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 the other. There has been much
eloquence expended in explaining how the rough genius of the English
people, even in the middle ages, when it was especially rude, carried
into life and practice that elaborate division of functions which
philosophers had suggested on paper, but which they had hardly hoped to
see except on paper.

Secondly, it is insisted that the peculiar excellence of the British
Constitution lies in a balanced union of three powers. It is said that
the monarchical element, the aristocratic element, and the democratic
element, have each a share in the supreme sovereignty, and that the
assent of all three is necessary to the action of that sovereignty.
Kings, lords, and commons, by this theory, are alleged to be not only
the outward form, but the inner moving essence, the vitality of the
Constitution. A great theory, called the theory of "Checks and
Balances," pervades an immense part of political literatu