Professor Dicey has also pointed out a singular result of the conventions. If the growing power of the House of Commons, instead of being used to impose customary restraints on the exercise of authority by the Crown and the House of Lords, had been exerted to limit that authority by law, the Crown and the House of Lords would have been far more free to exercise at their discretion the powers still left in their hands; and hence the House of Commons could not have obtained its present omnipotence. By leaving the prerogative substantially untouched by law, and requiring that it should be wielded by ministers responsible to them, the Commons have drawn into their own control all the powers of the sovereign that time has not rendered entirely obsolete. The great part played by custom has had another effect upon English public life. It has tended to develop a conservative temperament. If laws are changed the new ones may have the same authority as the old; but if customs are changed rapidly they lose their force altogether. Stability is necessary for the very life of custom. The conventions of the constitution could not exist without respect for precedent, and where the institutions and liberties of a country depend not upon a written code, but upon custom, there is a natural tendency to magnify the importance of tradition and precedent in themselves. In England, therefore, there is a peculiar veneration for custom, and a disposition to make as little change in it as is compatible with changing times. The result is a constant tinkering, rather than remodelling, of outworn institutions,--a spirit which is strongly marked throughout the whole of English public life. [Sidenote: English System not Logical but Scientific.]