GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE RULE.
Proportion is sometimes called the "Rule of Three," because a certain system of conventionalisms has its origin in that, which is called, by way of joke, the "Three Estates" of the realm—King, Lords, and Commons; in other words, a parliament, so called from its being the focus of palaver, in which originate those splendid specimens of collective wisdom, known by the name of Acts of Parliament—because they "won't act."
The theoretic proportion is, that numbers should be exactly balanced,—that one sovereign should equal six hundred lords, that six hundred lords should equal six hundred and fifty-eight commoners, and that these should represent twenty-nine millions of people. Now, as the interests of each of these estates are said in theory to be opposed to each other, and as they are all theoretically supposed to pull three opposite ways with equal force, it must follow that legislation would be at a stand still, by the first law of mechanics, viz. that action and reaction are always equal: but to prevent such a catastrophe of stagnation, and to set in motion this beautiful machine, a pivot-spring, in the shape of a prime minister, or prime mover, is superadded, and a golden supply, fly, or budget wheel, is introduced, by which the following subordinate, yet ruling principles are developed; and thus we go on from age to age, making laws one day, and unmaking them the next, for the sake of variety.
"OUT OF PROPORTION."