Nay, how is any party-influence consistent with the solemn duty of a legislator? He does not, indeed, like a juryman, take oath to give a true verdict; yet he is not less urgently bound in conscience to vote for the right and the just. The juryman's unjust verdict may make a single life or a whole family miserable a bad law, such as very many of our laws have been, may ruin thousands of families, and worse, a bad vote of Parliament may entail a horrible war. How any member of Parliament can regard himself conscientiously pledged to vote with a party I never could understand. A right organization of the United Kingdom would destroy Party Legislation; but, alas! Party Legislation, under the specious name of Parliamentary Government, is exactly the thing which our existing Parties glorify, and uphold as the essence of English wisdom. None of the Reforms hitherto put forward touch, or pretend to touch, this cardinal mischief.

As a broad basis, to justify a large change, you must allow me to set forth at some length numerous undeniable facts. The business which, session after session, comes before Parliament, is overwhelming in magnitude. Every year, from mere want of time, numbers of half-advanced bills are arrested, with much labour and expense lost, often with much hope disappointed; hence the phrase Slaughter of the Innocents, has been stereotyped. Long hours of talk are given to a few measures which excite party zeal, or concern the pecuniary interests of the powerful, and but scant time remains, in which other measures are scuffled by, with very insufficient debate. This is no accident; it cannot be called an abuse: it inheres in the routine of the system. As a natural result also, measures of the utmost importance are decided by a late vote-even after midnight-and in a thin house. Attendance of members is not compulsory. Forty suffice to constitute a house. Forty! say one-sixteenth part of the whole. Indeed, if there are but twenty, and they choose to connive, then no one demands that the House be counted; so that any number, however few, can pass valid laws-even penal laws-affecting our liberty and our honour; and the thing is done-it is no mere possibility. Penal laws are thus made, and whatever indignation they cause, yet, once passed by trickery, they are very difficult to repeal. Numbers of Bills become law unknown to a majority of the House; indeed, the topics on which the members have to vote are so various that few can possibly understand them.

This reconciles so very many to vote as a whipper-in requests them. The Acts are called laws, but most of them are administrative edicts, setting forth, not broad clear principles, but numerous minute details, very difficult to grasp collectively and appreciate. Instead of all citizens knowing the laws which they have to obey, it is an arduous and special duty to know just those which are most needed. The Acts are often of immense length; some have two hundred or two hundred and fifty clauses, and fill twenty or thirty folio pages. Amendments introduced into a Bill are apt so to mar its unity that the judges themselves fail to understand it when it comes forth as an Act. Hence nothing is commoner than Acts to amend Acts. Who can deny that a grave internal reform in the procedure of Parliament is needed?

An internal organization used by some Parliaments would much lessen these evils. If the House established standing committees for the leading subjects, selecting each committee and its chairman for special acquaintance with the questions concerned, every measure which is allowed a first reading might be referred to the appropriate committee, who would lay before. Parliament a report with reasons. After that, discussion would be more concise and more profitable. The chairmen of committees would virtually superintend, as ministers are now expected to do. This perhaps is precisely the reason why nothing of the sort is proposed. Ministers covet the credit of conducting legislation, as political capital and as a means of patronage. Standing Committees, appointed without reference to party, would spoil their party schemes. Permanent able chairmen would check their ambition disagreeably.

But here I come to another and a very great grievance-the fact that executive ministers have any legislative place at all. To unite executive, legislative, and judicial power, is the definition of the most complete despotism, such as in the worst times of India or Rome. The Turkish Sultan does not claim judicial nor yet legislative power. An Arab Chieftain accepts the customs of his tribe as a fact, and does not dream of legislating, though he is at once administrator and judge. The qualities which make an able administrator in the executive government are so different from those needed by a legislator in a popular assembly, that they can rarely be united in the same man. Our system excludes even the ablest man from our ministry, unless he has (what is called) a "power of debate and of reply," to

which readiness, fluency, and ill-nature signally contribute. But the deepest reason against this plurality of functions is, that the duties are essentially inconsistent. The elected legislator owes candour and openness to his constituents, but the minister is pledged to secrecy. He has undertaken duties to his colleagues which forbid freedom and truthfulness in Parliamentary discussion. Scandalous to say, at present it is a received principle, that, if out-voted by his colleagues in the Cabinet, a minister is bound to argue publicly in favour of that which he opposed privately, and to pretend approval. This undermines public honour, and sanctions ministerial hypocrisy. Moreover, the Executive, by claiming the initiative in legislation and preoccupying the time of Parliament, have degraded the mass of the House, who are now called private members. It is the very policy whereby Augustus Cæsar reigned despotically under the cover and name of the Senate in Rome. The relative position of the Executive to Parliament is reversed by it. As the old Roman Senate used to set the policy, and entrust the execution of it to the consuls, so ought Parliament to set the policy now, and give instructions to the Executive. Such in theory are all Parliamentary statutes. Parliament passes them; ministers and judges have to enforce them. In theory the legislative power is supreme: the executive and the judicial powers obey it. Our constitutional lawyers talk grandly of the plenary supremacy of Parliament. But the Executive, here, as so very often elsewhere, has grasped at a double power, and does not relish subjection. Once it tried open defiance, now ministers are generally too prudent to talk high, yet they have a sharp scourge for Parliament, if it dare to act the master. By dissolution they can inflict on every member a pecuniary fine, varying from £500 to £3000 or £4000, with contingent loss of his seat, if a vote be carried disagreeable to the ministry. Lord John Russell called it a penal dissolution, when in 1856 Lord Palmerston inflicted it, in punishment of the vote which censured our bombardment of Canton, a bombardment executed without declaration of war, without communication with the Home Government, or even with the Chinese Emperor. The censure fell principally on Sir John Bowring; but a Prime Minister does not allow Parliament to censure one of his subordinates separately, especially for conduct towards foreign powers. This would entail personal responsibility for making a war; but they choose to have their responsibility only collective, and thereby nominal.

