The English Constitution

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THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

By

Walter Bagehot

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION.

II. THE CABINET.

III. THE MONARCHY.

IV. THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

V. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

VI. ON CHANGES OF MINISTRY.

VII. ITS SUPPOSED CHECKS AND BALANCES.

VIII. THE PREREQUISITES OF CABINET GOVERNMENT, AND THE PECULIAR

FORM WHICH THEY HAVE ASSUMED IN ENGLAND.

IX. ITS HISTORY, AND THE EFFECTS OF THAT HISTORY.--CONCLUSION.

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 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

This is all which I think I need say on the domestic events which have

changed, or suggested changes, in the English Constitution since this

illustrated it, and of these I should like to say a few words.

Naturally, the most striking of these illustrative changes comes from

France. Since 1789 France has always been trying political experiments,

from which others may profit much, though as yet she herself has

profited little. She is now trying one singularly illustrative of the

English Constitution. When the first edition of this book was published

I had great difficulty in persuading many people that it was possible

in a non-monarchical State, for the real chief of the practical

executive--the Premier as we should call him--to be nominated and to be

removable by the vote of the National Assembly. The United States and

its copies were the only present and familiar Republics, and in these

the system was exactly opposite. The executive was there appointed by

the people as the legislature was too. No conspicuous example of any

other sort of Republic then existed. But now France has given an

example--M. Thiers is (with one exception) just the chef du pouvoir

executif that I endeavoured more than once in this book to describe. He

is appointed by and is removable by the Assembly. He comes down and

speaks in it just as our Premier does; he is responsible for managing

it just as our Premier is. No one can any longer doubt the possibility

of a republic in which the executive and the legislative authorities

were united and fixed; no one can assert such union to be the

incommunicable attribute of a Constitutional Monarchy. But,

unfortunately, we can as yet only infer from this experiment that such

a Constitution is possible; we cannot as yet say whether it will be bad

or good. The circumstances are very peculiar, and that in three ways.

First, the trial of a specially Parliamentary Republic, of a Republic

where Parliament appoints the Minister, is made in a nation which has,

to say the least of it, no peculiar aptitude for Parliamentary

Government; which has possibly a peculiar inaptitude for it. In the

last but one of these essays I have tried to describe one of the mental

conditions of Parliamentary Government, which I call "rationality," by

which I do not mean reasoning power, but rather the power of hearing

the reasons of others, of comparing them quietly with one's own

reasons, and then being guided by the result. But a French Assembly is

not easy to reason with. Every assembly is divided into parties and

into sections of parties, and in France each party, almost every

section of a party, begins not to clamour but to scream, and to scream

as only Frenchmen can, as soon as it hears anything which it

particularly dislikes. With an Assembly in this temper, real discussion

is impossible, and Parliamentary government is impossible too, because

the Parliament can neither choose men nor measures. The French

assemblies under the Restored Monarchy seem to have been quieter,

probably because being elected from a limited constituency they did not

contain so many sections of opinion; they had fewer irritants and fewer

species of irritability. But the assemblies of the '48 Republic were

disorderly in the extreme. I saw the last myself, and can certify that

steady discussion upon a critical point was not possible in it. There

was not an audience willing to hear. The Assembly now sitting at

Versailles is undoubtedly also, at times, most tumultuous, and a

Parliamentary government in which it governs must be under a peculiar

difficulty, because as a sovereign it is unstable, capricious, and

unruly.

The difficulty is the greater because there is no check, or little,

from the French nation upon the Assembly. The French, as a nation, do

not care for or appreciate Parliamentary government. I have endeavoured

to explain how difficult it is for inexperienced mankind to take to

such a government; how much more natural, that is, how much more easy