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all conscience in the laws.
To sit as a court and to sit as a chamber are two distinct things. This
double function constitutes supreme power. The Long Parliament, which
began in November 1640, felt the revolutionary necessity for this
two-edged sword. So it declared that, as House of Lords, it possessed
judicial as well as legislative power.
This double power has been, from time immemorial, vested in the House of
Peers. We have just mentioned that as judges they occupied Westminster
Hall; as legislators, they had another chamber. This other chamber,
properly called the House of Lords, was oblong and narrow. All the light
in it came from four windows in deep embrasures, which received their
light through the roof, and a bull's-eye, composed of six panes with
curtains, over the throne. At night there was no other light than twelve
half candelabra, fastened to the wall. The chamber of Venice was darker
still. A certain obscurity is pleasing to those owls of supreme power.
A high ceiling adorned with many-faced relievos and gilded cornices,
circled over the chamber where the Lords assembled. The Commons had but
a flat ceiling. There is a meaning in all monarchical buildings. At one
end of the long chamber of the Lords was the door; at the other,
opposite to it, the throne. A few paces from the door, the bar, a
transverse barrier, and a sort of frontier, marked the spot where the
people ended and the peerage began. To the right of the throne was a
fireplace with emblazoned pinnacles, and two bas-reliefs of marble,
representing, one, the victory of Cuthwolf over the Britons, in 572; the
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