tantly 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
reared under an old Constitution, as long as its statesmen were trained
by that old Constitution. It is not really tested till it comes to be
worked by statesmen and among a people neither of whom are guided by a
different experience.

In one respect we are indeed particularly likely to be mistaken as to
the effect of the last Reform Bill. Undeniably there has lately been a
great change in our politics. It is commonly said th