by his voice, to the management of the House.  Even in so small a matter as the Education Department, Mr. Lowe, a consummate observer, spoke of the desirability of finding a chief “not exposed to the prodigious labour of attending the House of Commons”.  It is all but necessary that certain members of the Cabinet should be exempt from its toil, and untouched by its excitement.  But it is also necessary that they should have the power of explaining their views to the nation; of being heard as other people are heard.  There are various plans for so doing, which I may discuss a little in speaking of the House of Commons.  But so much is evident:  the House of Lords, for its own members, attains this object; it gives them a voice, it gives them what no competing plan does give them—­ position.  The leisured members of the Cabinet speak in the Lords with authority and power.  They are not administrators with a right to speech—­clerks (as is sometimes suggested) brought down to lecture a House, but not to vote in it; but they are the equals of those they speak to; they speak as they like, and reply as they choose; they address the House, not with the “bated breath” of subordinates, but with the force and dignity of sure rank.  Life peers would enable us to use this faculty of our Constitution more freely and more variously.  It would give us a larger command of able leisure; it would improve the Lords as a political pulpit, for it would enlarge the list of its select preachers.

The danger of the House of Commons is, perhaps, that it will be reformed too rashly; the danger of the House of Lords certainly is, that it may never be reformed.  Nobody asks that it should be so; it is quite safe against rough destruction, but it is not safe against inward decay.  It may lose its veto as the Crown has lost its veto.  If most of its members neglect their duties, if all its members continue to be of one class, and that not quite the best; if its doors are shut against genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not 5000 pounds a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so much kingly power is gone—­ no one knows how.  Its danger is not in assassination, but atrophy; not abolition, but decline.

No.  V.

The house of commons.

[Footnote:  I reprint this chapter substantially as it was first written.  It is too soon, as I have 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.