HENRY BROUGHAM (QUEEN CAROLINE'S ATTORNEY-GENERAL, AFTERWARDS LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN) 194 From the Painting by JAMES LONSDALE in the National Portrait Gallery THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN WALPOLE'S DAY 200 From the Engraving by A. FOGG The figures from left to right are:--SIR ROBERT WALPOLE, the RT. HON. ARTHUR ONSLOW, SYDNEY GODOLPHIN (Father of the House), SIR JOSEPH JEKYL, COL. ONSLOW, EDWARD STABLES, ESQ. (Clerk of House of Commons), SIR JAMES THORNHILL, MR. AISKEW (Clerk Assistant). EDMUND BURKE 206 From an Engraving by J. WATSON after the Painting by SIR J. REYNOLDS RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 212 From an Engraving by J. HALL after the Painting by SIR J. REYNOLDS THE PASSING OF THE REFORM BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 246 From an Engraving after the Painting by SIR J. REYNOLDS THE HOUSE OF LORDS IN 1910 268 From a Photograph by London Electrotype Agency WILLIAM WOODFALL 284 From the Painting by THOMAS BEACH in the National Portrait Gallery THE MOTHER OF PARLIAMENTS CHAPTER I PARLIAMENT AND PARTY It has been asserted that the different social conditions of various peoples have their origin, not so much in climate or parentage, as in the character of their governments. If that be true, there is little doubt that the social conditions of England should compare most favourably with those of sister nations. But the admirable form of Government to which Englishmen have now long been accustomed, did not come into existence in the course of a single night. "The resemblance between the present Constitution and that from which it originally sprang," says an eighteenth-century writer, "is not much nearer than that between the most beautiful fly and the abject worm from which it arose."[1] And the conversion of the chrysalis into the butterfly has been a slow and troublesome process. [1] King's "Essay on the English Constitution," p. 17. Montesquieu, who was an earnest student of the English Constitution, after reading the treatise of Tacitus on the manners of the early Germans, declared that it was from them that England had borrowed her idea of political government. Whether or no this "beautiful system was first invented in the woods,"[2] as he says, it is certain that we owe the primary principles of our existing constitution to German sources. They date back to the earliest days of the first settlements of Teutons on the Kentish shores. [2] "The Spirit of Laws." "Works," vol. i. p. 212.