The Saturday Review said, some years since, that the ability of Parliament was a “protected ability”:  that there was at the door a differential duty of at least 2000 pounds a year.  Accordingly the House of Commons, representing only mind coupled with property, is not equal in mind to a legislature chosen for mind only, and whether accompanied by wealth or not.  But I do not for a moment wish to see a representation of pure mind; it would be contrary to the main thesis of this essay.  I maintain that Parliament ought to embody the public opinion of the English nation; and, certainly, that opinion is much more fixed by its property than by its mind.  The “too clever by half” people who live in “Bohemia,” ought to have no more influence in Parliament than they have in England, and they can scarcely have less.  Only, after every great abatement and deduction, I think the country would bear a little more mind; and that there is a profusion of opulent dulness in Parliament which might a little—­ though only a little—­be pruned away.

The only function of Parliament which remains to be considered is the informing function, as I just now called it; the function which belongs to it, or to members of it, to bring before the nation the ideas, grievances, and wishes of special classes.  This must not be confounded with what I have called its teaching function.  In life, no doubt, the two run one into another.  But so do many things which it is very important in definition to separate.  The facts of two things being often found together is rather a reason for, than an objection to, separating them, in idea.  Sometimes they are not found together, and then we may be puzzled if we have not trained ourselves to separate them.  The teaching function brings true ideas before the nation, and is the function of its highest minds.  The expressive function brings only special ideas, and is the function of but special minds.  Each class has its ideas, wants, and notions; and certain brains are ingrained with them.  Such sectarian conceptions are not those by which a determining nation should regulate its action, nor are orators, mainly animated by such conceptions, safe guides in policy.  But those orators should be heard; those conceptions should be kept in sight.  The great maxim of modern thought is not only the toleration of everything, but the examination of everything.  It is by examining very bare, very dull, very unpromising things, that modern science has come to be what it is.  There is a story of a great chemist who said he owed half his fame to his habit of examining after his experiments, what was going to be thrown away:  everybody knew the result of the experiment itself, but in the refuse matter there were many little facts and unknown changes, which suggested the discoveries of a famous life to a person capable of looking for them.  So with the special notions of neglected classes.  They may contain elements of truth which, though small, are the very elements which we now require, because we already know all the rest.