Walter Bagehot, in The English Constitution, offers an analysis of fundamental English law as it existed in 1865-66. The work was first published in 1867. Essentially, the author has three aims: to draw a distinction between the appearance and the reality of British politics; to present an accurate picture of the British political system in that era; and to argue that the true power in British law and politics in the mid-19th century was held by the Cabinet.
Beyond those explicit aims, however, Bagehot gives the reader his own views on the nature of politics itself. Crossman in his Introduction writes that Bagehot wavers between "treating [political science] sometimes as a strictly descriptive discipline, and sometimes as a practical study of the techniques of manipulating power" (28). However, it is safe to say that Bagehot more feared than respected the masses, and his critical "description" of the Constitution and British politics leads to the inevitable conclusion that the middle class would have to take measures to control those masses or lose control of the country.
The difficulty Crossman has in pinning Bagehot down with respect to his perspective and motives is due to the ambiguity of Bagehot's dual role as journalist and historian. This role gives the book a dynamic quality, but it also leads to some confusion. Bagehot, as a journalist, is writing about events and attempting to interpret them while they are still warm, so to speak. He writes about events whose historical significance had yet to be determined or measured, but he does so in the pose of an historian, despite the disclaimers in his own "Introduction to the Second Edition." In the first paragraph of the book, he places himself above the previous writers who had explored the English Constitution, essentially claiming that most of what had been earlier written is not mirrored in reality. The conclusion is that Bagehot has arrived to set the record straight,...