Abstract
This chapter describes Parliament as a law maker — what had to be done to turn a proposal into a law. It begins with the Commons, and particularly with the relation between the Commons and the government. It was trite law throughout the 19th century that Parliament's sovereignty gave its laws a finality no other rule-making possessed, and trite politics that the Commons was the primary initiating chamber. Well before 1914 the government came to possess a near monopoly of access to this legislative machinery, which was different from the near veto power it possessed in 1820.