The question seems to resolve itself into two parts: first, why a custom once established is so tenaciously followed in England; and, second, why the conventions have assumed their present form. In regard to the first it may be suggested that while the consequences mentioned by Professor Dicey form, no doubt, the ultimate sanction of the most important conventions of the constitution, they are not the usual, or in fact the real, motive for obedience; just as the dread of criminal punishment is not the general motive for ordinary morality. The risk of imprisonment never occurs, indeed, to people of high character, and in the same way the ultimate sanctions of the law are not usually present in the minds of men in English public life. In the main the conventions are observed because they are a code of honour. They are, as it were, the rules of the game, and the single class in the community which has hitherto had the conduct of English public life almost entirely in its own hands is the very class that is peculiarly sensitive to obligation of this kind. Moreover, the very fact that one class rules, by the sufferance of the whole nation, as trustees for the public, makes that class exceedingly careful not to violate the understandings on which the trust is held. The key to the question why the conventions have assumed their present form is to be found mainly in Professor Dicey's remark[13:1] that all of them exist for the sake of securing obedience to the deliberately expressed will of the House of Commons, and ultimately to the will of the nation. Their effect has been to bring the prerogatives of the Crown more and more completely under the control of the cabinet, and the cabinet itself under the control of the House of Commons; to restrain the opposition of the Lords to any policy on which the Commons backed by the nation are determined; and, finally, through the power of dissolution to make the House of Commons itself reflect as nearly as may be the views of the electorate. In England there is, in fact, only one conclusive means of expressing the popular will--that of an election to the House of Commons; and in ordinary cases there is only one body that has power to interpret that expression, the cabinet placed in office by the House so elected. [Sidenote: The Effects of Custom.]