change which might have been expected from the Act of 1832 was held
in suspense, and did not begin till that measure had been followed
by another of similar and greater power.

The work which the Duke of Wellington in part performed has now,
therefore, to be completed also. He met the half difficulty; we have
to surmount the whole one. We have to frame such tacit rules, to
establish such ruling but unenacted customs, as will make the House
of Lords yield to the Commons when and as often as our new
Constitution requires that it should yield. I shall be asked, How
often is that, and what is the test by which you know it? I answer
that the House of Lords must yield whenever the opinion of the
Commons is also the opinion of the nation, and when it is clear that
the nation has made up its mind. Whether or not the nation has made
up its mind is a question to be decided by all the circumstances of
the case, and in the common way in which all practical questions are
decided. There are some people who lay down a sort of mechanical
test; they say the House of Lords should be at liberty to reject a
measure passed by the Commons once or more, and then if the Commons
send it up again and again, infer that the nation is determined. But
no important practical question in real life can be uniformly
settled by a fixed and formal rule in this way. This rule would
prove that the Lords might have rejected the Reform Act of 1832.
Whenever the nation was both excited and determined, such a rule
would be an acute and dangerous political poison. It would teach the
House of Lords that it might shut its eyes to all the facts of real
life and decide simply by an abstract formula. If in 1832 the Lords
had so acted, there would have been a revolution. Undoubtedly there
is a general truth in the rule. Whether a bill has come up once
only, or whether it has come up several times, is one important fact