Transcriber's Notes:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the original.Ellipses match the original. A complete list of typographicalcorrections and other notes follows the text.
Click on the page number to see an image of the original page.
[i]
[ii]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
[iii]
BY
PROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1908
All rights reserved
[iv]
Copyright, 1908,
By A. LAWRENCE LOWELL.
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1908. Reprinted June, 1908.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
[v]
Measured by the standards of duration, absence of violent commotions,maintenance of law and order, general prosperity and contentment of thepeople, and by the extent of its influence on the institutions andpolitical thought of other lands, the English government has been one ofthe most remarkable the world has ever known. An attempt, therefore, tostudy it at any salient epoch cannot be valueless; and the present is asalient epoch, for the nation has now enjoyed something very near tomanhood suffrage in the boroughs for forty years, and throughout thecountry more than twenty years, a period long enough for democracy toproduce its primary if not its ultimate effects. Moreover, England hasone of the most interesting of popular governments, because it has had afree development, little hampered by rigid constitutional devices. It isan organism constantly adapting itself to its environment, and hence infull harmony with national conditions. An endeavour has been made inthese volumes to portray the present form of that organism and theforces which maintain its equilibrium.
In preparing a study of this kind one feels the need of limiting itsscope, by reducing the denominator as Arthur Helps remarked. Hence thework covers only the English governmen