uniformity of franchise and proportionate representation were
made the basis of the electoral system, the extension of the former, the
more and more accurate adjustment of the latter, became a mere question
of time. The poorest class of householders in towns in 1886 are probably
as intelligent and competent as were the ten-pounders of 1832. The
masses might have been satisfied with the gradual enlargement of their
old representation; having been once disfranchised by wholesale, it was
certain that they would ere long demand and ultimately secure that
wholesale enfranchisement, by which every other class must necessarily
be swamped. Minority representation, electoral districts, and single
seats, are at best lame and unsatisfactory methods of engrafting on pure
democracy securities and checks, which were essential and natural parts
of the old representation of classes and interests. When once every
borough below a certain numerical standard had been extinguished, and
all below another deprived of their second member, the upward extension
of the principle became a logical and historical necessity. So again
much, perhaps most, of what has been written upon the contrast between
the American and English constitutions--the two great types of popular
government, Parliamentary and Presidential, the direct and indirect
election of the actual Executive, terms fixed by law or dependent upon
Parliamentary favour--was anticipated in the best chapters of Mr.
Bagehot's 'English Constitution.'

Few writers so terse, compact, and clear, have been so completely free
from the temptation of deliberate phrase making as Mr. Bagehot; yet few
professional phrase-makers have left in the minds of their readers so
many telling, forcible, and suggestive phrases; sentences in which a
novel or striking thought, an impressive view of new or old truth, a
principle apt to be forgotten or imperfectly appreciated, is vivified
and incarnated in a few emphatic words. It would be difficult to quote
any passage of ten times the length half so suggestive of the
exceptional conditions that have secured to England peace and stability
during the last two centuries of storm and shipwreck, revolution, and
reaction abroad, any phrase so expressive of the distinctive character
of the nation and its Government, as the two aptly chosen epithets
employed by Mr. Bagehot--the 'dignified parts' of the English
Constitution and the 'deferential tendency' of the English peopl