ABSTRACT
Walter Bagehot The English Constitution (1867) Everybody knows that Britain is a democracy. Our leaders regularly tell us so. They are supported, with only minor qualification, by the great constitutional authorities of the recent past and the textbook writers of the recent present. Indeed, when the blood really starts pumping, we are liable to be told that we are not merely a democracy, but the quintessential democracy, the mother and father of all democracies, the veritable fons et origa of the democratic principle itself and the pre-eminent exponent of its living reality.
