that was their position from age to age) to a lawyer who was of yesterday,—­whom everybody could remember without briefs, who had talked for “hire,” who had “hungered after six-and-eightpence”.  Great peers did not gain glory from the House; on the contrary, they lost glory when they were in the House.  They devised two expedients to get out of this difficulty:  they invented proxies which enabled them to vote without being present, without being offended by vigour and invective, without being vexed by ridicule, without leaving the rural mansion or the town palace where they were demigods.  And what was more effectual still, they used their influence in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords.  In that indirect manner a rural potentate, who half returned two county members, and wholly returned two borough members, who perhaps gave seats to members of the Government, who possibly seated the leader of the Opposition, became a much greater man than by sitting on his own bench, in his own House, hearing a Chancellor talk.  The House of Lords was a second-rate force, even when the peers were a first-rate force, because the greatest peers, those who had the greatest social importance, did not care for their own House, or like it, but gained great part of their political power by a hidden but potent influence in the competing House.

When we cease to look at the House of Lords under its dignified aspect, and come to regard it under its strictly useful aspect, we find the literary theory of the English Constitution wholly wrong, as usual.  This theory says that the House of Lords is a co-ordinate estate of the realm, of equal rank with the House of Commons; that it is the aristocratic branch, just as the Commons is the popular branch; and that by the principle of our Constitution the aristocratic branch has equal authority with the popular branch.  So utterly false is this doctrine that it is a remarkable peculiarity, a capital excellence of the British Constitution, that it contains a sort of Upper House, which is not of equal authority to the Lower House, yet still has some authority.  The evil of two co-equal Houses of distinct natures is obvious.  Each House can stop all legislation, and yet some legislation may be necessary.  At this moment we have the best instance of this which could be conceived.  The Upper House of our Victorian Constitution, representing the rich wool-growers, has disagreed with the Lower Assembly, and most business is suspended.  But for a most curious stratagem, the machine of Government would stand still.  Most Constitutions have committed this blunder.  The two most remarkable Republican institutions in the world commit it.  In both the American and the Swiss Constitutions the Upper House has as much authority as the second:  it could produce the maximum of impediment—­the dead-lock, if it liked; if it does not do so, it is owing not to the goodness of the legal constitution, but to the discreetness of the members of the Chamber.