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No unbiased observer who derives pleasure from the welfare of his species , can fail to consider the long and uninterruptedly increasing prosperity of England as the most beautiful phsenomenon in the history of mankind . If the first work of the poor voters is to try to create a " poor man 's paradise , " as poor men are apt to fancy that Paradise , and as they are apt to think they can create it , the great political trial now beginning will simply fail . But I am a student of the British constitution ; my unhesitating conviction is that the constitution of the Empire ought to develop , as it is actually developing , in the same way in which grew up the constitution of England.103 The relation between England and the Dominions , and , as far as possible , between England and the colonies which are not as yet self-governing countries , need not be developed by arduous feats of legislation . It is at once a duty and a pleasure to mention my special obligation to two friends , who can both be numbered as high authorities among writers , who have investigated the constitution of England from different points of view . Not a page of my lectures could have been written without constant reference to writers such as Blackstone , Hallam , Hearn , Gardiner , or Freeman , whose books are in the hands of every student . A student may ask what is the good of insisting upon the absolute sovereignty of Parliament in relation to the Dominions when it is admitted that Parliament never gives , outside the United Kingdom , and probably never will give , full effect to this asserted and more or less fictitious omnipotence . England and the whole British Empire with her have taken up the sword and thereby have risked the loss of wealth , of prosperity , and even of political existence . To three of these authors in particular I am so deeply indebted that it is a duty no less than a pleasure to make special acknowledgment of the extent of my obligations . In this way , judicial panels would be governed by a similar rule to that for trial juries for verdicts in criminal cases . In the eyes , at any rate , of thinkers who share the moral convictions prevalent in most civilised states , it must seem a gain that the Imperial Parliament should have been able in 1834 to prohibit the existence of slavery in any country subject to the British Crown , and should be able to-day to forbid throughout the whole Empire the revival of the Slave Trade , or of judicial torture . Its existence is undoubted , but the veto has not been exercised for at least two centuries . Happily , crises arise from time to time in the history of any great state when , because national existence or national independence is at stake , the mass of a whole people feel that the authority of the nation is the one patent and the one certain political fact . Nothing can be more pedantic , nothing more artificial , nothing more unhistorical , than the reasoning by which Coke induced or compelled James to forego the attempt to withdraw cases from the Courts for his Majesty 's personal determination.9 But no achievement of sound argument , or stroke of enlightened statesmanship , ever established a rule more essential to the very existence of the constitution than the principle enforced by the obstinacy and the fallacies of the great Chief-Justice . In other words , by a process similar to that which we use to select trial juries , and arguably are supposed to use to select grand juries .