Parliament had even taken upon itself on one celebrated occasion
(1689) to deprive a monarch of his "divine right" to rule, to establish
a new sovereign, and to decree that never again should Great Britain
have a king of the Roman Catholic faith.
French philosophers who saw so much power vested in a representative
body could not be too loud in their praise of "English liberty." Had
they investigated more closely, these same observers might have learned
to their surprise that Parliament represented the people of Great
Britain only in name.
[Sidenote: Undemocratic Character of Parliament]
As we have seen in an earlier chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 265
f.], Parliament consisted of two legislative assemblies or "Houses,"
neither one of which could make laws without the consent of the other.
One of these houses, the House of Lords, was frankly aristocratic and
undemocratic. Its members were the "lords spiritual"--rich and
influential bishops of the Anglican Church,--and the "lords temporal,"
or peers, haughty descendants of the ancient feudal nobles or haughtier
heirs of millionaires recently ennobled by the king.
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