"
Now, how it comes to pass that after two hundred years, and many
years after a Reform Bill, the house of Commons is so little
changed, I will not stop to inquire. I will not ask how it happens
that bills which cramp and worry the people, and restrict their
scant enjoyments, are so easily passed, and how it happens that
measures for their real interests are so very difficult to be got
through Parliament. I will not analyse the confined air of the
lobby, or reduce to their primitive gases its deadening influences
on the memory of that Honourable Member who was once a candidate
for the honour of your--and my--independent vote and interest. I
will not ask what is that Secretarian figure, full of
blandishments, standing on the threshold, with its finger on its
lips. I will not ask how it comes that those personal
altercations, involving all the removes and definitions of
Shakespeare's Touchstone--the retort courteous--the quip modest--
the reply churlish--the reproof valiant--the countercheck
quarrelsome--the lie circumstantial and the lie direct--are of
immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the
health, the taxation, and the education, of a whole people. I will
not penetrate into the mysteries of that secret chamber in which
the Bluebeard of Party keeps his strangled public questions, and
with regard to which, when he gives the key to his wife, the new
comer, he strictly charges her on no account to open the door.
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