Their leading patriots took refuge in the City, and the nearest approach to an English "sitting in permanence" is the committee at Guildhall, where all members" that came were to have voices." Down to George III.'s time the City was a useful centre of popular judgment. Here, as elsewhere, we have built into our polity pieces of the scaffolding by which it was erected.

De Tocqueville indeed used to maintain that in this matter the English were not merely historically excusable, but likewise politically judicious. He founded what may be called the culte of corporations. And it was natural that in France, where there is scarcely any power of self-organization in the people, where the préfet must be asked upon every subject, and take the initiative in every movement, a solitary thinker should be repelled from the exaggerations of which he knew the evil, to the contrary exaggeration of which he did not. But in a country like England, where business is in the air, where we can organize a vigilance committee on every abuse and an executive committee for every remedy-as a matter of political instruction, which was De Tocqueville's point - we need not care how much power is delegated to outlying bodies, and how much is kept for the central body. We have had the instruction municipalities could give us: we have been through all that. Now we are quite grown up, and can put away childish things.

The same causes account for the innumerable anomalies of our polity. I own that I do not entirely sympathize with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics. It is natural

that those who by special and admirable culture have come to look at all things upon the artistic side, should start back from these queer peculiarities. But it is natural also that persons used to analyze political institutions should look at these anomalies. with a little tenderness and a little interest. They may have something to teach us. Political philosophy is still more imperfect; it has been framed from observations taken upon regular specimens of politics. and States; as to these its teaching is most valuable. But we must ever remember that its data are imperfect. The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail. A philosophical politician regards a political anomaly as a scientific physician regards a rare disease - it is to him an interesting case.” There may still be instruction here, though we have worked out the lessons of common cases. I cannot, therefore, join in the full cry against anomalies; in my judgment it may quickly overrun the scent, and so miss what we should be glad to find.

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Subject to this saving remark, however, I not only admit, but maintain, that our constitution is full of curious oddities, which are impeding and mischievous, and ought to be struck out. Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracts of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete. Just so the lines of our constitution were framed in old

eras of sparse population, few wants, and simple habits; and we adhere in seeming to their shape, though civilization has come with its dangers, complications, and enjoyments. These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle. The casual line was traced according to the strength of deceased combatants; succeeding generations fought elsewhere; and the hesitating line of a half-drawn battle was left to stand for a perpetual limit.

I do not count as an anomaly the existence of our double government, with all its infinite accidents, though half the superficial peculiarities that are often complained of arise out of it. The co-existence of a Queen's seeming prerogative and a Downing Street's real government is just suited to such a country as this, in such an age as ours.*

* So well is our real Government concealed, that if you tell a cabman to drive to "Downing Street" he most likely will never have heard of it, and will not in the least know where to take you. It is only a “disguised republic" which is suited to such a being as the Englishman in such a century as the nineteenth.

Cambridge: Press of Johr. Wilson and Son.