CONSTITUTIONAL ESSAYS.* THE object of this book is stated by
its authors to be "the arrangement of well-ascertained facts connected with the growth of our institutions in such a way as to make the study of them
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Essays Introductory to the Study of English Constitatitmel H.dory. By Resident Members of the University of Orford. Edited by H. 0. Wakeman, Tutor of Keble, and A. Hassell, Tutor of Christ Church. London: Hivingtons. more intelligible and more attractive to beginners." The institu- tions to be dealt with are the institutions dealt with by Dr. Stubbs; the period comprised in this book is the period com- prised in Dr. Stubbs's History ; Dr. Stubbs has permitted his History to be taken throughout as the foundation of the work, and has looked over the proofs of the book, besides according help to the authors in other ways. This book, then, is to be regarded as a sort of students' " Stubbs," published with the author's sanction, and, indeed, compiled almost under his super- vision. The actual compilers are resident Fellows of several Oxford Colleges. Without exception, they are thoroughly well qualified for the task which they have undertaken, and most of them evidently possess a degree of ability and of learning which would fit them for kinds of historical work even more ambitious than the simplification of Stubbs for beginners.
Simplification, whether by a clearer method of arrangement, by the suppression of unnecessary details, by the adoption of a more lucid style, or by mere abridgment and compression, is clearly the object of the authors. How else could the study of that which is generally studied in the pages of Stubbs be ren- dered more attractive and more intelligible ? There is no doubt one other means by which these ends might be secured. The student trembling on the verge of Stubbs might be pre- sented with a little book containing a tabular analysis of institutions and a chronological list of important dates. By completely mastering these, he would partly emerge from his normal ignorance, and would set forth on his journey through his three threatening volumes with a reasonable hope of being cheered now and again by the mention of something he had heard about before. Such little books have already been written in considerable numbers, and in some eases with excellent results. The object of Mr. Wakeman and his friends is not to add to the number of these works, but to do work of a different kind. They do not tell the beginner common things necessary to be known for the profitable study of Stubbs. On the con- trary, beginners who read this book will stand rather more in need of a knowledge of the outlines of English history than beginners who begin with Stubbs. What the resident Fellows do for the beginner is to point out the same relations of cause and effect, the same tendencies, the same develop. ments, the same instances of personal influence, the same historical epochs which Dr. Stubbs points out, only to point them out, it seems, in a more intelligible and attractive manner. Nobody who is acquainted with the history school at either Oxford or Cambridge will doubt that Dr. Stubbs numbers among his readers many beginners who do not consider his great work a masterpiece either of intelligibility or of attractive- ness. One is tempted to ask, however, whether a proper study of Stubbs himself is not the true cure for those who are incapable of understanding his book at once, or of taking any pleasure in its perusal. A reader of Stubbs has only to attain a certain degree of industry and attention, and he will find plenty of things that he can understand, and some things by which he will be interested. The danger is that Dr. Stubbs's clever pupils may have written a book which will serve a good many beginners as an excuse for not reading Dr. Stubbs at all. Intelli- gible and attractive as the new book maybe, it will teach its readers far less than the original. It necessarily contains less informa- tion; and it is a book which can be read, and even mastered, without any great intellectual effort, whereas the mere feet of reading through Dr. Stubbs's History affords admirable mental training, quite apart from the actual knowledge acquired. The writers would doubtless repudiate the idea that they wish in any case to supersede Dr. Stubbs ; but any one at all versed in the art of imposing on examiners, will see how well these Constitu- tional essays might serve the turn of a candidate for history honours, who had never read Stubbs, but wished it to be thought that he had done so. It sometimes happens that one who combines the functions of examiner and coach, writes a book destined to lighten his labours in the latter capacity, which also has the effect of making him a particularly easy victim in the former.
It must be admitted that Dr. Stubbs does not add to his other merits every clear or effective style. The faults of style consti- tute the principal defect in his admirable book. Many sentences are awkwardly turned, and some are really difficult to under- stand. This defect might justify another writer as learned as Dr. Stubbs, and gifted with a more facile pen, in thinking that the early history of the English Constitution still needs writing. But it is one thing to undertake the almost impossible task of displacing Dr. Stubbs from the position as the standard author on his own subject ; it is quite another to transfer the easiest and least detailed parts of his work from the somewhat uncouth language of the author into the smoother periods of his disciples. Dr. Stubbs's deficiencies as a writer are certainly not sufficient alone to justify the publication of this book. The Essays fairly and plainly express the views of the greatest living authority on a subject of great interest with which they deal on a scale somewhat different from that adopted in any former work. The book is therefore valuable on its merits. It purports, however, to be written for the sake of beginners ; and it may be doubted whether the beginners will not lose more than they will gain by having their Stubbs made easy for them.
Dr. Stubbs is not a diffuse writer ; his long book is, in fact, rather more closely compressed than the short book of the Oxford essayists. It was therefore not an easy task to choose amid such a mass of valuable matter what to omit and what to reproduce. Upon the whole, the essayists have performed this task well. The book begins with a sketch of the centuries of English history which preceded the Norman Conquest. We are told how a feudal organisation of society was slowly growing up among the English settlers, subject, however, to certain checks imposed by the national spirit and institutions which the English had brought from their Continental home. We next come to the Norman Conquest, which in some respects matured and brought to perfection the existing tendency towards feudalism, while in other ways it increased existing checks and introduced new ones. A more detailed method characterises the next essay, in which Mr. Oman very clearly describes the strong centralised administrative system introduced by Henry II. Mr. Oman speaks of this system as a "centralised bureaucratic autocracy," where the will of the King was the real governing power in the country ; but he shows how the central govern- ment was made to enter into combination with the existing local administrative institutions, and how the policy of Henry II. left England possessed not only of a kingship so strong as to be likely to become dangerous, but also of the means of legal and orderly resistance ready to be used if occasion should arise. We are than shown the gradual growth of Parliament and the development of its several functions. The steps of this tendency are accurately traced, but not for the first time. In the fifth essay, we read of the efforts of the Lancastrian Kings to govern constitutionally ; of Parliament at its highest pitch of power under Edward IV. ; of the thirty years during which Parliament was the direct instrument of government, and nominated the Council ; of the fall of the house of Lancaster " through want of governance;" and of the proved unfitness for a really repre- sentative form of government of a people who needed the despotic sway of the Tudors effectively to protect them from the dangers of baronial turbulence and impending anarchy. Mr. Wakeman admirably sums up the influence of the Church on the early political development of this country. Theodore of Tarsus taught the lesson that English unity was practicable. Dunstan in one age, and Lanfranc in another, taught England to be not only a nation, but a great nation. The Church is allied now with the King and the people against the Barons, now with the Barons and the people against the King. Armed with au administrative system, with Courts and with a legal code of its own, the Church strives to make itself a greater power in the land than the civil government. Failing this, the Church stands somewhat aloof, an imperiuni in imperio, refusing to take a subordinate place in the united and organ- ised nation whose development it has itself done so much to further.
All these things are interesting and important ; but they are all in Stubbs. The troth is that Dr. Stubbs has been enabled by his own labours, and those of his predecessors and contem- poraries, to throw light upon many dark places and to make clear to English readers many things which were formerly uncertain and confused. He has explained and mapped out a tract of history which was formerly imperfectly known, and the subject of conflicting accounts. Now that there is at last a standard text-book, and an authorised map, of course the writers of compendiums and primers rush into the new country. These Constitutional Essays will be useful in so far as they lead people to read the Constitutional History ; worse than useless in so far as they lead them to go without reading it.
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