_Leading Features of Parliamentary Government._--The parliamentary government developed by England out of feudal materials has been deliberately accepted as the type of constitutional government all over the world. Its leading features are popular representation more or less extensive, a bicameral legislature, and a cabinet or consolidated ministry. In connexion with all of these, numberless questions of the highest practical importance have arisen, the bare enumeration of which would surpass the limits of our space. We shall confine ourselves to a few very general considerations.
_The Two Chambers._--First, as to the double chamber. This, which is perhaps more accidental than any other portion of the British system, has been the most widely imitated. In most European countries, in the British colonies, in the United States Congress, and in the separate states of the Union,[5] there are two houses of legislature. This result has been brought about partly by natural imitation of the accepted type of free government, partly from a conviction that the second chamber will moderate the democratic tendencies of the first. But the elements of the British original cannot be reproduced to order under different conditions. There have, indeed, been a few attempts to imitate the special character of hereditary nobility attaching to the British House of Lords. In some countries, where the feudal tradition is still strong (e.g. Prussia, Austria, Hungary), the hereditary element in the upper chambers has survived as truly representative of actual social and economic relations. But where these social conditions do not obtain (e.g. in France after the Revolution) the attempt to establish an hereditary peerage on the British model has always failed. For the peculiar solidarity between the British nobility and the general mass of the people, the outcome of special conditions and tendencies, is a result beyond the power of constitution-makers to attain. The British system too, after its own way, has for a long period worked without any serious collision between the Houses,--the standing and obvious danger of the bicameral system. The actual ministers of the day must possess the confidence of the House of Commons; they need not--in fact they often do not--possess the confidence of the House of Lords. It is only in legislation that the Lower House really shares its powers with the Upper; and (apart from any such change in the constitution as was suggested in 1907 by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman) the constitution possesses, in the unlimited power of nominating peers, a well-understood last resource should the House of Lords persist in refusing important measures demanded by the representatives of the people. In the United Kingdom it is well understood that the real sovereignty lies with the people (the electorate), and the House of Lords recognizes the principle that it must accept a measure when the popular will has been clearly expressed. In all but measures of first-class importance, however, the House of Lords is a real second chamber, and in these there is little danger of a collision between the Houses. There is the widest possible difference between the British and any other second chamber. In the United States the Senate (constituted on the system of equal representation of states) is the more important of the two Houses, and the only one whose control of the executive can be compared to that exercised by the British House of Commons.