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