perhaps a false and pernicious opinion, but at any rate possible—­an opinion within the intellectual sphere, an opinion to be reckoned with.  And it is an immense achievement.  Practical diplomatists say that a free Government is harder to deal with than a despotic Government; you may be able to get the despot to hear the other side; his Ministers, men of trained intelligence, will be sure to know what makes against them; and they may tell him.  But a free nation never hears any side save its own.  The newspapers only repeat the side their purchasers like:  the favourable arguments are set out, elaborated, illustrated; the adverse arguments maimed, misstated, confused.  The worst judge, they say, is a deaf judge; the most dull Government is a free Government on matters its ruling classes will not hear.  I am disposed to reckon it as the second function of Parliament in point of importance, that to some extent it makes us hear what otherwise we should not.

Lastly, there is the function of legislation, of which of course it would be preposterous to deny the great importance, and which I only deny to be as important as the executive management of the whole State, or the political education given by Parliament to the whole nation.  There are, I allow, seasons when legislation is more important than either of these.  The nation may be misfitted with its laws, and need to change them:  some particular corn law may hurt all industry, and it may be worth a thousand administrative blunders to get rid of it.  But generally the laws of a nation suit its life; special adaptations of them are but subordinate; the administration and conduct of that life is the matter which presses most.  Nevertheless, the statute-book of every great nation yearly contains many important new laws, and the English statute-book does so above any.  An immense mass, indeed, of the legislation is not, in the proper language of jurisprudence, legislation at all.  A law is a general command applicable to many cases.  The “special acts” which crowd the statute-book and weary Parliamentary committees are applicable to one case only.  They do not lay down rules according to which railways shall be made, they enact that such a railway shall be made from this place to that place, and they have no bearing upon any other transaction.  But after every deduction and abatement, the annual legislation of Parliament is a result of singular importance; were it not so, it could not be, as it often is considered, the sole result of its annual assembling.

Some persons will perhaps think that I ought to enumerate a sixth function of the House of Commons—­a financial function.  But I do not consider that, upon broad principle, and omitting legal technicalities, the House of Commons has any special function with regard to financial different from its functions with respect to other legislation.  It is to rule in both, and to rule in both through the Cabinet.  Financial legislation is of necessity a yearly recurring legislation; but frequency of occurrence does not indicate a diversity of nature or compel an antagonism of treatment.