THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARLIAMENT DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY G. LOWES DICKINSON, M.A. FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW 1895 YORK All rights reserved PREFACE THE OBJECT of the following pages is twofold. First, to recount, as briefly and clearly as may be, the process of the 'democratisation' of Parliament; secondly, to put what appears to me to be one of the most important questions to which that process has given rise-the question of the competence of a democratic House of Commons to direct to a satisfactory issue the socialistic tendencies of the future. It would have been easy for me to expand my materials into a larger book, to insert in the text much that I have relegated to notes, and to add much which I have omitted altogether. But I have preferred to aim, above all things, at clearness and brevity, in the hope that what I have written may be read, if not by the general public, at any rate by some who are not professional |