Mechanism of the Modern State

THE primary purpose of this book is to set forth the actual working of the English Constitution. Its method is mainly analytical; but no one can apprehend the genius of an historical Constitution from mere analysis. I have, therefore, traced the historical evolution of the principal organs of the Body Politic, both as they function in England and in the British Dominions. With constitutional history and political analysis there mingles also a certain amount of political philosophy; for neither philosophy nor history can yield their appropriate fruit unless cultivated in close conjunction. The method adopted in this work is indeed the outcome of a strong conviction that the Political Institutions of anyone country cannot profitably be studied in isolation. Accordingly, to the main
body of this work short studies are prefixed of three types of 'Democracy' which severally present a sharp contrast with each other and with the parliamentary type of Democracy gradually established by a prolonged process of evolution in this country. I have not, however, at- tempted a comprehensive survey of the democratic communities of the modern world. That task has been accom-
plished once for all in Lord Bryce's masterly treatise on Modern Democracies, but Lord Bryce has nothing to say of British Democracy (save in its newer homes oversea), which supplies my central theme. Where I have strayed from that central theme (conspicuously in Books Il, VI,and VIII) it has been for purposes of illustration and comparison, in order to bring into clearer relief the characteristic features of the English Polity.