erent, 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 firs