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But such a conviction is almost certain to beget , on the part of persons suffering under what they deem to be an unjust law , the belief , delusive though it often is , that any kind of injustice may under a democratic government be rightly opposed by the use of force . The constitution indeed of a Dominion in general originates in and depends upon an Act , or Acts , of the Imperial Parliament ; and these constitutional statutes are assuredly liable to be changed by the Imperial Parliament . The Act is at the moment detested by the Protestants of Ulster , and a binding though ambiguous pledge has been given that the Act will not be forced upon Ulster against her will . That ground is that the law defends possession against everything except a better title . From each class he may learn much , but for reasons which I am about to lay before you for consideration , he is liable to be led by each class of authors somewhat astray in his attempt to ascertain the field of his labours and the mode of working it ; he will find , unless he can obtain some clue to guide his steps , that the whole province of so-called " constitutional law " is a sort of maze in which the wanderer is perplexed by unreality , by antiquarianism , and by conventionalism . Now when the process was abridged , no persons were made liable to summons who would not have been liable before . At first it was doubted whether proof of such a secret trust ought to be allowed , even as against the heir . " This enactment , if strictly construed , would protect any Speaker who , either from partisanship or to promote some personal interest of his own , signed a certificate which was notoriously false from being liable to punishment by any Court of law whatever.50 No doubt the House of Commons has been historically jealous of any judicial interference with persons acting under the authority of the House , and has on more than one occasion claimed in a sense to be above the law of the land . The blackleg may be , and one may suspect often is , a mean fellow who , to put money into his own pocket , breaks rules which his fellow-workers hold to be just and beneficial to the trade generally . No impartial observer can therefore deny the possibility that a fundamental change in our constitution may be carried out against the will of the nation . This misrepresentation is likely or even certain to arise where , as in England , a general election comes more and more to resemble the election of a given man or a given party to hold office for five years . My aim in this Introduction has been to place before my readers the strongest argument against and also the strongest argument in favour of the introduction of the referendum into the constitution of England .