This arrangement immensely increases the authority of the democratic favourite of the moment. It is less favourable to the prestige or usefulness of the Chamber as containing the collective wisdom of the nation. The aptitude for business talk that shall be to the point in Committee has not, when the House has a mind to it, declined. The great speeches, no sooner delivered than they constitute national text-books, are less frequent than the display of excellence in debate. Afraid of boring the Assembly, dreading the imputation of mere rhetoric, the Member who has something to say usually prefers delivering it to his constituents at his periodical reunion with them, or upon some other extra parliamentary occasion. The terse diction and urbane gravity of manner of Sir Charles Dilke made him, during his Foreign Under-Secretaryship, a parliamentary model. Such oratorical efforts as he sometimes made, were reserved for the meetings with his electors. The clever young politician, being on his promotion, speaks when he can that he may give his future chief a taste of his quality. Popular meetings therefore, and the periodical press have detracted from the House of Commons as a school of eloquence, or as a national educator. On the other hand the House of Lords has no constituencies in the background. Its time is less preoccupied. It is to-day far more representative of the English people than was the House of Commons a few years before the Queen's accession. It does indeed chiefly consist now of men whose station and whose antecedents are not very dissimilar from those of the House of Commons before that Chamber had been thrice Reformed. Hence some of those debates, especially on foreign policy, or grave points of constitutional procedure that used to mark epochs in the Elective Chamber are now almost confined to the Hereditary House. Outbursts of periodical petulance against the Peers will doubtless continue. Such Radicals as may be left in England to-day are at heart far more tolerant of a second Chamber, composed as that at Westminster is, than were the 'root and branch' men not merely of Cromwell's day, but of half a century ago. Something therefore may perhaps be said on behalf of the opinion that any movement which may be successful against the House of Lords is likely to affect the House of Commons as well.[54] CHAPTER XIX CROWN, COUNTRY AND COMMONS