It might indeed
be contended that the House of Commons of the present epoch does far
more to increase the aggregate of public charge than to reduce it. It
might even be a question whether the public would take benefit if the
House were either intrusted annually with a great part of the
initiative, so as to be really responsible to the people for the
spending of their money; or else were excluded from part at least of its
direct action upon expenditure, intrusting to the executive the
application of given sums which that executive should have no legal
power to exceed.
Meantime, we of this island are not great political philosophers; and we
contend with an earnest, but disproportioned, vehemence about changes
which are palpable, such as the extension of the suffrage, or the
redistribution of Parliamentary seats, neglecting wholly other
processes of change which work beneath the surface, and in the dark, but
which are even more fertile of great organic results. The modern English
character reflects the English Constitution in this, that it abounds in
paradox; that it possesses every strength; but holds it tainted with
every weakness; that it seems alternately both to rise above and to fall
below the standard of average humanity; that there is no allegation of
praise or blame which, in some one of the aspects of its many-sided
formation, it does not deserve; that only in the midst of much default,
and much transgression, the people of this United Kingdom either have
heretofore established, or will hereafter establish, their title to be
reckoned among the children of men, for the eldest born of an imperial
race.
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