facts which he held up to view, but when we look at other facts which he ignored. It is true that the existence of two coequal Houses is an evil when those two Houses are of distinct natures, as was the case under the Victorian Constitution to which Mr. Bagehot refers by way of illustrative example. Under that Constitution all legislative business was sometimes to be seen quite suspended because of irreconcilable differences of opinion between the Upper House, which represented the rich wool-growers of the colony, and the Lower Assembly, which represented the lesser wool-growers, perhaps, and the people who were not wool-growers at all. The Upper House, in other words, was a class chamber, and thus stood quite apart from anything like the principle embodied in our own Senate, which is no more a class chamber than is the House of Representatives.
The prerogatives of the Senate do, indeed, render our legislative system more complex, and for that reason possibly more cumbersome, than the British; for our Senate can do more than the House of Lords. It can not only question and stay the judgment of the Commons, but may always with perfect safety act upon its own judgment and gainsay the more popular chamber to the end of the longest chapter of the bitterest controversy. It is quite as free to act as