To this end they construct a trade union, unknown to the laws and constitution, they call it a "cabinet:" it virtually supersedes the Privy Council, which they have perverted and degraded. Of old they used to sign their advice as Privy Councillors, then the Sovereign could make each responsible. In or out of office they bind themselves now to collective action against the Queen, and against Parliament, on such a question as "Who shall be Prime Minister?" In fact, if Parliament firmly control them, they make a collective strike, and dictate the conditions on which alone they will work. Such are the arts by which they prevent Parliamentary government from growing into a reality. Since each faction plays the same game, Parliament is paralyzed, and will be so until ministers cease to have double functions.

It is pretended that the dissolution of Parliament at the will of a minister is a reasonable constitutional mode of allowing the country to declare its will on a special question. If a plebiscite were sincerely desired, the way is plain. Do not dissolve Parliament, but require of every constituency to vote Yes or No on the matter under debate, as : "Do you approve of the Chinese War?" But that would not at all have suited the minister. He wanted to punish the members for their vote. He did not desire to risk double defeat by a plebiscite. He knew that the Radicals were so hot after what they called "Parliamentary Reform,” that they would not elect on the issue of the Chinese War; and when, by affecting to favour Reform, he had got a new House unpledged concerning war or peace, he scornfully declared that of course the electors had voted solely on the question, "What Prime Minister shall guide the destinies of England?”

Now I need to insist, that this stifling and confusing of the public voice is no unfortunate accident. It is systematic. It recurs at every general election, as a result of that usurpation, or coup d'état, called the Septennial Act, which more than anything else takes the guidance of affairs out of the hands of electors, and makes elections a game of chance. Few of us keep in mind the utter illegitimacy of that usurping act which still oppresses us. Parliaments used to be elected year by year. Because Charles I. had dispensed with Parliaments for many painful years, the House, to guard against the recurrence of this royal misconduct, passed a very stringent law which, in compliment to Charles II., was softened into a new enactment, that Parliament shall never be intermitted for more than three years. This was strangely

interpreted to mean that each Parliament must sit three continuous years; so triennial Parliaments became the rule, until a Parliament elected for three years voted that it would sit seven ! Such is the Septennial Act, which is since nailed down upon us permanently, though the reasons pleaded for it were transitory. As legitimately may the existing Parliament vote that it will sit twenty-one years. There is little chance now that any Parliament, except under terror, will go back to the three years' term, if it be claimed separately. It would not please ministers so long as they can hold the scourge of a dissolution over the members; and it certainly will not please the members individually. As things now stand, at every general election we choose men to be our supreme authority for seven years. The moment after they are elected, they are for that long period our complete masters. We may humbly petition, or we may clamour with irregular demonstrations; the vassals even of the Turkish Sultan may do either. But before the election, in providing for seven years, topics far too numerous crowd on each constituency. Even those who desire the same measures range them in a different order of value, so that they are liable to be split into small bands with different flags, or, to avoid this, they sacrifice all measures but one or two. In this way, Extension of the Suffrage, with perhaps the Ballot as a postscript, became the favourite ticket with Reformers, as soon as the abolition of the Corn Laws was gained. Conservatism then, by opposing and delaying as long as possible the most popular of the national demands, keeps the Parliament irresponsible to the People, just as are the Ministers to the Parliament.

A stable despotism, like that of Russia, propped by severely trained officers of departments, has many solid advantages for the lower people, as indeed Prussia has well shown, from Frederick the Great downwards. Such a despotism dares to act against the aristocracy and the rich for the public good. But the despotism of an English ministry is so short-lived that it has no permanent stake in the country. I compare its despotism to that of a Turkish Pasha. Its own stability is the paramount object of its common interest, and it knows itself to be eminently unstable; hence it is the most timid of political clubs. It dares not to look far forward; it has to manage for the moment. It dreads to incur enmity with the powerful. It cuts down its legislative proposals, not to offend the squires, or the Church, or it may be, the Cardinals, or, not long back, the West India planters, the