ABSTRACT
The geographically dispersed aspect of the political system, namely the election of members to the House of Commons, was only one aspect of a larger structure. Laws were the work of The King (or Queen) in parliament’. The Crown still retained great political clout when the industrial revolution began. It could certainly destroy cabinets, although frequently unable to maintain them. Only in 1835 was it obliged to accept wholesale one devised by a parliamentary leadership in control of the Lords and Commons. Great influence (actual or potential) was commanded by the House of Lords vis-à-vis the House of Commons throughout the late eighteenth, the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Since the 1670s it had lost the power to veto money bills, but not until 1911, with the passing of the Parliament Act, was its right to reject all other prospective measures subjected to severe restriction. Contemporaneously, for long into the nineteenth century and occasionally into the twentieth, peers were able to exercise enormous influence over the conduct and outcome of elections to the Commons. The great reality of power from above must never be left out of account.
