ABSTRACT
The attention of historians has been unduly concentrated upon one feature of the evolution of government, to the exclusion of another, equally permanent and indispensable. According to the view which will be maintained in the succeeding pages, Parliament supplies only the regulating, moralizing, and controlling force of government. The attention of the reader is almost wholly directed to the struggle by which the community establishes over the king a parliamentary control, designed to abolish arbitrary power and to enforce the truth that the end of government is the good of the nation. The rise of political ability capable of dealing with the immense difficulties, both external and internal, which beset every administration, is therefore of equal importance with the development of the powers of Parliament. The king of course is, from the point of view of the constitutional historians, acting within his theoretical rights.
