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During the Palmerstonian era , at any rate , a few of such men each possessed an authority inside and outside the House which is hardly claimed by any member now-a-days who neither has nor is expected to obtain a seat in any Cabinet . Up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century , and even as late as 1884 , many Englishmen , including a considerable number of our older statemen , held that the solution of the colonial problem was to be found wholly in the willingness of England to permit and even to promote the separation from the Empire of any self-governing colony which desired independence , provided that this separation should take place without engendering any bad feeling between England and her so-called dependencies . These words are a true statement of patent facts , but it will on examination be found that the change during recent years in English opinion , and also in colonial opinion , with regard to the relation between England and the Dominions presents rather more comlexity than at first sight may be apparent41 to a casual reader of Mr. As-quith 's address . ' " / 3 / But if this means anything more than to explain what is implied by the Roman metaphors , it goes too far . These facts may rekindle among the youth of England as of France the sense that to be young is very heaven ; these facts may console old men whom political disillusion and disappointment which they deem undeserved may have tempted towards despair , and enable them to rejoice with calmness and gravity that they have lived long enough to see the day when the solemn call to the performance of a grave national duty has united every man and every class of our common country in the determination to defy the strength , the delusions , and the arrogance of a militarised nation , and at all costs to secure for the civilised world the triumph of freedom , of humanity , and of justice . How comes it , then , that one who has neither title nor possession is so far favored ? As a lawyer , I find these matters too high for me . At the present day students of the constitution wish neither to criticise , nor to venerate , but to understand ; and a professor whose duty it is to lecture on constitutional law , must feel that he is called upon to perform the part neither of a critic nor of an apologist , nor of an eulogist , but simply of an expounder ; his duty is neither to attack nor to defend the constitution , but simply to explain its laws . The second object of this Introduction is to state and analyse the main constitutional ideas which may fairly be called new , either because they have come into existence during the last thirty years , or because ( what is much more frequently the case ) they have in England during that period begun to exert a new and noticeable influence . The rule of law , as described in this treatise , remains to this day a distinctive characteristic of the English constitution . I must refer to what I said above touching these conflicts between theory and convenience . Neither can it be defended on the same ground as the protection to the occupation of the land itself . But the principles on which an assign could have the benefit of these covenants were derived from those which governed warranty , as any one may see by looking at the earlier decisions . But in spite of or perhaps because of this facile eloquence , the authority of individual M.P.s who neither sit in the Cabinet nor lead the Opposition , has suffered diminution . In certain cases , of which the original and type was the ancient warranty , and of which the modern covenants for title are present examples , the sphere of succession was enlarged by the mention of assigns , and assigns are still allowed to represent the original covenantee for the purposes of that contract . But such men in many cases doubted whether the maintenance of the Colonial Empire was of real benefit to England , and thought that on the whole , with respect at any rate to any self-governing colony , the course of prudence was to leave things alone until it should have become manifest to every one that the hour for friendly separation had struck . On publishing the eighth and final edition of this treatise I have thought it expedient to pursue a different course . The term " Imperial Parliament " is , however , a convenient one when we have to deal , as in this Introduction , with the relation between the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Dominions , every one of which has representative legislatures of their own which are always popularly , and sometimes in Acts of Parliament , termed Parliaments . But neither parliamentary government nor any form of constitution , either which has been invented or may be discovered , will ever of itself remove all or half the sufferings of human beings . It embraces two or three inquiries the answers whereto may trouble the thoughts of theorists , and these replies , if they are ever discovered , may give rise throughout England and the British Empire to infinite discord . But the possession of theoretically equal political rights does certainly give in England , or rather to be strictly accurate in the United Kingdom , to every British subject an equality which some British subjects do not possess in some of the Dominions . For although there is no difference in principle between a devise of a piece of land by will and a conveyance of it by deed , the dramatic resemblance of a devisee to an heir is stronger than that of a grantee . The first is the reign of Law : wherever the King 's writ runs , it is the symbol and messenger not of an arbitrary authority , but of rights shared by every citizen , and capable of being asserted and made effective by the tribunals of the land . It is probable , if not certain , that any one , who realises the extent to which parliamentary government itself is losing credit from its too close connection with the increasing power of the party machine , will hold with myself that the referendum judiciously used may , at any rate in the case of England , by checking the omnipotence of partisanship , revive faith in that parliamentary government which has been the glory of English constitutional history . The traditional feuds of Ireland and the ecclesiastical grievances of Wales , the demand of some further recognition of that Scottish nationality , for which no sensible Englishman shows or is tempted to show the least disrespect , all deserve and receive exaggerated attention .