allowing so much discretionary power on matters peculiarly dangerous
and peculiarly delicate to rest in the sole charge of one secret
committee is exceedingly strange. No doubt it may be beneficial;
many seeming anomalies are so, but at first sight it does not look
right.

I confess that I should see no advantage in it if our two Chambers
were sufficiently homogeneous and sufficiently harmonious. On the
contrary, if those two Chambers were as they ought to be, I should
believe it to be a great defect. If the administration had in both
Houses a majority--not a mechanical majority ready to accept
anything, but a fair and reasonable one, predisposed to think the
Government right, but not ready to find it to be so in the face of
facts and in opposition to whatever might occur; if a good
Government were thus placed, I should think it decidedly better that
the agreements of the administration with foreign powers should be
submitted to Parliament. They would then receive that which is best
for all arrangements of business, an understanding and sympathising
criticism, but still a criticism. The majority of the legislature,
being well disposed to the Government, would not "find" against it
except it had really committed some big and plain mistake. But if
the Government had made such a mistake, certainly the majority of
the legislature would find against it. In a country fit for
Parliamentary institutions, the partisanship of members of the
legislature never comes in manifest opposition to the plain interest
of the nation; if it did, the nation being (as are all nations
capable of Parliamentary institutions) constantly attentive to
public affairs, would inflict on them the maximum Parliamentary
penalty at the next election and at many future elections. It would
break their career. No English majority dare vote for an exceedingly