Moreover, he obeyed a lifelong instinct in shying away from the call to decide.
"But we were talking about the House of Lords," he suggested feebly.
"The hereditary principle--" Brother Copas inhaled his snuff, sideways eyeing this friend whose weakness he understood to a hair's-breadth.

But he, too, had his weakness--that of yielding to be led away by dialectic on the first temptation.
"Aye, to be sure.

The hereditary--principle, did you say?
My dear fellow, the House of Lords never had such a principle.
The hereditary right to legislate slipped in by the merest slant of a side wind, and in its origin was just a handy expedient of the sort so dear to our Constitution, logically absurd, but in practice saving no end of friction and dispute." "You will grant at any rate that, having once adopted it, the Lords exalted it to rank as a principle." "Yes, and for a time with amazing success.

That was their capital error.

.