English political thought in the Nineteenth century

THIS book was undertaken over twenty ycars ago, at the
suggestion of Professor Harold J. Laski, who was then
rather under the influence of Acton and Maitland than of
Marx and Lenin.
date confess that I am today in general agreement with
myselt two decades ago. On going over the text I have
indecd been struck with an inevitable series of attacks of
esprit d'escalier. I think I could say some things now better,
more clecarly, than I said them then. I should like to revise
some snap judgments, notably the one in which I equate
Mr. Churchill-the Churchill of the 1920's, it is true
with the unprofitable Brougham. But second thoughts are
not always wiser than first thoughts, and they are almost
always duller, more cluttered. I do not think I should be
justified in trying to alter this book, which is here reprinted
in its original form.
No doubt the book shows its age. I cannot claim that it
was written with any remarkable prescience. The disasters
and the triumphs of the last war are not foreshadowed,
nor do the outlines of the great revolution by consent of
the nineteen-forties come out clearly in my analysis of the
political thought of nineteenth-century Britain. I do not
think the semi-socialist Britain of today will appear an
unnatural development trom the Britain of these pages
but neither do I think it will appear an inevitable develop-
ment from the political ideas here analysed.