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THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION
By Walter Bagehot
No. I.
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION.
There is a great difficulty in the way of a writer who attempts to
sketch a living Constitution--a Constitution that is in actual work
and power. The difficulty is that the object is in constant change.
An historical writer does not feel this difficulty: he deals only
with the past; he can say definitely, the Constitution worked in
such and such a manner in the year at which he begins, and in a
manner in such and such respects different in the year at which he
ends; he begins with a definite point of time and ends with one
also. But a contemporary writer who tries to paint what is before
him is puzzled and a perplexed: what he sees is changing daily. He
must paint it as it stood at some one time, or else he will be
putting side by side in his representations things which never were
contemporaneous in reality. The difficulty is the greater because a
writer who deals with a living Government naturally compares it with
the most important other living Governments, and these are changing
too; what he illustrates are altered in one way, and his sources of
illustration are altered probably in a different way. This
difficulty has been constantly in my way in preparing a second
edition of this book. It describes the English Constitution as it
stood in the years 1865 and 1866. Roughly speaking, it describes its
working as it was in the time of Lord Palmerston; and since that
time there have been many changes, some of spirit and some of
detail. In so short a period there have rarely been more changes. If
I had given a sketch of the Palmerston time as a sketch of the
present time, it would have been in many points untrue; and if I had
tried to change the sketch of seven years since into a sketch of the
present time, I should probably have blurred the picture and have
given something equally unlike both.
The best plan in such a case is, I think, to keep the original
sketch in all essentials as it was at first written, and to describe
shortly such changes either in the Constitution itself, or in the
Constitutions compared with it, as seem material. There are in this
book various expressions which allude to persons who were living and
to events which were happening when it first appeared; and I have
carefully preserved these. They will serve to warn the reader what
time he is reading about, and to prevent his mistaking the date at
which the likeness was attempted to be taken. I proceed to speak of
the changes which have taken place either in the Constitution itself
or in the competing institutions which illustrate it.
It is too soon as yet to attempt to estimate the effect of the
Reform Act of 1867. The people enfranchised under it do not yet
know. their own power; a single election, so far from teaching us
how they will use that power, has not been even enough to explain to
them that they have such power. The Reform Act of 1832 did not for
many years disclose its real consequences; a writer in 1836, whether
he approved or disapproved of them, whether he thought too little of
or whether he exaggerated them, would have been sure to be mistaken
in them. A new Constitution does not produce its full effect as long
as all its subjects were reared under an old Constitution, as long
as its statesmen were trained by that old Constitution. It is not
really tested till it comes to be worked by statesmen and among a
people neither of whom are guided by a different experience.
In one respect we are indeed particularly likely to be mistaken as
to the effect of the last Reform Bill. Undeniably there has lately
been a great change in our politics. It is commonly said that "there
is not a brick of the Palmerston House standing". The change since
1865 is a change not in one point but in a thousand points; it is a
change not of particular details but of pervading spirit. We are now
quarrelling as to the minor details of an Education Act; in Lord
Palmerston's time no such Act could have passed. In Lord
Palmerston's time Sir George Grey said that the disestablishment of
the Irish Church would be an "act of Revolution"; it has now been
disestablished by great majorities, with Sir George Grey himself
assenting. A new world has arisen which is not as the old world; and
we naturally ascribe the change to the Reform Act. But this is a
complete mistake. If there had been no Reform Act at all there
would, nevertheless, have been a great change in English politics.
There has been a change of the sort which, above all, generates
other changes--a change of generation. Generally one generation in
politics succeeds another almost silently; at every moment men of
all ages between thirty and seventy have considerable influence;
each year removes many old men, makes all others older, brings in
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