_Differences between lords and commons._--The reign of Charles II. was hardly more remarkable by the vigilance of the House of Commons against arbitrary prerogative than by the warfare it waged against whatever seemed an encroachment or usurpation in the other house of parliament. It has been a peculiar happiness of our constitution that such dissensions have so rarely occurred. I cannot recollect any republican government, ancient or modern (except perhaps some of the Dutch provinces), where hereditary and democratical authority have been amalgamated so as to preserve both in effect and influence, without continual dissatisfaction and reciprocal encroachments; for though, in the most tranquil and prosperous season of the Roman state, one consul, and some magistrates of less importance, were invariably elected from the patrician families, these latter did not form a corporation, nor had any collective authority in the government. The history of monarchies, including of course all states where the principality is lodged in a single person, that have admitted the aristocratical and popular temperaments at the same time, bears frequent witness to the same jealous or usurping spirit. Yet monarchy is unquestionably more favourable to the co-existence of an hereditary body of nobles with a representation of the commons than any other form of commonwealth; and it is to the high prerogative of the English Crown, its exclusive disposal of offices of trust which are the ordinary subjects of contention, its power of putting a stop to parliamentary disputes by a dissolution, and, above all, to the necessity which both the Peers and the Commons have often felt, of a mutual good understanding for the maintenance of their privileges, that we must in a great measure attribute the general harmony, or at least the absence of open schism, between the two houses of parliament. This is, however, still more owing to the happy graduation of ranks, which renders the elder and the younger sons of our nobility two links in the unsevered chain of society; the one trained in the school of popular rights, and accustomed, for a long portion of their lives, to regard the privileges of the house whereof they form a part, full as much as those of their ancestors;[29] the other falling without hereditary distinction into the class of other commoners, and mingling the sentiments natural to their birth and family affection, with those that are more congenial to the whole community. It is owing also to the wealth and dignity of those ancient families, who would be styled noble in any other country, and who give an aristocratical character to the popular part of our legislature, and to the influence which the peers themselves, through the representation of small boroughs, are enabled to exercise over the lower house.