English history has been in substance the same, though its form is different, and its growth far slower and longer.  The scale was larger, and the elements more various.  A Greek city soon got rid of its kings, for the political sacredness of the monarch would not bear the daily inspection and constant criticism of an eager and talking multitude.  Everywhere in Greece the slave population—­the most ignorant, and therefore the most unsusceptible of intellectual influences—­was struck out of the account.  But England began as a kingdom of considerable size, inhabited by distinct races, none of them fit for prosaic criticism, and all subject to the superstition of royalty.  In early England, too, royalty was much more than a superstition.  A very strong executive was needed to keep down a divided, an armed, and an impatient country; and therefore the problem of political development was delicate.  A formed free government in a homogeneous nation may have a strong executive; but during the transition state, while the republic is in course of development and the monarchy in course of decay, the executive is of necessity weak.  The polity is divided, and its action feeble and failing.  The different orders of English people have progressed, too, at different rates.  The change in the state of the higher classes since the Middle Ages is enormous, and it is all improvement; but the lower have varied little, and many argue that in some important respects they have got worse, even if in others they have got better.  The development of the English Constitution was of necessity slow, because a quick one would have destroyed the executive and killed the State, and because the most numerous classes, who changed very little, were not prepared for any catastrophic change in our institutions.

I cannot presume to speak of the time before the Conquest, and the exact nature even of all Anglo-Norman institutions is perhaps dubious:  at least, in nearly all cases there have been many controversies.  Political zeal, whether Whig or Tory, has wanted to find a model in the past; and the whole state of society being confused, the precedents altering with the caprice of men and the chance of events, ingenious advocacy has had a happy field.  But all that I need speak of is quite plain.  There was a great “council” of the realm, to which the king summoned the most considerable persons in England, the persons he most wanted to advise him, and the persons whose tempers he was most anxious to ascertain.  Exactly who came to it at first is obscure and unimportant.  I need not distinguish between the “magnum concilium in Parliament” and the “magnum concilium out of Parliament”.  Gradually the principal assemblies summoned by the English sovereign took the precise and definite form of Lords and Commons, as in their outside we now see them.  But their real nature was very different.  The Parliament of to-day is a ruling body; the mediaeval Parliament was, if I may so say, an expressive body.  Its