Chamber. The history of such an institution is indeed most natural. A little State will like, and must like, to see some token, some memorial mark of its old independence preserved in the Constitution by which that independence is extinguished. But it is one thing for an institution to be natural, and another for it to be expedient. If indeed it be that a Federal Government compels the erection of an Upper Chamber of conclusive and coordinate authority, it is one more in addition to the many other inherent defects of that kind of Government. It may be necessary to have the blemish, but it is a blemish just as much.
There ought to be in every Constitution an available authority somewhere. The sovereign power must be come-at-able . And the English have made it so. The House of Lords, at the passing of the Reform Act of 1832 , was as unwilling to concur with the House of Commons as the Upper Chamber at Victoria to concur with the Lower Chamber. But it did concur. The Crown has the authority to create new peers; and the king of the day had promised the Ministry of the day to create them. The House of Lords did not like the precedent, and they passed the bill. The power was not used, but its existence