The English Constitution

The challenge facing Walter Bagehot while writing the essays that became his study of The English Constitution is that, infamously, there is no “English constitution,” at least, not one that has ever been written down. The government of Great Britain and Ireland, in Bagehot’s day, is the result of centuries of evolution, and so is the product of custom, precedent, reform, and a great degree of chance. As a “constitutional monarchy,” the theory of government that Bagehot describes entails chiefly the role of the monarch, the main legislative assembly—the House of Commons—and its counterpart in