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