"...man lives in something else besides a private house..."

But the gentleman who wanted to keep the Lords out of Public Houses committed an unconscious irony when he wished to achieve that end by keeping them in the House of Lords. For the House of Lords is a Public House. So is the House of Commons. That is the one really agreeable thing about them. I do not refer to the mere fact that they are, I believe, both licensed to sell stimulants, like any ordinary Public House. Nor do I allude to the fact that its occupants are sometimes chucked out. I mean that behind the existence of these things is the same idea that is behind the old inns of the world: the idea that man lives in something else besides a private house, that in the words of Aristotle (the Greek of which you have on the tip of your tongue), "man is by nature political." And if the taverns and the drinking-shops do not look very much as if they lived up to their sublime destiny- well, there are some churlish people who think that the Houses of Parliament...but perhaps we had not better go into that. Suffice it to repeat, for the benefit of the philanthropist who wished to keep the Lords out of public houses, that the House of Lords is itself a Public House. And that there are some people who would like to keep the Lords out of that one.

-December 9, 1905, Illustrated London News