THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

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THIS book is the result of studies, prosecuted for many years, concerning the development of the domestic politics of England during the nineteenth century. What remains to be said of the origin and plan of the book, besides the explanations given in the introductory chapter, is mainly of a personal character.

When I came the first time to the shores of England, more than ten years ago, it was as a student of English Law and Constitution entirely imbued with the ideas and judgments which the great German jurist and scholar, Rudolf von Gneist, had expressed in the many legal and political writings of his long career. But soon I discovered that those writings were not only in many ways obsolete, having been long passed by current practice and by modern legislative reforms, but also that the general idea of the modern political history of England, as given by Gneist, stood in inexplicable contradiction to the real development and the true nature of political facts. These first impressions have been strengthened by incessant study in England itself, until out of my doubts of the theories and judgments of Gneist there has resulted a view of modern English politics, independent of, and in essence opposed to, those views of Gneist which have so constantly been accepted as authoritative by continental learning. Here I have not to explain or justify a view which must rather be justified by the book itself. In this place I only want to emphasise my obligations; for, notwith

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standing my refusing the theories of Gneist, I never can suppress a feeling of deep and reverential gratitude to this master of the German science of English constitutional law. Gneist's studies have indeed done what he once claimed: they have cut a first path through a huge and dense forest. Nobody will forget the discoverer of this first path, although he himself continues his way in quite another direction from that indicated by the pioneer. The high and entirely deserved praise which Gneist had earned as historian of the English Constitution secures him a lasting monument in the German school of political science; though his exposition of the modern English State is proved erroneous in many and important points, though his theory of "Self-Government" is shown to be one great mistake, though his influence on German constitutional doctrine and law appears to have been rather unfavourable to their progressive development. Gneist's theories, which are expounded and criticised in the third and last part of this book, must be regarded as fruit on the tree of the politico-metaphysical speculation of Hegel and Lorenz von Stein; and not less as the consequence of a certain doctrinairism, which is peculiar to Gneist in common with the whole famous historical school of the German science of law to which he belongs. It is the aim and purpose of the following pages to give, in contradiction to those methods, a realistic view of the evolution of English local government generally, and especially of its modern structure in law and practice.

The system of local government here dealt with is English in the narrow sense of the word. The corresponding institutions of Scotland and Ireland are entirely outside the scope of this book. And the administrative organisation of London is also left out. For metropolitan government has its own special problems both of practice and theory, and must therefore be treated quite independently, although all the elements of local organisation in the Metropolis have their counterparts in the general administrative organisation of England.

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