Walter Bagehot

A casual majority of the House of Commons has therefore dominant power: it can legislate as it wishes.

And though the whole House of Commons upon great subjects very fairly represents public opinion, and though its judgment upon minor questions is, from some secret excellencies in its composition, remarkably sound and good; yet, like all…

If these 200 choose to combine on a point which the public does not care for, and which they care for because it affects their purse, they are absolute.

A formidable sinister interest may always obtain the complete command of a dominant assembly by some chance and for a moment, and it is therefore of great use to have a second chamber of an opposite sort, differently composed, in which…

The most dangerous of all sinister interests is that of the executive Government, because it is the most powerful.

It is perfectly possible--it has happened and will happen again--that the Cabinet, being very powerful in the Commons, may inflict minor measures on the nation which the nation did not like, but which it did not understand enough to forbid.

If, therefore, a tribunal of revision can be found in which the executive, though powerful, is less powerful, the Government will be the better; the retarding chamber will impede minor instances of Parliamentary tyranny, though it will not…

But even after due allowance for the full weight of this protective machinery, our House of Commons is, as all such chambers must be, subject to sudden turns and bursts of feeling, because the members who compose it change from time to…

The pernicious result is perpetual in our legislation; many Acts of Parliament are medleys of different motives, because the majority which passed one set of its clauses is different from that which passed another set.

But the greatest defect of the House of Commons is that it has no leisure.

The life of the House is the worst of all lives--a life of distracting routine.

Our legislation touches on all subjects, because our country contains all ingredients.

The whole scene is so encumbered with changing business, that it is hard to keep your head in it.

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.

The best test of a machine is the work it turns out.

While the House of Commons is what it is, a good revising, regulating and retarding House would be a benefit of great magnitude.

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…

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.

It would not be powerful, it would not be possible, unless it were known to be independent.

The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.