During the period from the Reform Act of 1832 to the early 1880s, when a change set in, the house of lords was perceptibly weaker than the house of commons. The prevailing view of its position, accepted for the most part even by the peers themselves, was expressed in Walter Bagehot's highly influential English constitution (1867, rev. 1872), where the house of lords is described as safe from rough destruction but not from inner decay, the danger coming not so much from assassination as atrophy, not from abolition but decline. This description drew on Bagehot's distinction between the dignified and efficient parts of the constitution. The house of lords belonged to the first category: that house in its dignified capacity inspired a reverence in the people that attached them to the government. Yet, paradoxically, in view of the great respect for the aristocracy, the house of lords had been subordinate as a legislative chamber to the house of commons even before the Reform Act of 1832; and since then this subordination had grown ever more pronounced.