The Spectator

Supreme but not respected

From ‘The disconsideration of the House of Commons’, 5 April 1919: The House of Commons is legally supreme in the land; it has eaten up and destroyed all competitors and become the sole depository of political power under the Constitution; and yet, instead of earning the respect which one might imagine would belong to such absolutism, it is, as we have said, suffering from a disconsideration such as has never before attached to it in its history. How has this come about? What is it that has, as it were, robbed the House of Commons of the complete authority at which it grasped? Why has its supremacy made it less, not more, respected by the nation at large?

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