The English Constitution | Page 4

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