tution is a living organism, so constantly
undergoing modification that any description of it which may be
attempted is likely to be subject to correction almost before it can
be completed. At no time, as Mr. Freeman wrote, "has the tie between
the present and the past been rent asunder; at no moment have
Englishmen sat down to put together a wholly new constitution in
obedience to some dazzling theory."[53] On the contrary, each step in
the growth of the constitutional system has been the natural
consequence of some earlier step. Great changes, it is true, have been
wrought. To mention but the most obvious illustration, autocratic
kingship has been replaced by a parliamentary government based upon a
thoroughgoing political democracy. None the less, transitions have
been regularly so gradual, deference to tradition so habitual, and the
disposition to cling to ancient names and forms, even when the spirit
had changed, so deep-seated, that the constitutional history of
England presents elements of continuity which cannot be paralleled in
any other country of Europe.

[Footnote 52: Constitutional History of England,
I., prefatory note.]

[Footnote 53: Growth of the English Constitution,
19.]

The letter of a written constitution may survive through many decades
unchanged, as has that of the Italian _Statuto_ of 1848, and as did
that of the American constitution between 1804 and 1865. No (p. 045)
constitutional system, however, long stands still, and least of all
one of the English variety, in which there exists but little of even
the formal rigidity arising from written texts. Having no fixed and
orderly shape assigned it originally by some supreme authority, the
constitution of the United Kingdom has retained throughout its history
a notably large measure of flexibility. It is by no means to-day what
it was fifty years ago; fifty years hence it will be by no means what
it is to-day. In times past changes have been accompanied by violence,
or, at least, by extraordinary manifestations of the national will.
Nowadays they are introduced through the ordinary and peaceful
processes of legislation, of judicial interpretation, and of
administrative practice. Sometimes, as in the instance of the recent
overhauling of the status of the House of Lords, they are accompanied
by heated controversy and widespread public agitation. Not
infrequently, h