PREFACE. In order to explain the scheme and general character of this volume, it is necessary to say a few words about the series of which it forms the commencement. The English Citizen Series is intended to meet the demand for accessible information on the ordinary conditions and the current terms of our political life. In this, its first volume, it deals with the machinery whereby our Constitution works, and the broad lines upon which it has been constructed in subsequent volumes it will treat of the course of legislation; of the electoral body, its functions, composition, and development; of the great scheme of national income, and its disbursement, and of various other matters; but on the present, as on every other subject, the aim has been not to give mere compendia of technical information, but to sum up as shortly and clearly as possible the leading points, and to arrange these so as to show their relation to one another, and their general bearing on the life and the duties of the citizen. To apply these principles to the treatment of a subject of such dimensions as that of "Central Govern 225091 |