11 DECEMBER 1909, Page 13

SIR HENRY MAINE ON SINGLE-CHAMBER GOVERNMENT.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

Sin,—At the present juncture the following passage from the late Sir Henry Maine's "Popular Government" is rot without its significance :—

" We are drifting towards a typo of government associated with terrible events—a single Assembly, armed with full powers over the Constitution which it may exercise at pleasure. It will be a theoretically all-powerful Convention, governed by a practically all-powerful secret Committee of Public Safety [the Cabinet], but kept from complete submission to its authority by obstruction, for which its rulers are always seeking to find a remedy in some kind of moral guillotine."