very small, and
if it were not economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would
be null. We could not do every day out of our own heads all we have to
do. We should accomplish nothing, for all our energies would be
frittered away in minor attempts at petty improvement. One man, too,
would go off from the known track in one direction, and one in another;
so that when a crisis came requiring massed combination, no two men
would be near enough to act together. It is the dull traditional habit
of mankind that guides most men's actions, and is the steady frame in
which each new artist must set the picture that he paints. And all this
traditional part of human nature is, ex vi termini, most easily
impressed and acted on by that which is handed down. Other things being
equal, yesterday's institutions are by far the best for to-day; they
are the most ready, the most influential, the most easy to get obeyed,
the most likely to retain the reverence which they alone inherit, and
which every other must win. The most imposing institutions of mankind
are the oldest; and yet so changing is the world, so fluctuating are
its needs, so apt to lose inward force, though retaining out ward
strength, are its best instruments, that we must not expect the oldest
institutions to be now the most efficient. We must expect what is
venerable to acquire influence because of its inherent dignity; but we
must not expect it to use that influence so well as new creations apt
for the modern world, instinct with its spirit, and fitting closely to
its life.

The brief description of the characteristic merit of the English
Constitution is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and
somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable; while its efficient
part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple
and rather modern. We have made, or rather stumbled on, a constitution
which--though full of every species of incidental defect, though of the
worst workmanship in all out-of-the-way matters of any constitution in
the world--yet has two capital merits: it contains a simple efficient
part which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work more simply and
easily, and better, than any instrument of government that has yet been
tried; and it contains likewise historical, complex, august, theatrical
parts, which it has inherited from a long past--which take the
multitude--which guide by an insensible but an omnipotent influence the
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