strengthen the enemy, yet that would be so here; since a losing
battle--especially a long and well-fought one--would have thoroughly
taught the lower orders to combine, and would have left the higher
orders face to face with an irritated, organised, and superior
voting power. The courage which strengthens an enemy and which so
loses, not only the present battle, but many after battles, is a
heavy curse to men and nations.

In one minor respect, indeed, I think we may see with distinctness
the effect of the Reform Bill of 1867. I think it has completed one
change which the Act of 1832 began; it has completed the change
which that Act made in the relation of the House of Lords to the
House of Commons. As I have endeavoured in this book to explain, the
literary theory of the English Constitution is on this point quite
wrong as usual. According to that theory, the two Houses are two
branches of the legislature, perfectly equal and perfectly distinct.
But before the Act of 1832 they were not so distinct; there was a
very large and a very strong common element. By their commanding
influence in many boroughs and counties the Lords nominated a
considerable part of the Commons; the majority of the other part
were the richer gentry--men in most respects like the Lords, and
sympathising with the Lords. Under the Constitution as it then was
the two Houses were not in their essence distinct; they were in
their essence similar; they were, in the main, not Houses of
contrasted origin, but Houses of like origin. The predominant part
of both was taken from the same class--from the English gentry,
titled and untitled. By the Act of 1832 this was much altered. The
aristocracy and the gentry lost their predominance in the House of
Commons; that predominance passed to the middle class. The two
Houses then became distinct, but then they ceased to be co-equal.