Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Students Manual of English Constitutional History English
AN author needs to justify the appearance of so ambitious and yet so imperfect a work as I fear this will be found A twofold reason has prompted its compilation. In the first place, text-books on Con stitutional History are few, and experience suggests that those which exist deal with the subject on unsatis fac'tory lines. The development of an institution is subordinated to the details of a general narrative. No doubt the natural interest in the play of individual character will always place so-called political history in the van of historical pursuits. But if the study of history is, as it promises, to become a great educational medium, it is to the history of institutions rather than of dynasties or of individual men that we must look to provide the fittest mental training. As a preliminary it is necessary to trace the evolution and growth of each institution or set of institutions separately and apart from the accidental events of contemporaneous political history. Otherwise the institution is lost sight of in a mass of unimportant personal detail; it is difficult to pick up the threads Of its development while the attention of the student is at every turn called off to irrelevant matter, and the mind altogether fails to comprehend the great impersonal movement by which an institution shows itself to be something greater than the greatest man who has helped to mould and to work.
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