times to the present age; and to shew how the general
principles of liberty, originally common to it, with the other Gothic
monarchies of Europe, but in other countries lost or obscured, were in
this more fortunate island preserved, matured, and adapted to the
progress of civilization. I shall attempt to exhibit this most
complicated machine, as our history and our laws shew it in action; and
not as some celebrated writers have most imperfectly represented it, who
have torn out a few of its more simple springs, and, putting them
together, miscall them the British constitution. So prevalent, indeed,
have these imperfect representations hitherto been, that I will venture
to affirm, there is scarcely any subject which has been less treated as
it deserved than the government of England. Philosophers of great and
merited reputation[27] have told us that it consisted of certain
portions of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; names which are, in
truth, very little applicable, and which, if they were, would as little
give an idea of this government, as an account of the weight of bone, of
flesh, and of blood in a human body, would be a picture of a living man.
Nothing but a patient and minute investigation of the practice of the
government in all its parts, and through its whole history, can give us
just notions on this important subject. If a lawyer, without a
philosophical spirit, be unequal to the examination of this great work
of liberty and wisdom, still more unequal is a philosopher without
practical, legal, and historical knowledge; for the first may want
skill, but the second wants materials. The observations of Lord Bacon on
political writers, in general, are most applicable to those who have
given us systematic descriptions of the English constitution. "All
those who have written of governments have written as philosophers, or
as lawyers, _and none as statesmen_. As for the philosophers, they make
imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as
the stars, which give little light because they are so high."--"_Haec
cognitio ad viros civiles proprie pertinet_," as he tells us in another
part of his writings; but unfortunately no experienced philosophical
British statesman has yet devoted his leisure to a delineation of the
constitution, which such a statesman alone can practically and perfectly
know.

In the discussion of this great subject, and in all reasonings on the
principles of politics,