Hallam's predilection for moral judgments is the more intelligible if we remember that his conception of "constitutional" history is somewhat wider than ours is to-day. He included in it much that would now be called "political" history. One has only to compare his work with the latest of our authorities--the posthumous book of F. W. Maitland--to realise how the term has become specialised. Maitland confines his treatment to the results of political action as they are represented in the growth of institutions; with political action itself he is, unlike Hallam, not concerned. The rise and fall of parties, the issues of Parliamentary debate, the progress of political speculation interest him but little and disturb him not at all. But to Hallam these things were hardly less important than the statute book and the law reports. This liberal view of his subject is not a thing to be regretted. It enables the reader to appreciate the large part played in the development of the English constitution by those "conventions" which are a gloss upon the law and without which the constitution itself is unintelligible. As Bagehot has pointed out, the legal powers of the king are as large as his actual authority is small. In strict legal theory the cabinet is merely an informal group of ministers of the crown who hold office during the king's pleasure. In fact and in practice it is a committee of the House of Commons dependent upon the support of the majority of the members. The fact is the outcome of a conventional modification of the theory, and this convention is due to the political changes of the eighteenth century and the growth of the party system. In the pages of Hallam these changes receive their due recognition, and without it the development of the English constitution is unintelligible. It was a favourite doctrine of Hallam that so far as the law was concerned the constitution was developed very early and that all that later generations contributed to it was better administration of the law and a more vigilant public opinion. He even goes so far as to say in his chapter in the _Middle Ages_ that he doubts "whether there are any essential privileges of our countrymen, any fundamental securities against arbitrary power, so far as they depend upon positive institutions, which may not be traced to the time of the Plantagenets." This is something of an anachronism, but it represents a not unjustifiable reaction against the high prerogative doctrines of writers of his own day. What Hallam, however, was really concerned to prove was that constitutional law in this country rests upon the common law--upon the rules laid down by mediæval judges as to the right of the subject to trial by jury, his immunity from arbitrary arrest, his claim not to be arbitrarily dispossessed of his property, and his right of action against the servants of the crown when he has suffered wrong. In this conception Hallam was undoubtedly right, and he urged it at a time when