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An institution which did not exist in the times, of the Plantagenets, of the Tudors or of the Stuarts, an institution not known to the law, an institution not mentioned in any statute, an institution of which such writers as De Lolme and Blackstone take no notice, began to exist a few years after the Revolution, grew rapidly into importance, became firmly established, and is now almost as essential a part of our polity as the Parliament itself.
Noble, generous, forgiving, and possessing all the attributes of a truly brave man himself, he little dreamt of the fate that awaited him; he had heard of the generosity of the English character, he knew the English to be brave, he had always found them so, but he was deceived as to their power and influence over the Government; he was grossly ignorant of the state and character of the British Parliament; he had read De Lolme and other popular writers upon the British Constitution, and he fell into the fatal, the irretrievable error, of believing that the practice of that constitution was the same thing as the theory described by these writers; and thus he was betrayed into a gulf from whence he was never to be extricated.
The text of De Lolme is incorporated in the second volume, and the notes affixed extend to great length, and embody very valuable and diversified information relative to the rights, qualifications, and disqualifications of members of Parliament and their constituents; the unions of Scotland and Ireland with England; the origin, rise, and progress of the civil law under nine periods of the Roman history; civil process in the English courts of law; history of the courts of equity, and the principles under which they act; trial by jury, and an analysis of criminal offences, and the statutes under which they are punishable, with an analysis of crimes that were committed in 1837, and of the sentences passed.
The real social forces of the time found there no channels of activity; and the difference between De Lolme and Bagehot is the latter's power to go behind the screen of statute to the inner sources of power. The basis of revolutionary doctrine was already present in England when, in 1762, Rousseau published his Contrat Social.
What, perhaps, is most immediately significant is his famous praise of the British Constitution the secret of which he entirely misapprehended and his discovery of its essence in the separation of powers. The short sixth chapter of his eleventh book is the real keynote of Blackstone and De Lolme.
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