In both these Constitutions, this dangerous division is defended by a peculiar doctrine with which I have nothing to do now.  It is said that there must be in a Federal Government some institution, some authority, some body possessing a veto in which the separate States composing the Confederation are all equal.  I confess this doctrine has to me no self-evidence, and it is assumed, but not proved.  The State of Delaware is not equal in power or influence to the State of New York, and you cannot make it so by giving it an equal veto in an Upper Chamber.  The history of such an institution is indeed most natural.  A little State will like, and must like, to see some token, some memorial mark of its old independence preserved in the Constitution by which that independence is extinguished.  But it is one thing for an institution to be natural, and another for it to be expedient.  If indeed it be that a Federal Government compels the erection of an Upper Chamber of conclusive and co-ordinate authority, it is one more in addition to the many other inherent defects of that kind of Government.  It may be necessary to have the blemish, but it is a blemish just as much.

There ought to be in every Constitution an available authority somewhere.  The sovereign power must be come-at-able.  And the English have made it so.  The House of Lords, at the passing of the Reform Act of 1832, was as unwilling to concur with the House of Commons as the Upper Chamber at Victoria to concur with the Lower Chamber.  But it did concur.  The Crown has the authority to create new peers; and the king of the day had promised the Ministry of the day to create them.  The House of Lords did not like the precedent, and they passed the bill.  The power was not used, but its existence was as useful as its energy.  Just as the knowledge that his men can strike makes a master yield in order that they may not strike, so the knowledge that their House could be swamped at the will of the king—­at the will of the people—­made the Lords yield to the people.

From the Reform Act the function of the House of Lords has been altered in English history.  Before that Act it was, if not a directing Chamber, at least a Chamber of Directors.  The leading nobles, who had most influence in the Commons, and swayed the Commons, sat there.  Aristocratic influence was so powerful in the House of Commons, that there never was any serious breach of unity.  When the Houses quarrelled, it was as in the great Aylesbury case, about their respective privileges, and not about the national policy.  The influence of the nobility was then so potent, that it was not necessary to exert it.  The English Constitution, though then on this point very different from what it now is, did not even then contain the blunder of the Victorian or of the Swiss Constitution.  It had not two Houses of distinct origin; it had two Houses of common origin—­two Houses in which the predominant element was the same.  The danger of discordance was obviated by a latent unity.