The party of change, which would be a party of revolution if it was obliged to have large changes or none, is apt to be divided, and its more moderate section is, or soon passes into, a party only of reform. The English Chartists of 1840-50 caused some alarm. But between them and the old Constitutional Whigs there were several sections of opinion passing by imperceptible gradations into one another; and when it was seen that the current was setting towards changes approximating to those which the Chartists demanded, their less violent men were by degrees reabsorbed into the general body of the Whig or Liberal party, the latter at the same time moving with the times; and some of those changes, in particular vote by ballot, were ultimately obtained with no great friction.

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It must nevertheless be remembered that in the history of most States a crisis is apt to arrive when elasticity becomes a danger, in that it tempts people to abuse the facility for change. There is no better sign of strength in a man's physical constitution than his being able to make some short, sudden, and violent effort without suffering afterwards from doing so; and there is nothing of which the happy possessor of such strength is more proud. But most men who have reached middle life are aware that the temptation to strain one's strength in this exultant spirit is perilous. Repeated impunity is apt to encourage a man to go on trying experiments when the conditions are perhaps less favourable, or when the reserve of force is less abundant than it was in youth. The story goes that the famous Milo of Croton, passing alone through a forest, saw an oak into which woodmen who were

preparing to fell it had driven wedges. Pulling out the wedges, he tried to rive it asunder. But he had no longer the fullness of his youthful strength. The returning tree caught him by the hands and held him fast till he died. In our own days Captain Webb, stimu lated by his feat in swimming across the English Channel, sought still bolder exploits, and perished in the Whirlpool Rapid below Niagara Falls. So the Romans, having many a time given exceptional powers for special occasions to their magistrates, found at last that they had created precedents which enabled the old free Constitution to be in substance overthrown. Sulla became a dictator of a new kind. After a while he resigned his power, but the example showed that monarchy was not far off. Julius Caesar also received exceptional authority, and used it to form an army which extinguished the Republic. The dictatorship he had held passed under other forms into permanent absolutism, and what was practically a revolution was ultimately carried through with a certain deference to the old constitutional forms. In England, Parliament, during the sixteenth century, once or twice gave powers to the Crown which brought the Constitution into danger. In the seventeenth century the monarchy was abolished, and a Protectorate set up by revolutionary methods. This was the result of a war which had destroyed a vital part of the old machine, much to the regret of most of those who had in the first instance taken up arms. We have never since that date (except under King James the Second) seen the Constitution in any real danger.

It is, however, often suggested that the enormous

power possessed by Parliament might be used to upset fundamental institutions with reckless haste, and that it might therefore be prudent to impose restrictions on parliamentary action. And those who note the way in which Parliament bends and staggers under the increasing burden of work laid on it, coupled with the inadequacy of its rules to secure the prompt dispatch of business', have frequently predicted that the House of Commons may one day deliver itself into the hands of the Cabinet, the power of party organization having grown so strong that the head of each Cabinet will be deemed a sort of dictator, drawing his authority, nominally of course, from the House of Commons, but really from a so-called direct 'mandate' of the electors 2. Others draw a yet more horrible picture of a party machine, which they call the Caucus, dictating a policy to the electors on the one hand, and to the Cabinet on the other, itself reigning in the spirit of a tyrant, but under the forms of the Constitution. If the British Constitution, as we have hitherto known it, should perish, there is little

1 This was written in 1884. Since that year sweeping changes have been made in the procedure of the House of Commons which have greatly curtailed the rights and opportunities of private members while increasing the powers of the Ministry of the day. They have not, however, made that House able to discharge all or nearly all the work that falls on it; and it is becoming (under the new rules) less and less careful in the exercise of its powers of voting money.

2 This apprehension was often expressed between 1880 and 1885. Nothing has occurred since to justify it so far as the dictatorship of any single person is concerned; and it may have in great part arisen from the fact that from 1867 to 1885 the headships of both the two great parties had been vested in exceptionally vigorous and influential leaders. There can however be no doubt that the power of the Cabinet as against the House of Commons has grown steadily and rapidly and it appears (1901) to be still growing.

reason to fear it will do so in this eminently ignoble fashion 1.

When Flexible Constitutions come to an end, they do so in one of two ways. Sometimes they pass into an autocracy, either dying a violent death by revolution, or expiring in a more natural manner through the extension and development, under legal forms, of one of their organs, to a point at which it practically supersedes and replaces the other organs. Sometimes, on the other hand, they pass into Rigid Constitutions. The causes which induce this latter change belong, however, to the examination of that second type of Constitution; and will be considered when we have surveyed some further features characteristic of the Flexible type.

VI. ARISTOCRACIES AND FLEXIBLE CONSTITUTIONS.

Flexible Constitutions have a natural affinity for an aristocratic structure of government. I do not mean merely that they spring up at times when power is in the hands of the well-born or rich, for the stage of society in which constitutions, properly so called, begin to exist, is nearly always oligarchic, even if there be a monarch at the head of it. But there is a sort of natural attraction between an aristocracy and an undefined and elastic form of government, as there has begun to be, in most modern countries, a natural repulsion between such a form and a pure democracy. It needs a good deal of knowledge, skill and experience

1 Of this supposed danger also much less is heard now than in 1884. The thing that was then called the Birmingham Caucus' has ceased to be used to terrify the timid.

to work a Flexible Constitution safely, and it is only in the educated classes that these qualities can be looked for. The masses of a modern nation seldom appreciate the worth of ancient usages and forms, or the methods of applying precedents. In small democratic communities, such as are the Forest Cantons of Switzerland, this attachment to custom may be found, because there traditions have passed into the life of the people, and the maintenance of ancient forms has become a matter of local pride. But in a large nation it is only educated men who can comprehend the arrangements of a complicated system with a long history, who can follow its working, and themselves apply its principles to practice. The uninstructed like something plain, simple and direct. The arcana imperii inspire suspicion, a suspicion seldom groundless, because the initiated are apt to turn a knowledge of secrets to selfish purposes. Now a Common Law Constitution with its long series of precedents, some half obsolete, some of doubtful interpretation, is full of arcana. Even to-day, though the process of clarification and simplification has gone on fast since 1832, dark places are still left in the British Constitution.

There is, however, a further reason why Common Law Constitutions accord better with aristocratic than with democratic sentiment. They allow a comparatively wide discretion to the chief officials of State, such as the higher magistrates at Rome and the Ministers of the Crown in England. The functions of these officials are not very strictly defined, because legal enactments, though they limit power in certain directions (far more rigidly now in England than was the case at Rome), do