It may, however, be worth while to indicate
briefly some of the changes that have occurred
since the following chapters were composed.
Several of these changes were anticipated; and
those who did me the honour to read my pages
with attention in 1904 will not perhaps have been
surprised by the march of events during the years
that have since elapsed. I have left the chapters
on "The House of Lords" and "The Peers as a
Senate" substantially as they were written, though
I am conscious that their interest must now be
largely antiquarian. But, since it is impossible to
know what the Upper Chamber will become, it
seems useful to leave on record what it was, and
what, to a certain extent, and pending further
modifications, it still is.

The Parliament Act of 1911 is a definite step
towards the enlargement of the " written " at the
expense of the unwritten, or conventional, constitu-
tion. It has given a precise, statutory, shape to
that limitation of the legal prerogative of the House
of Lords which had previously rested on a tacit
understanding. In writing of the Upper House ^*
I have pointed out that the prerogative was endured
because it was believed that it never would be
exercised again except in the most moderate and
cautious fashion. The strength of the House of
Lords, I said, lay in its weakness; and I quoted a
Conservative statesman, the late Lord Iddesleigh,
who thought "that the House of Lords would be
perfectly intolerable, if it were as powerful in
reality, as it is in appearance." If, I added, the
House ventured to act as other Second Chambers

-viii-