Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's introduction
- Principal events in Bagehot's life
- Note on the text and annotation
- The English Constitution
- I The Cabinet
- II The Prerequisites of Cabinet Government, and the Peculiar Form Which They Have Assumed in England
- III The Monarchy
- IV The Monarchy (continued)
- V The House of Lords
- VI The House of Commons
- VII On Changes of Ministry
- VIII Its Supposed Checks and Balances
- IX Its History, and the Effects of That History – Conclusion
- Introduction to the Second Edition (1872)
- Biographical notes on persons mentioned in the text
- Bibliographical note
- Index
- Title in the series
I - The Cabinet
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's introduction
- Principal events in Bagehot's life
- Note on the text and annotation
- The English Constitution
- I The Cabinet
- II The Prerequisites of Cabinet Government, and the Peculiar Form Which They Have Assumed in England
- III The Monarchy
- IV The Monarchy (continued)
- V The House of Lords
- VI The House of Commons
- VII On Changes of Ministry
- VIII Its Supposed Checks and Balances
- IX Its History, and the Effects of That History – Conclusion
- Introduction to the Second Edition (1872)
- Biographical notes on persons mentioned in the text
- Bibliographical note
- Index
- Title in the series
Summary
‘On all great subjects’, says Mr Mill, ‘much remains to be said’, and of none is this more true than of the English Constitution. The literature which has accumulated upon it is huge. But an observer who looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper description. He will see in the life much which is not in the books; and he will not find in the rough practice many refinements of the literary theory.
It was natural – perhaps inevitable – that such an undergrowth of irrelevant ideas should gather round the British Constitution. Language is the tradition of nations; each generation describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a series of inapt words – of maxims once true, but of which the truth is ceasing, or has ceased. As a man's family go on muttering in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and inculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer. Or, if I may say so, an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bagehot: The English Constitution , pp. 3 - 22Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001