MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
ONE of the incidental regrets which assail those of us who have been swept aside by the electoral avalanche is that we shall not be there to witness the first stages of this new and unexpected Parlia- i ment. How much I should have liked to see the House of Commons muster once again in St. Stephen's Chapel and to inidulge my sense 3f historical coincidence by feeling that, if only for a short few moments, we were back on the site of the great historical contests of the past. Four brass rosettes set in the tesselated pavement are all that recall to us the fact that it was in St. Stephens that the old House used to assemble, and that within the square marked out by these rosettes stood the table across which Pitt and Fox conducted their immortal combat and at which Castlereagh stood impassive while Whitbread assailed him for his betrayal of Saxony and Poland. It was indeed a different building in those days, with its vast chandeliers, its narrow gallery and the three high windows opening upon the river behind the Speaker's chair. But it is strange and true that this new House of Commons, which may seem so different but which will prove so much the same, will assemble for its first reunion within the walls that witnessed the passage of the Reform Bill and the political revolution which was the presage of the social revolution which we are now experiencing. There can be few of us who do not feel some pride at the thought that this tremendous reversal of fortune, with all its possible implications, should have taken place so placidly and with so little bitterness or vituperation. There can be few of us who are not astonished by the dumb instinct of the electorate, which in its rejection of all minority groups or fancy parties, has proved once again that the two-party system, with its alternative balance and exchange between a responsible Government and a responsible Opposition is (however illogical it may appear) the very basis for the proper working of representative institutions.
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