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621 , where , however , it does not appear that the plaintiff did not know of the offer of a reward , but merely that the jury found that she was in fact actuated by other motives , a finding wholly beside the mark . They have become only a little more unreal during the century and more which has since elapsed . The Repealers , as led by O'Connell , and still more the Free Traders , as led by Cobden91 are early examples of such 90 I choose these old expressions which have been in use , at any rate from 1689 till the present day , because they make it easier to keep somewhat apart from the burning controversies of 1914 . The self-governing colonies , on the other hand , up at any rate till 1884 , just because they were more and more left alone and free to manage their own affairs , though they occasionally resented the interference of the English Government with colonial legislation , were on the whole contented with things as they stood . Nothing gives a more vivid idea of English sentiment with regard to the constitution towards the end of the eighteenth century than the satirical picture of national pride to be found in Goldsmith 's Citizen of the World , Letter IV . Federalism , when successful , has generally been a stage towards unitary government . But the appeal to precedent is in the law courts merely a useful fiction by which judicial decision conceals its transformation into judicial legislation ; and a fiction is none the less a fiction because it has emerged from the Courts into the field of politics or of history . No doubt again their lordships have , at any rate since 1832 , acknowledged that they ought to pass any Bill deliberately desired by the nation , and also have admitted the existence of a more or less strong presumption that the House of Commons in general represents the will of the nation , and that the Lords ought , therefore , in general to consent to a Bill passed by the House of Commons , even though their lordships did not approve of the measure . I yield to no man in my passion for the greatness , the strength , the glory , and the moral unity of the British Empire.1021 am one of the thousands of Englishmen who approved , and still approve , of the war in South Africa because it forbade secession . At the same time it is clear that a way is no more capable of possession because somebody else has a right to it , than if no one had . Our civil servants , indeed , are as yet not in any serious degree put beyond the control of the law Courts , but in certain instances , and notably with regard to many questions arising under the National Insurance Act , 1911 , something very like judicial powers have been given to officials closely connected with the Government.55 And it may not be an exaggeration to say that in some directions the law of England is being " officialised , " if the expression may be allowed , by statutes passed under the influence of socialistic ideas . The period of now more than two centuries which has elapsed since what used to be called the " Glorious Revolution , " filled as those two centuries are with change and with growth , seems hardly to have attracted the attention of a writer whom lack , not of knowledge , but of will has alone prevented from sketching out the annals of our modern constitution . No one who reads the last and the strangest of the biographies of Parnell can doubt that " Ireland a Nation " was the cry which met his own instinctive feeling no less than the wishes of his followers , except in so far as their desires pointed towards a revolutionary change in the tenure of land rather than towards the claim for national independence . It has been shown that a similar limitation of the benefits of the ancient [ 380 ] warranty was required by its earlier history before the assign was allowed to sue , and that the fiction by which he got that right could not extend it beyond that limit . Yet one or two facts may be noted which , though they do not solve the problem before us , do to some slight extent suggest the line in which its solution must be sought for. Parliamentary government may under favourable circumstances go a great way towards securing such blessings as the prevalence of personal liberty and the free expression of opinion . Important alterations have most certainly taken place ; these may , for the most part , be brought under two different heads which for the sake of clearness should be distinguished from each other , namely , first , new rules or customs which still continue to be mere constitutional understandings or conventions , and , secondly , understandings or conventions which have since 1884 either been converted into laws or are closely connected with changes of law.64 These may appropriately be termed " enacted conventions . But the aspiration and the effort towards actual national independence is at least as inconsistent with the conditions of a federal as with the conditions of a unitary government .