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 under growth 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.

There are two descriptions of the English Constitution which have
exercised immense influence, but which are erroneous. First, it is
laid down as a principle of the English polity, that in it the
legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers are quite
divided--that each is entrusted to a separate person or set of
persons--that no one of these can at all interfere with the work of