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Resolutions of Either House of Parliament The House of Commons , at any rate , has from time to time appeared to claim for resolutions of the House , something like legal authority . It seems to me quite certain that , if for four centuries there had been a very widely extended franchise and a very large electoral body in this country , there would have been no reformation of religion , no change of dynasty , no toleration of Dissent , not even an accurate Calendar . The period of now more than two centuries which has elapsed since what used to be called the " Glorious Revolution , " filled as those two centuries are with change and with growth , seems hardly to have attracted the attention of a writer whom lack , not of knowledge , but of will has alone prevented from sketching out the annals of our modern constitution . Its existence is undoubted , but the veto has not been exercised for at least two centuries . It would be remarkable , considering their history , if the same principles had not affected other singular successions also . Gradual growth of the English constitution ; new laws seldom called for ; importance of precedent ; return to early principles in modern legislation ; shrinking up of the ancient national Assemblies ; constitution of the Witenagemot ; the Witenagemot continued in the House of Lords ; Gemots after the Norman Conquest ; the King 's right of summons ; Life Peerages ; origin of the House of Commons ; comparison of English and French national Assemblies ; of English and French history generally ; course of events influenced by particular men ; Simon of Montfort . the temper of fanatical adoration by just hatred of those " doctors of the modern school , " who , when he wrote , were renewing the rule of barbarism in the form of the reign of terror ; we cannot exactly echo the fervent self-complacency of Hallam , natural as it was to an Englishman who saw the institutions of England standing and flourishing , at a time when the attempts of foreign reformers to combine freedom with order had ended in ruin .