no written Constitution and where Parliaments are elected for as long as five years. When there is an ancient community built up across the generations, Where Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent", it is not right that all should be liable to be swept away by the desperate measures of a small set of discredited men. A thousand years scarce serve to form a State. An hour may lay it in dust. 212 This is the argument against Second-Chamber Government, which is evidently so espoused on that side of the House. In this field the outlook of His Majesty's Ministers is marked by the same meanness of thought and spirit which characterise so much of their action and which destroys their power to help or unite and save our suffering country. They wish to keep the present Second Chamber on the hereditary basis so that they can abuse it, insult it and attack it and yet to cripple its powers, although those powers stand on 36 years of modern Parliamentary title so that, in effect, it is both vulnerable and powerless. That is their tactical method. By this artful, and insincere scheme they hope to substitute for the will of the people the decisions of the Government. This sinister intrigue will be exposed by us, without fear, to the electorate resting upon a universal suffrage. The Government say -- let us look closer into the point -- "We have the right to pass into law everything we mentioned