Note (49) — Chapter III
Reading edition
We hardly need assurance of the fact, but if it were needed, something like an assurance to that effect was given by an official member of the House during the session of 1872. At all events we read in Sir T. E. May (ii. 83); “The increased power of the House of Commons, under an improved representation, has been patent and indisputable. Responsible to the people, it has, at the same time, wielded the people’s strength. No longer subservient to the crown, the ministers, and the peerage, it has become the predominant authority in the state.” But the following strange remark follows: “But it is characteristic of the British constitution, and a proof of its freedom from the spirit of democracy, that the more dominant the power of the House of Commons,—the greater has been its respect for the law, and the more carefully have its acts been restrained within the proper limits of its own jurisdiction.”
ὦ δημοκρατία, ταῦτα δῆτ' ἀνασχετά;
Has Mr. Grote lived and written so utterly in vain that a writer widely indeed removed from the vulgar herd of oligarchic babblers looks on “the spirit of democracy” as something inconsistent with “respect for the law”?