation has been not merely conscious but deliberate; it has implied not only approximation to the better but rejection of the worse. Long before the general acceptance of the modern parliamentary model England herself, as we have seen, had made trial of the single-chamber system. Why did the United States of America, themselves closely adhering, in many respects, to the Cromwellian models, reject the legislative form prescribed in the Instrument of Government' ? The trend of constitutional evolution in the democratic communities adhering to the British flag beyond the seas may be regarded as the outcome of filial piety. But why has France, after more than one experiment in unicameralism, finally found salvation in a Parliament of two chambers?

The single-chamber doctrinaire must, then, be prepared not

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It will not, howener escape bservation that while the world has imitated England, as regards the general outline of her parliamentary form, act a single State has copied the details of the particular institution known as the House of Lords. Not many States had the chance of doing so. The House of Lords could not be precisely copied since it is the outcome of a process of historical evolution which is not merely curious but unique. Not that the House of Lords is alone among English institutions in this respect. Parliament as a whole-King, Lords, and Commons is virtually unique among the legislatures of the world, in its enjoyment of uncontrolled legal sovereignty. But the Upper Chamber is absolutely unique: unique in size; unique in its predominantly hereditary character; almost unique in practical impotence. It is worth while in passing to observe that all these attributes are relatively modern. Down to the sixteenth century the House of Lords was comparable in size to most of the modern Semates or Second Chambers. At the accession of the Tudors the number of members of the Upper House was about 75, or considerably less than that of the American Senate and not greatly in excess of the German Bundesrat. And of the 75

ast 45 were Bishops or Abbots and therefore non-hereditary.

bots disappeared after the dissolution of the monasteries