Whatever, too, may be the case hereafter, when a better system has been struck out, at present the House does all the work of legislation, all the detail, and all the clauses itself. One of the most helpless exhibitions of helpless ingenuity and wasted mind is a committee of the whole House on a bill of many clauses which eager enemies are trying to spoil, and various friends are trying to mend. An Act of Parliament is at least as complex as a marriage settlement; and it is made much as a settlement would be if it were left to the vote and settled by the major part of persons concerned, including the unborn children. There is an advocate for every interest, and every interest clamours for every advantage. The executive Government by means of its disciplined forces, and the few invaluable members who sit and think, preserves some sort of unity. But the result is very imperfect. The best test of a machine is the work it turns out. Let any one who knows what legal documents ought to be, read first a will he has just been making and then an Act of Parliament; he will certainly say, "I would have dismissed my attorney if he had done my business as the legislature has done the nation's business". While the House of Commons is what it is, a good revising, regulating and retarding House would be a benefit of great magnitude.
But is the House of Lords such a chamber? Does it do this work? This is almost an undiscussed question. The House of Lords, for thirty years at least, has been in popular discussion an accepted matter. Popular passion has not crossed the path, and no vivid imagination has been excited to clear the matter up.
The House of Lords has the greatest merit which such a chamber can have; it is POSSIBLE. It is incredibly difficult to get a revising assembly, because it is difficult to find a class of respected revisers. A federal senate, a second House, which represents State unity, has this advantage; it embodies a feeling at the root of society--a feeling which is older than complicated politics, which is stronger a thousand times over than common political feelings--the local feeling. "My shirt," said the Swiss state-right patriot, "is dearer to me than my coat." Every State in the American Union would feel that disrespect to the Senate was disrespect to itself. Accordingly, the Senate is respected; whatever may be the merits or demerits of its action, it can act; it is real, independent, and efficient. But in common Governments it is fatally difficult to make an UNpopular entity powerful in a popular Government.
