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Thus Speakers elected by a Liberal majority have continued to occupy their office though the House of Commons be elected in which a Conservative majority predominates , whilst , on the other hand , a Speaker elected by a Conservative House of Commons has held the Speakership with public approval when the House of Commons exhibits a Liberal majority and is guided by a Cabinet of Liberals . No one who reads the last and the strangest of the biographies of Parnell can doubt that " Ireland a Nation " was the cry which met his own instinctive feeling no less than the wishes of his followers , except in so far as their desires pointed towards a revolutionary change in the tenure of land rather than towards the claim for national independence . Public Opinion and Popular Government , pp . " 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 . Thus many Englishmen have long felt a moral 52 See especially Lowell , Public Opinion and Popular Government , chap . No one , in the second place , can , I think , with reason dispute that , among the numerous plans for proportional representation thrust upon the attention of the public , some one , and probably several , would tend to make the House of Commons a more complete mirror of what is called the mind of the nation than the House is at present ; and this concession , it may with advantage be noted , does not involve the belief that under any system of popular government whatever , a representative body can be created which at every moment will absolutely and with complete accuracy reflect the opinions held by various classes of the people of England . Public opinion approves and public expediency requires the observance of contracts , yet contracts are not always observed , and would ( presumably ) be broken more often than they are did not the law punish their breach , or compel their performance . 441-447 ; Public Opinion and Popular Government , partii . It is , however , an arrangement obviously congenial to 96 See especially Chap . The referendum , as I have dealt with it , cannot , be it always borne in mind , enforce any law to which at any rate the House of Commons has not consented . The prejudices which , say , in the time of Dr. Johnson , kept Scotsmen and Englishmen apart , have in reality vanished .