The English Constitution

The constitution of the United Kingdom is the sum of laws and principles that make up the body politic of the United Kingdom. It concerns both the relationship between the individual and the state, and the functioning of the legislature, the executive and judiciary. Unlike many other nations, the UK has no single constitutional document. This is sometimes expressed by stating that it has an uncodified or "unwritten" constitution.

Walter Bagehot was one of the great political journalists of his—or indeed of any—age. Woodrow Wilson called his approach a "fresh and original method which has made the British system much more intelligible to ordinary men than it was before."

For anyone who wants to understand the workings of British politics, this book, written in 1867, is still the best introduction available. It is a study of the classical period of Cabinet government before the extension of the suffrage, the creation of the party machines, and the emergence of an independent Civil Service administering a vast welfare state.

“…an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.” (p. 42)

1. “it is laid down as a principle of the English polity, that in it the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers, are quite divided — that each is intrusted to a separate person or set of persons — that no one of these can at all interfere with the work of the other.”