A real
supremacy belonged to the House as a whole; but the forces of which it
was compounded were not all derived from the people, and the
aristocratic power had found out the secret of asserting itself within
the walls of the popular chamber, in the dress and through the voices of
its members. Many persons of gravity and weight saw great danger in a
measure of change like the first Reform Act, which left it to the Lords
to assert themselves, thereafter, by an external force, instead of
through a share in the internal composition of a body so formidable. But
the result proved that they were sufficiently to exercise, through the
popular will and choice, the power which they had formerly put in action
without its sanction, though within its proper precinct and with its
title falsely inscribed.
The House of Commons is superior, and by far superior, in the force of
its political attributes, to any other single power in the State. But it
is watched; it is criticized; it is hemmed in and about by a multitude
of other forces: the force, first of all, of the House of Lords, the
force of opinion from day to day, particularly of the highly
anti-popular opinion of the leisured men of the metropolis, who, seated
close to the scene of action, wield an influence greatly in excess of
their just claims; the force of the classes and professions; the just
and useful force of the local authorities in their various orders and
places.
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