But the trouble is, that when they turn from voting to writing they call many of their abstract reflections on government studies of _politics_, and thereby lose the benefit of some very wholesome aids to just thought. Even when they draw near the actual life of living governments, as they frequently do, and read and compare statutes and constitutions, they stop short of asking and ascertaining what the men of the street think and say of institutions and laws; what little, as well as what big, influences brought particular laws into existence; how much of each law actually lives in the regulation of public function or private activity, how much of it has degenerated into ‘dead letter;’ in brief, just what things it is--what methods, what habits, what human characteristics and social conditions--that make the appearance of politics outside the library so different from its appearance inside that quiet retreat; what it is that constitutes ‘practical politics’ a peculiar province. And yet these are the questions most necessary to be answered in order to reach the heart of their study. Every one who has read great treatises on government which were not merely speculative in their method must have been struck by their exhaustive knowledge of statutes, of judicial precedents, and of legal and constitutional history; and equally by their tacit ignorance of anything more than this gaunt skeleton of institutions. Their best pages are often those on which a modest asterisk, an unobtrusive numeral, or a tiny dagger sticking high in the stately text, carries the eye down to a foot-note, packed close in small print, in which some hint is let drop of the fact that institutions have a _daily_ as well as an epochal life, from which the student might ‘learn something to his advantage.’