The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

CHAPTER [| FOUNDATIONS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS

A NOTE ON THE ENGLISH CHARACTER

Iris said of ancient institutions that they are rooted in history. It were more illuminating to say that they are rooted in national character. Institutions that have endured through the centuries, informed with history, tradition and romance, are the mark of a strong and tenacious people. But institutions that are imposed upon a community that fret the temper or run counter to national habits soon die in tumult or under social attrition. The Englishman’s proverbial regard for historic continuity can be traced to the fact that at any given period during the past thousand years, with a few significant breaks, he has had on the whole the kind of constitution (but not necessarily the kind of government) that suited his mood. Let it, however, be remembered that this fondness for ordered sequence in development has never prevented the Englishman from effecting revolutions and then adapting his institutions to the new order of society. It is this little fact that destroys Lord Passfield’s complacent theory of the inevitability of gradualness.